Note: This is your regular reminder that this is my purely self-indulgent writing project. I am waging war against the writer's block by ignoring the fact that between me and that one scene I REALLY want to write is potentially a novel's worth of words. Please don't ask me how space travel or any arm of any military in the world works.
Andrew didn't know where he was. He only knew that he wasn't home.
When he asked himself how he knew this, he couldn't find the answer. The inside of his head was a mess, memories and ideas and lists scattered about the place like a toddler had just come through.
Or someone with a bad temper.
There had been a man with a really bad temper, not too long ago. He was the reason for the ringing in Andrew's ear. People who solved all their issues with brute force were difficult to talk to. Andrew had a distinct memory of trying anyway.
Hence: ringing ear. How long could an ear do that before it gave up? Was the next stage deafness? He almost thought he’d prefer that.
There was another sound, under the ringing, or rather a choir of sounds: beeps and clicks and the murmur of voices; and below that, the hum of a mechanical heart that did not belong to Zenith.
He wasn't home. Where was he?
With an effort, Andrew opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, but at least both eyes seemed to be working. A curtain along three sides defined the “room” he lay in, with a monitor-lined wall making up the fourth side. Even though he couldn’t see the rest of the room, he knew immediately that he was in the infirmary. It was too quintessentially medical to be anything else, with the constant drone of machines, the too-white light, the tile floors. There was also a strong smell of antiseptic. That stirred up memories of the only other time Andrew had been in a hospital (ten, broken arm, disagreement with a garden bot).
No, not the only other time. There was another time, more recently, back on Zenith. That was when he had learned what fear smelled like.
Andrew pushed that memory aside and focused on his immediate surroundings instead. He was lying on a bed. Not a comfortable bed. It was stiff and slightly elevated and there were too many pillows scrunched up behind his shoulders. Nikki always laughed at how he tossed away most of his pillows before going to sleep.
Andrew lifted a hand to dig out the worst of the pillows and stopped with a hiss of pain. Right. The broken wrist.
Something stirred at the foot of his bed. With an effort, squinting through his left eye, Andrew managed to focus on the figure sitting there in a wobbly metal chair. He'd overlooked her at first, taking her for a piece of furniture.
"Hey," Andrew croaked as the woman swam into clearer view. "That's mine."
She was reading a book. His book. "You let me borrow it," she said without looking up.
Andrew stared at her for a moment. In the debris of his mind, he found a torn bit of memory that corroborated this statement. "I did." He wasn't sure when that had happened. Maybe yesterday, or the day before. It was morning now. She always visited in the morning, after her breakfast and before his.
He couldn't remember her name.
He did know the title of the book she was reading. All the Dead Stars had inexplicably followed him all the way out here, to this ship with its heartbeat so different from Zenith's. All the Dead Stars and this woman sitting in what passed for his hospital room. They were his only companions, however unwilling, on a ship that didn’t want them there. Ward had made it clear that Andrew wasn’t welcome, and she probably felt the same about….
"Liz."
The woman raised her head, revealing a yellowing bruise on her cheek and a raw mark under her chin. She didn't smile, only looked at him, waiting.
She looked awful. Her pale hair was falling out of its braid and the circles under her ice-blue eyes looked darker than Andrew remembered. As he woke, he found that he remembered a lot. Too much. Best to focus on Liz. Not the start, when they'd grabbed her, guessing correctly that threatening her would make Andrew cooperate. Or what came after.
Here. Here was what mattered. Even if the bruises on Liz's face insisted on reminding him of what he had done.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Liz frowned. Andrew had apologized before, more than once, for what he had inadvertently dragged her into. She had told him to stop apologizing.
"Sorry," Andrew said, more clearly. He folded his right arm in its cast over his ribs. "Still waking up."
"Hmm." Marking her place with her thumb, Liz closed the book and rolled her shoulders. "Did you sleep?"
"I think so." He wasn't sure how, with the veritable mountain of pillows jammed underneath him and the monitors on the wall putting out a constant noise and light.
He clutched at his elbow with his left hand, bracing the injured arm against his ribs, which were also injured, with his broken, ringless left ring finger that was wrapped between supporting middle and pinkie. Consolidated the physical pain to drown out the emotional pain.
The rest of his memories were settling into place now. After his spectacular display of self-control during his one and only interview with Ambrosia Ward, whose title he still did not know, he had been confined to the infirmary to recuperate. That had been…at least four days ago.
He was on the Ireyon, the…cruiser?…that had rescued him and Liz. The ship was part of the Concordia fleet, which belonged to a union of settlements that included both Andraste and Zenith—although Zenith was less a power in that union than an asset.
"What?" Liz asked.
Andrew could only manage a confused noise in reply. He had just tried to run a query to determine if "cruiser" was the correct designation for the Ireyon and had run into a wall instead. His personal network had been cut off from the general feed.
"Are you cut out of the feed?" he asked.
Liz sighed. "No. Hasn’t changed since the last time you asked.”
He didn't remember asking. See: head injury = memory issues. The irony was that he kept forgetting about the memory issues. He could only imagine what talking to him was like.
He frowned at the reminder that he was the only one in digital isolation. Ward, or whoever was in charge of his case, had restored access to his personal systems, but no more.
Unlike Andrew, Liz's credentials had been easily verified and, as a result, she was at liberty to go where she pleased within the public sections of the ship, and to access information on the public feed. She ate her meals in the citizens' cafeteria and had her own sleeping quarters. (He vaguely remembered her describing the narrow bunk just down the hall from the infirmary. She had her own injuries that needed monitoring.)
Andrew, meanwhile, was still a suspect. Person of interest? Point was they didn't trust him, and he hadn't found a way to convince them of his innocence. There was too much working against him. His link was heavily encrypted; even his public profile was locked down tight. Anyone questioning him would have to take his word for it that he'd been born on Andraste, that he had gone to school on Eusebia, and that he lived on and was married to a woman from Zenith Station. Even his school records were sealed, and while his profile showed his relationship status as MARRIED, no other details were public.
Nikki’s profile was the same. They'd had a long and circuitous discussion about that before she'd finally agreed to let one of the family’s paid nerds lock down her private info. Andrew had told her that she wouldn't really notice a difference in a station the size of Zenith. He prayed now that her conspicuously-sparse public details wouldn't attract the wrong sort of attention.
Were those pirates still on Zenith? They had to be. There had been some sort of coup, he thought. He had overheard snatches of conversation while on the marauder ship, and there had only been one attacking ship. Unless the rest of the marauder’s crew had commandeered Kate’s hauler or that passenger carrier that had been in dock at the time of the attack, the rest of the pirates would still be on the station.
Had Kate managed to get away? Ward had said that the gate had gone down, but how long had that taken? Kate could have just…left, no jump, depending on her supplies.
The pirates could have done the same thing. Maybe they weren’t on Zenith at all. He prayed they had cut their losses and run. Zenith didn't have any kind of defenses. She didn't need them, way out on the brink. She had station security, of course, but they were basic law enforcement. Most of them weren't even armed. What kind of damage could a crew of pirates inflict?
"Have I already asked our status?" Andrew asked, and wished he didn't have to. He would put all of the things he forgot onto a list as soon as he remembered to.
"Not yet. Three days out from Tauf, as of last night."
Liz stood up so suddenly that Andrew jumped. She stomped over to the head of Andrew's bed and pushed Andrew forward with the hand holding Dead Stars. With the other, she tugged free a couple of the excess pillows and tossed them onto the floor before wordlessly resuming her seat.
Andrew stared at her. He hadn't realized he'd been wriggling around trying to find a comfortable sitting position. (Really, who needed that many pillows?)
"Thank you," he said belatedly.
Liz returned to the book. "It was that or smother you with them."
Was she always like this?
No. He'd seen her cry, once; and he'd seen her numb with shock. He remembered the noise she’d made when Martin—
Andrew blinked the memory away. Why could he remember the worst things that had happened to him recently, and none of the rest of it? What did Liz remember?
God, whatever she's going through…? His usual prayer would have run something like "give her peace", but it felt far too inadequate now. For Liz, finding or making peace probably meant dealing with her simmering anger first, and then dealing with whatever she was left with after that.
Unless this anger was normal for her. Andrew had no idea. He really didn't know her at all; not in the usual way, that came about through conversation and shared interests. He didn't know why she maintained her habit of visiting him every morning and most evenings when she clearly saw those visits as a chore. She almost never talked when they were together. Andrew had offered her his book to borrow just so she didn't sit there staring at the wall in silence for an hour.
"You don't have to keep coming here, you know."
Liz didn't acknowledge the remark. He'd probably already told her that more than once, and maybe she'd argued before.
She didn't leave now, so Andrew decided to make what use he could of her visit. "Tauf seems like a weird choice to put in at," he ventured, as if he had any concept of where they were in relation to anywhere he had ever been.
Liz let out a breath. "It's the nearest port on the Hub Line."
"Right." Was he supposed to know that? He knew most of Zenith’s neighbors and not much else when it came to astronomy. "How do you know that's where we're going, anyway? I would have thought they’d put in at a fort."
"Local chatter."
He waited, tracing the circular scar on his temple, until Liz turned to the next page—she was a slow reader, or else not really paying attention to the story. Then he asked, "Learn anything else?"
Liz wagged her head back and forth, grimacing a little as she did. "War, terror, star fleets, embargoes. The usual.” A pause. The scratch of her thumb over one of the tabs stuck to the page. “No, nothing from Zenith."
"It's still dark?"
"Don't know." She snapped the book closed and tossed it onto his bed. Propping a heel on the edge of her chair, she told him plainly, "Zenith doesn't matter to anybody but you. I'm glad to be off of it." A wry smile twisted her lips, pulling at the cut on one side. "Wouldn’t have minded a smoother departure, of course."
"I have to get back to them, Liz."
Liz shrugged one shoulder. "You can't. There's no way. For one thing, travel's restricted. You might not even have a way back to wherever you're from."
She probably meant Andraste. Instead of arguing with her, Andrew asked, "Where are you from?"
"No where, really."
"Your team on Zenith?"
Another shrug. Her gaze shifted to the wall behind him. "Didn't know most of them."
Had she known Martin? Andrew was pretty confident that he hadn't asked that question before, and he didn't ask it now. "Where will you go?"
"As far from this mess as I can get. You should plan on doing the same."
Before Andrew could reply, the curtain moved. Liz swiveled toward the motion like a cat startling at a potential threat.
It was only one of the staff bringing Andrew's breakfast. He looked like a kid, fresh-faced and far too cheerful under the circumstances. His ID popped up on Andrew’s retina display: Daichi. Giving Liz as wide a berth as the partitioned space would allow, Daichi plunked a tray of food onto Andrew's lap. "You have orders to eat all of this," he said brightly.
Forget beside manner; someone should tell the kid that they were kind-of-almost in a war.
"Thanks," Andrew said, rather than making any promises. He had forgotten this part, and that lapse of memory had been bliss. The meal consisted almost entirely of mushrooms disguised as other things: mushroom fiber shred with a drizzle of synthesized butter-replacement; mushroom protein bake sprinkled with yeast flakes; and dark mushroom coffee sweetened with—he could only assume—a sweeter variety of mushroom. He didn't know what Liz ate in the citizens' cafeteria but it had to be better than this. How were mushrooms supposed to help a brain injury?
Andrew took a bite. It took a long time to chew.
"Do you need anything else?” Daichi asked.
My wife, Andrew thought. Nikki would know what to do in a situation like this. She would launch herself out of this bed and storm straight to the commander to demand answers and passage toward home.
He hadn’t even said goodbye. He hadn't known he'd need to say it.
“Have you heard about anybody heading toward Zenith? Zenith Station?”
Daichi's eyebrows drew together. "Where?"
Liz snorted.
"Never mind." Andrew took another bite.
Daichi waited a moment, and, when Andrew didn't speak, dug out a pad and took notes on it while he fiddled with the med systems over Andrew's shoulder. That task completed, he reminded Andrew that his ident wouldn't let him out of the infirmary, pointed out the manual call button, and left.
Liz took this as her sign to go as well. She probably had access to a rec room or something. Some way to occupy herself.
"See you later," Andrew said.
Liz paused, hand raised to push aside the curtain. She studied Andrew for a minute in her piercing blue gaze. "I'll see if I can find out anything."
She left before he could thank her.
Andrew made a half-hearted attempt at breakfast before he realized that he'd forgotten to say grace. No point wasting gratitude on mushrooms. Setting aside the tray, Andrew reached for All the Dead Stars.
He braced the book against his three splinted fingers, fought to get to the prologue with his thumb and index finger, and lost himself for a while in the story of Bren Reinholt, world-weary officer aboard a ship he hated and longed to leave.
In which Andrew grapples somewhat belatedly with his own mortality.
<- Part 2 | Zenith Station Masterlist | Part 4 ->
"Welcome aboard, Pastor Breckon."
Andrew didn't recognize the man who had just greeted him. He decided to put this down to memory loss, which was quickly becoming a convenient excuse for just about everything he did. Ducking through the shuttle doorway, he said, "Thanks. Erm…?"
The man—the shuttle pilot, by his uniform—grinned. "Colm." He stuck out a hand. "Colm Daly."
There was a little shuffle as he took in Andrew's right arm in its sling. Then, catching Andrew's left hand in an awkward half-shake, Colm tugged Andrew out of the entrance. "My sister's Grace Wilder."
That name was familiar. Andrew tried searching— Oh! The Wilders. "You came over with them when they moved to Zenith."
"Yes, sir. I wasn't sure you'd recognize me." Colm glanced over Andrew's shoulder.
The rest of the passengers were filing through, including Ambrosia Ward, who was serving as Andrew and Liz's escort out to Tauf.
Lowering his voice, Colm said, "One of the guys who picked you up from that marauder shared your picture. I tried to tell them who you were." His grin turned rueful. "No one believed me. Well, they believed you weren't a pirate. Anyone could see that."
He shouldn't ask. He didn't need to know. He wasn't going to ask.
"How do you know I'm not a pirate?" Andrew asked.
Colm bent his chin toward Andrew's boots.
It was always the boots. Laughing, Andrew said, "Well, thanks for trying.”
"Sure thing." Colm clapped a hand to Andrew's shoulder and turned toward the cockpit. "Best get seated. They're on a tight sched. Oh, and Pastor." He paused with a hand on the cockpit doorframe. "You probably saved my nephew's life, getting him off Zenith when you did. If there's any way I can repay you, you let me know."
"Do you know a way back to Zenith?" Andrew tried to make it sound like a joke. It almost worked.
Colm offered a sympathetic smile. "No, sir. But I hope you find one."
Colm closed the cockpit door, and Andrew moved into the passenger section of the shuttle. It was a short-range, capable of the hop from the Ireyon across to port and not much else. In addition to Ambrosia Ward, his and Liz’s escort included two armed guards. One look told Andrew that it was going to be a quiet trip.
Andrew pulled up the flight summary on one of the wall displays and eyed the distance between The Ireyon and the station. The flight timer showed the trip would last about an hour. He had no idea what was waiting for him at the end of that trip, even though he'd tried asking. At a guess, Ward would hand him off to station security and let them deal with him. Andrew was pretty confident that he had managed to convince her that he hadn't been in league with the pirates, which ruled out prison, but a holding cell wasn't much better.
He was sitting with his head in his good-ish hand, elbows on his knees, when his net connections came alive. Information flooded in, filling in the gaps and the silence he had endured for the past couple of weeks. The shock of it brought him bolt-upright in his seat.
Immediately he searched up Zenith Station. A half dozen articles came back, none of them useful.
Ambrosia Ward's stunned voice broke his concentration. "Your father is Owen Breckon?"
Andrew closed out of his search and blinked at her. Evidently she'd noticed whatever had happened to his link. Or she had just received a message from the station. The flight timer showed that they were about to begin their docking maneuvers.
"Does that mean I'm free to go?" Andrew asked the woman.
She wore a confused smile, her gaze inward as she read. "No. Maybe. My orders just changed. We have a different destination. Priority docking, too." She turned to say something to the guards.
Liz had watched this exchange in her usual opaque way. Catching her eye, Andrew asked Ward, "What about Liz?"
"Miss Bukharin will be given lodgings on Tauf until she decides on her next course of action."
If Liz had already decided on that course, she hadn't told Andrew. Now she unfolded her legs and reached under her seat for her bag.
Andrew had a bag, too, which contained a change of clothes and assorted toiletries courtesy of the Ireyon; and his book. He tossed it over a shoulder when they all stood to disembark. A memo from station security flashed on his display.
At the same time, Ward told him and Liz, "You've already been processed. This way."
The guards falling in behind them, Andrew and Liz followed Ward through the tunnel and into Tauf Station, Terminal E. The noise struck Andrew first. Zenith's single terminal was never this busy even when a shipment had just come in.
Liz, walking on his deaf side, pulled up short.
"What?" Andrew had to raise his voice to be heard.
Rather than shouting back at him, Liz sent, I forgot to disconnect from the public net.
Andrew grimaced in support, though he couldn’t sympathize. Most people didn’t have the kind of filters he’d sported since he’d first gone off-planet as a kid, and so he had didn’t share most people’s experience of being subjected to the dizzying array of news blasts, pop-up advertisements, digital hawkers, and inscrutable maps that you found in a public system. There were work-arounds, the easiest of which was to simply disconnect; but that option left only scant physical markers to use for finding your destination. Better to adapt to the noise, his college friends had told him, and maybe invest in a basic directory filter.
Some stations, like Zenith, had strict rules governing automated activity on the net. Part of that was because Zenith was so far beyond the regular communication lines that all news was old news, and so none of it was tagged for priority broadcasting.
Now, mostly as a way to distract himself from the worry threatening to override his hard-won self-control, Andrew connected to the net to see what the noise was all about. He cycled through predictable horror-fest of bombardments and evacuations, and the opinion pieces about how the world would end this time. All of that he had heard from Liz during her brief talkative moments back in the Ireyon’s infirmary. He shifted to entertainment news, hoping to get a better sense of local sentiments. Then it was his turn to pull up short at the sight of a familiar face.
There, on a promotional piece for some new epic drama, was his old school friend Cassie Dreymore. There were new crinkles at the corners of her midnight-blue eyes, and her hair was darker than he remembered, but her winning smile was as captivating as ever. He skimmed the article and learned that Cassie had transitioned out of her old familiar role of spunky young adventure heroine into something almost matronly by comparison. Where once she had headlined every script, in this new story she had been cast as the main character’s mentor. A note toward the end mentioned the recent birth of her third child.
Had Andrew been gone that long? He hadn't paid attention to the wider world in his brief visits to the family homestead; and though he kept up a regular correspondence with as many old friends and school companions as possible, plenty had fallen away as their paths diverged. Cassiopeia Dreymore, the girl who had taught him how to swim, was no longer a rising star, but an established artist.
A tug on his elbow drew Andrew out of his reverie. Absently, he let himself be towed off of a collision course with a cluster of teenagers. Liz kept her hand on his elbow and said something he didn't catch in his bad ear. Ward was well ahead of them, having plowed through the crowd while Andrew and Liz attempted to get their bearings.
“What?” Andrew called.
Liz’s short answer spelled it all out: “Rooter.”
Translation: He was conducting himself like a dirt-bound tourist with no concept of transit etiquette. Andrew bobbed his head in acknowledgement of this reproof and plowed on.
Fifteen minutes' walking brought them out of the terminal, down two decks, along a concourse lined with shops, and through a security gate into a private lounge with walls thick enough to muffle the chaos of the port.
"Miss Bukharin," Ward said, "you're with me. Mr. Breckon, through there." She pointed to a door marked "private office". To Andrew she added, "I'll be on-station another day or two if you need me for anything." She held out a hand. "Best of luck."
Andrew shook her hand absently, his eyes on the office. It had to be one of his father's people. That was the only thing that made sense. Someone had picked up news of his rescue and had come to meet him. To take him back to Andraste. He couldn't— No. Better see what they had to say before he started constructing elaborate escape plans.
"I'll find you in a bit," Andrew told Liz.
She shrugged at him and turned to follow their escort. Andrew tossed a prayer at her retreating back, just in case he was wrong and had missed another good-bye. Then, squaring his shoulders, he went to confront whatever Breckon Family representative had been sent to fetch him.
++++++++
In his sophomore year of college (the regular one, not the biblical one), Andrew had developed a drinking habit. Why, he never could say, because that period of his life was something of a void. Very likely it had had something to do with a dare. What he did know was that it had lasted all of four months before his brother Cade had shown up to remind him that he had Responsibilities and the Family Reputation to think about, and Andrew had promptly quit. (Which Cade had also warned against, but Andrew had been too terrified to take anything but the most direct route to sobriety.)
Cade probably hadn’t meant to sort his brother out so properly that Andrew later pivoted to a life in the ministry, but no one could say his scolding hadn’t been effective.
And memorable. Because it wasn’t the shock of his brother's impossible presence in the narrow office that now held Andrew frozen in the doorway. It was the fact that he recognized the expression on Cade’s face. It said “Responsibilities” and “The Family Reputation” and “I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This, We’re All So Ashamed of You”.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Andrew blurted.
Cade pressed his lips against several impolite replies and addressed the uniformed young woman he had been speaking with. “That should be all. Would you excuse us?”
The woman didn't even hesitate. Murmuring a polite good-bye and a reminder about where to find something-or-other, she scurried around Andrew and out the door.
“Close the door,” Cade said.
There commenced a brief war in Andrew’s head about the best response to the command, with the prevailing logic being that he could best retain his last shreds of dignity by not arguing.
When he turned back from closing the door, Cade was standing directly in front of him. He held his breath while his brother surveyed the bruising and scars on Andrew's face.
“How are you here?” Andrew asked.
Cade’s mouth pulled down into a frown. He caught Andrew’s left wrist and held it up to look at the splint on the ring finger. “Gigi sent a note.”
Translation: We (the family and their oldest and most useful friends) can’t trust you to stay out of trouble, so your name is automatically flagged on any reports we have access to; and, because it was the military, Gigi saw this report first.
“Right,” Andrew said as Cade finally released him. “But how? I was only on the ship for a week." No request for information could have run the comm lines all the way to Andraste, or wherever else Cade might have been. Given the current intergalactic situation, he had probably been off-world putting out fires.
Cade moved around the desk that filled half of the office and sat in the bare metal chair there. "We got the buoy ping." When Andrew only stared uncomprehendingly, he clarified, "The rendezvous buoy? You sent the pirates right to it."
"I did?"
Andrew had coordinates to a distress beacon on the line between Zenith and Westfell. It was one of the many fail-safes someone in the family had arranged during an early bout of paranoia after he moved to Zenith. However, he had zero recollection of sending the pirates to that location and activating that beacon.
Was that how the Ireyon had found them? Ward hadn't said anything about the beacon.
Cade swore under his breath. "It sent a signal. The inquiry from that ship reached me while I was in transit." Cade's frown deepened. He gestured to one of the chairs facing him across the desk. "Sit down, Andrew."
Andrew remained standing. “I thought Dad would have sent one of his security guys.”
“I was already in the area, trying to track you down.”
In spite of a persistent apprehension, Andrew smiled. “Not so you could pay my ransom, of course.”
Cade ignored the peace offering. "Sit."
Andrew tapped his splinted finger against his leg.
“Please.”
Andrew sat. The chair was as uncomfortable as it looked. “Is there any word from Zenith?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad are fine,” Cade said stiffly. “I sent them a note after I made contact with the ship that rescued you. From pirates.”
"The pirates who were probably not thrilled when they realized what the buoy was." A few gaps in his memory filled in with all of the flair of a toddler possessed with a box full of crayons. He waggled the fingers sticking out of the cast on his forearm. "Huh."
“What were you doing, Andrew?”
“Trying to help.”
“By getting kidnapped?”
So no chance at smalltalk. Oddly enough, that suited Andrew. “They came through the gate without any warning,” he said as calmly as he could. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I thought I was getting on the shuttle out to Kate’s cargo hauler—”
Cade cut in. “And that’s another thing. You of all people should know that shipping is monitored, especially at a time like this.” He was trying and failing to keep his tone level. “You should know better than to put in an unscheduled supply request like that!”
“Who said it was me?” Andrew cried.
Cade bent his chin to look down his nose at Andrew. He gave Andrew such an impression of their father’s “stop and think” look that Andrew flinched. “No one on Zenith has that kind of credit,” Cade said. “No one except Zenith’s own Pastor Breckon, who swore himself to a life of poverty so he could fit in with the locals.”
“That’s not fair.”
“And you dragged Kate into it,” Cade added, still speaking over him. “It’s bad enough that you got our family mixed up in this, but Kate?”
“She offered!”
“She wouldn’t have if you hadn’t said something in the first place!”
This was too much. “We’re out on the brink, Cade. No one would have thought twice about us until it was too late. I had to do something.”
“And what good did it do?” Cade snapped. “You painted a target on Zenith Station, calling in those shipments way out to a place that’s supposed to be of no consequence. It’s pure luck the gate went down when it did.”
“You don’t know—”
Cade’s voice continued to rise, moving out of boardroom territory and into broken-curfew-and-public-stunt levels. “And then you had to go and get yourself captured. For all we know, you were those pirates’ actual target. Lacerations and burns, a broken finger, a cracked wrist, cracked ribs, a bruised lung, and probably brain damage.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious.”
Andrew braced his hand on the arm of his chair and barely caught himself before he put weight on it. “I had to do something,” he said again. “And besides, you started it.”
“Started what?”
By a monumental effort, Andrew didn’t roll his eyes, but even that was almost too much for him. Even if he’d had the chance to prepare for this interrogation, his already-strained nerves wouldn’t have fared any better. Why was he being forced to defend himself for something he’d had no control over?
The ringing in his ear was getting worse. Feeling like he had to shout over it just to hear himself, Andrew said, “You sent me that message in the first place. And you knew there was no way for me to leave. Not with Nikki. Not with— What did you expect me to do?”
“Find a way!” Cade finally gave up on decorum and slapped his palm against the desk. “Those travel restrictions are just a precaution, not a rule. You could have taken a carrier that didn’t make any jumps. Stop glaring at me!”
“She almost died, Cade!”
It came out as nearly a scream. If it wasn't for the raw ache in his throat, Andrew never would have recognized the sound as coming from his own mouth.
Cade drew back, his eyebrows pulling together. “Who?” he demanded.
“Nikki!”
It was all he could get out past the animal terror bubbling in his chest and crowding out his airflow. Knowing, on a level too far down for him to reach, Andrew knew that he was panicking. He wrestled his broken arm out of its sling and leaned forward, elbows digging into his knees, face in his hands.
Here was the nightmare that had caught him out back home, the first reminder that his family wasn’t safe. The very thought of it consumed him the moment he gave it the slightest attention; and so he had ignored it, refused to confront it, pretended everything was fine.
And then Cade’s message had come through: Get out before it gets worse.
The cast on his right hand chafed against his skin and snagged on the scabbed-over cuts on his face. He couldn’t get enough oxygen. Over the ringing in his ears, he could just hear Cade calling his name.
Andrew didn’t move. Didn’t dare. Someone had fired a weapon right next to his face, and his ear screamed with the pain of it. The chaos in the room was a whine against that horrible ringing.
All he could see was blood.
Hands caught his wrists, pulling his hands down. Cade’s blue eyes searched his. His mouth moved.
Shifting his grip to Andrew’s shoulders, Cade shook him once, hard enough that their heads knocked together. That was enough to jar Andrew back to reality. He blinked and tried to pull away.
Cade held on. “What is going on?” he demanded. He wasn’t shouting now, but his voice was raw with strain. He sat back on his heels, bracing his hands on Andrew’s knees. “Tell me.”
Andrew anchored himself in his brother’s gaze and said, as quickly as he could, “She almost died when Jayme was born. And then you sent that message, and I didn’t know what to do, and I asked Kate because I didn’t want to get the family involved. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t do that. Kate hid my name on everything, covered it up as much as she could.”
He stopped to take a breath. Spots danced in his vision. He traced a finger along the scar on his temple and focused on his breathing until his vision was clear again.
Cade was frowning at that ring of raised scar tissue.
Pressing his arm against his ribs, Andrew whispered, “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t going to let Zenith die. Not without a fight.”
For a long minute they sat there, neither speaking, both trying to make sense of everything that had led to this point, trying to see what they should have done differently. Trying to decide if it mattered.
To Andrew’s shock, Cade looked away first. He reached behind for the edge of the desk and pulled himself to his feet. Leaning heavily against the desk, he said, “Oasis.” At last he began to understand the scope of Andrew’s dilemma.
“I wasn’t just going to run away.” Andrew lifted his chin to frown at his brother. One leg jogged in spite of his efforts to calm down. “Even if I could have taken Nikki and Jayme with me. That’s not— I’m not—”
But it didn’t matter, because he’d left anyway. Against his will, but he’d left. And he didn’t know why those men had come in the first place, whether it was to take advantage of an isolated station with a jump gate or because they thought Zenith hid something valuable beneath the surface. Zenith had gone dark, and he didn’t know why.
Cade dragged a hand through his hair. There were streaks of gray at his temples. He looked like their father.
“And Kate?” Cade asked.
“Still there. We were supposed to meet her— There was a mix-up with the shuttles. I ended up on the gate instead of her hauler. They were prepping things to send out one last carrier, to take out a bunch of mechanics and engineers whose contracts were up. We were going to put a few more of our people on with them, try to get them somewhere….” Safer? They hadn’t known then, and he still didn’t know now.
“And then what?”
“I don’t know how, but that marauder got through instead.”
Cade sat down and folded his hands on the desk. “Did they recognize you? Did it seem like they were looking for you?”
“I don’t think so. Why would they?”
“Because Gigi’s theory is that they didn’t care about the extra supply runs, and they weren’t thinking that Zenith was secretly a space port or a military base. She thinks they were looking for leverage.”
A cold feeling wormed its way into Andrew’s gut. The thought had occurred to him while he’d lain in that brig, but he hadn’t let himself entertain it. It couldn’t be possible. He refused to believe it.
Because if that was why the attack had happened, it would mean that all of this—Kate and Nikki and Jayme and the church, Liz, Martin—really was his fault, and not just because he’d been sloppy and reckless.
“You— Gigi thinks I was the target?”
Cade shrugged one shoulder. “What happened on the bridge?”
A flash of light. Thunder inches from his face. Now it was Andrew’s turn to look away as he focused on arranging his arm back in its sling. “The gate crew tried to fight. The warden knew something was up as soon as the ship came through, of course, but they were armed.” He shook his head. “I don’t really know what happened. I think there might have been a split among the marauder crew. They grabbed me.”
“And then they—” Cade broke off sharply with a disgusted noise.
Andrew smiled ruefully. “And then they beat the hell out of me.”
A mirthless laugh lifted Cade’s chest. “Well, it was bound to happen eventually. What did you say to them?”
"I thought they were just venting their frustration. Like I said, something was up with their crew. They left some of them on Zenith."
"They left part of their crew?"
"I don't— I'm not sure. I'm having trouble remembering the details."
Cade hummed in thought. "Well, that can't be helped right now."
They sat in silence for a minute, both of them contemplating the possibilities.
“So now what?” Andrew finally asked. He was aware of how he was sitting, slumped and haggard in his seat, but he couldn’t bring himself to correct the posture. He was exhausted, and Cade’s arrival had only made it worse.
"Everything's a mess right now,” Cade said. “I already put in a departure request, but it could be a couple of days. My pilot is working out a course in the meantime. Might not be any good by the time we leave. What?” Cade had explained the plan in an abstracted way, up until he caught the shift in Andrew’s expression.
“There’re ships going back toward Zenith?”
Cade answered slowly, as if speaking to a child. “No, Andrew. There’s no way back to Zenith. The gate is down and there’s a whole cold war between here and there.”
“There has to be some way—”
“There isn’t!” Cade pushed away from the desk and leaned back, covering his face with his hands. He said something unsavory through his teeth. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. You aren’t going back there. No one is.” He dragged his hands over his face. “Look. You did everything you could. You gave them a fighting chance. As soon as there’s a way back to the brink that won’t get you killed, I swear, I’ll help you get there."
Now it was Andrew who refused the peace offering. He did his best to draw himself up in his seat. “What if it was Giuliana out there?”
Not many people could make Cademon Breckon flinch. Andrew had only ever managed it twice—three times, counting just now. His stomach twisted, but he wouldn’t apologize. Cade needed to understand, and if that meant Andrew had to invoke his brother's dead wife to get through to him, then so be it.
Cade’s hands lowered into fists on his knees. He leveled a cold blue gaze on Andrew.
Andrew met him glare for glare. He wasn't going to apologize. He wasn't going back to Andraste to be put under house arrest or declared insane or whatever else the family decided they had to do to keep him there. He was going back to Nikki and Jayme. He'd made a promise.
He wouldn’t apologize.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said.
Cade pushed to his feet. “Pull yourself together, Andrew. As soon as we have clearance, we’re going home.”
Andrew’s second instinct upon receiving his brother Cade’s message was to tell Nikki. This was only natural, after six years of friendship and a little more than a year of marriage. He told Nikki everything.
Fortunately, his first instinct was blind panic, which took a minute to tamp down and afforded him enough time to remind his second instinct that Nikki was meant to be resting. Telling her about Cade’s message would result in the opposite of a restful state. So Andrew scribbled a note on the apartment board and took his panic attack out into the hall.
Then he made a list.
He walked as he did this, out of habit, and both the motion and the list helped put his mind back into order. He was overreacting, clearly—or Cade was. Except that Cade didn’t overreact. It was one of the many ways in which they differed. If Cade was worried, there was a good reason for it.
Habit carried Andrew to the church. He was halfway to his office before he registered that the lights were on.
Colby must be working on something, he decided vaguely.
Andrew’s shoulder connected with the doorframe as he remembered that it couldn’t be Colby, because Colby was dead. He stared into the darkness of his office, his center of balance shifting like an old-world sailor on a rolling sea. For a long minute he stood just inside the office doorway, out of line of the sensor that would turn on the lights, and waited for a single thought to settle long enough for him to make sense of it. The whole world was storm-wracked, with no stars to show him where to go.
“Andrew?”
Andrew jumped at the voice. The motion triggered his office light. He turned, squinting against watering eyes, to find Philomena in the chapel doorway. An unfamiliar person stood behind her. Both of them were carrying large wreaths of flowers.
Andrew stared helplessly at this new puzzle. He didn’t have the capacity for any more puzzles.
“You’re up early,” Phil said.
“Is it early?”
“Technically, yes.” She stepped into the chapel, adjusting her hold on her wreath. “You don’t look like you ever went to bed, though.”
“Thank you.”
Phil smiled faintly at Andrew’s stiff tone. The second person, a young man in some sort of uniform, followed her toward the altar.
“Don’t mind us,” Phil said. “We’re just getting things set up for later. Have you met Martin Kanas?”
Andrew had no idea. He didn’t know if he answered Phil, either. Blankly he watched the pair arrange their wreaths. Phil and her companion were decorating the chapel for a funeral.
Colby’s funeral.
Andrew had been working on a eulogy when Cade’s message had come through.
“What are you doing here?” Phil asked conversationally.
At the back of his muddled mind, Andrew knew she meant here, now, when Andrew was not only entirely distracted with a dozen different worries but also clearly dead on his feet and no good to anybody; but the question echoed in Andrew’s head. What was he doing here on Zenith?
Was it odd that he had never questioned it before? Not even when he was facing down that first shuttle at the South Andraste port, or when he was reaching for the bag under his seat on the ride that followed? All through those first rocky years, he’d never had a shadow of a doubt that he was where he ought to be. Sure, he'd doubted his own ability—he still did, most days—but he'd pushed on because this was the work he'd been given. There was nothing else for him to do.
But was that wrong? Should he have—
A hand on his elbow broke Andrew out of his reverie. Philomena had stopped whatever she was doing with the chairs to come check on him. Her brow was furrowed with concern.
Andrew met her searching gaze and felt the fog begin to clear, replaced with raw relief. Of course. Phil would know what to do. She always knew what to do.
Wordlessly, Andrew caught Phil’s hand and hauled her into his office. He stabbed at his desk to bring up the windows he’d closed back at the apartment. Cade’s message was at the top: You need to leave. The sooner the better.
He stared at the data stamp on the message: three weeks. Zenith had been wrestling with communication delays for over a year now, for any number of reasons, and this latest date packet was no exception. Messages from Andraste shouldn’t take more than a week to reach him.
Worse was the fact that the report Cade had included—a report Cade definitely shouldn’t have had access to—was almost two months old. Andrew blinked heavily, trying to clear his blurry vision. A lot could happen in two months.
Somewhere in the fog, he was aware that Phil was speaking. She had come around to stand at his shoulder for a better view of the display.
"Hmmm?" Andrew asked helpfully.
“What is this?” Phil repeated.
Andrew licked his lips and clicked away from Cade’s message and back to the attachment. He shifted aside so Phil could read it. “There was an attack on that shipping depot out by Etana.”
“Where did this come from?” Phil asked.
“My brother, Cade. He was here for the wedding.”
“I remember him.” Phil’s tone suggested she didn’t approve, though Andrew couldn’t guess why. She shifted back on her heels and looked up her nose at Andrew. “What does it mean?”
"Trouble, if Cade is right." Andrew brought the report to the center and highlighted a section. "Some sort of resource dispute, and some hotheads lashed out to make a point. They chose a research station. It’s still unclear whether or not they were aware of the fact that Commander Rydek’s son was stationed there. Then one of their dockyards got hit, and now Etana…." Andrew threw out his hands in a helpless gesture.
Too much information had been either omitted or excluded for Andrew to understand the intricacies, but he could guess well enough what had set up the conflict: someone wanted a planet or a moon or an asteroid field and someone else wouldn't let them have it, and it had come to blows. It happened from time to time, and generally one of the other conglomerates would step in and mediate, and everyone would cool off.
But not always. And, if Cade's instincts were to be trusted, not this time.
“That’s way out in Epsilon."
Phil and Andrew both looked to Martin, who had come to stand in the doorway. Dread trickled down Andrew’s spine. He’d forgotten Martin was here.
Phil waved a hand at the young man. “Don’t worry about him, he won’t talk.”
Martin shoved his hands into his pockets and gave a lopsided smile, as if this could convince Andrew of his innocence.
There wasn’t time to worry about that. Andrew stabbed at the screen, accidentally magnifying Cade’s letter. “Point is, there are fleets scrambling all through the system.”
“And your brother thinks…?”
Andrew dragged a hand through his hair. "At the worst? War."
"People don't do war anymore,” Phil said slowly. “It's too big."
"It looks different. It's still war."
“Fine,” she allowed. “But like he said,” and she bent her head toward Martin, “that’s out in Epsilon, and we’re way out here. No one’s going to attack Zenith. Cosmically, we aren’t worth salt.”
Andrew felt his face contort into an imitation of his father's famous "stop and think" expression. It got Phil’s attention. He watched her eyebrows slowly rise.
“Oasis,” he said, knowing it would be enough.
Originally the codename for a covert operation from back in Andrew's great-grandfather's day, "Oasis" became the common way to refer to a series of system-wide battles spanning almost a decade. In the first two years alone, the resulting supply disruptions had destroyed two colonies, an asteroid mine, and a space station bigger than Zenith; to say nothing of the populations that took direct hits during the fighting, or the countless ships engaged in every strike. Some places had never recovered from the shortages and the economic collapses, even after the conflict was finally resolved.
“We’re way out here,” Andrew repeated. “Out far enough that any disruption in shipping could be a disaster. Look at what happened the last time a delivery was late: it’s been six months and we’re still on rations. We're expanding too fast, and there’s all that shuffling right now while they’re prepping to bring the gate online. And we’ve got Payayun to worry about, too.”
Living with Nikki, Andrew couldn’t help but be aware of the fact that Zenith was falling apart. Ever since the jump gate project had been announced, the population had experienced a boom, and the station couldn’t keep up. The new gate was supposed to help with that—make shipping supplies and specialized technicians cheaper and more timely—but the gate was still in its testing phase.
And then, as if Zenith’s growing pains weren’t enough, someone had decided to build a new station further out. Payayun Station, eventually intended as a manufacturing hub, was still in its infancy, with a minimal number of residents, most of them the construction crew. And Zenith was their only link to the outside world.
“It's not always a good thing, living somewhere that's easily overlooked,” Andrew continued. “Draco’s distribution branch is being scrapped because they decided it was obsolete. We’ve got medical supplies coming from four times as far now—practically out in Epsilon—because those waypoints are all on the jump line.”
He was missing several connecting dots and he knew it, but the lists he’d worked up on his way over from the apartment were staring up at him from behind Cade’s message. He’d seen it all—enough of it, at least—to understand Cade’s very real concern.
“If there’s even a minor dispute, think how long it’ll take to get stuff to us,” Andrew concluded.
“He’s right,” Martin put in from the doorway.
Andrew finally remembered how he knew the man. Martin was one of the new techs for the jump gate. Andrew had helped take his crew on their first tour of the station. He had no idea how Martin had been roped into helping Phil decorate, but he had theories.
Phil looked from Martin to Andrew. “Alright,” she said after a minute. “So it could be bad. But what are the chances?”
"High enough for my brother to say something. For our friends to warn him so he could warn me."
Phil didn’t know Cade well, and clearly what she thought she knew about him was not enough for this to convince her. She wasn’t a business woman, just a church leader and a trustee and a mother and grandmother, with no natural bridge between her and Cade’s world.
It wasn’t even Andrew’s world; had never been, really, even when he’d lived in it. He remembered coming back from a business trip with his father when he was thirteen or fourteen and thanking God, on his knees and everything, that he had not been born first.
Cade, on the other hand, had truly been born to the family business of boards and trade and statistics and politics. He had the ruthless instincts for it.
"And what does he expect you to do?" Phil asked.
Andrew tapped a finger on the edge of his desk and stared at his brother's message. Cade expected him to do the impossible.
But Phil’s question had been redundant. She’d read the message, too. “He wants you to leave.” The disapproval was back in her tone.
"If I could send Nikki away, I would," Andrew said. "Nikki and Jayme."
Phil snorted. “As if you could.”
Andrew’s mouth twisted wryly. He didn’t bother arguing with her. Besides, it was a moot point. Cade would have known, even a month ago, that they couldn't leave. Regular ship travel was dodgy enough for pregnant women; any kind of jump was beyond dangerous, and it was the same with newborns. Standard protocol said no jump travel for any child under the age of two—better to wait until they were five, to be really safe.
And even then, Andrew wouldn’t have left.
He closed out Cade’s message, revealing his lists. Most of his ideas hinged on one question. Fortunately, he had an expert on hand.
“The gate is operational, isn’t it?” he asked Martin.
“In a manner of speaking.” Martin took a couple of steps toward the desk and crossed his arms. “We sent a couple of shuttles through earlier this week.”
“That buys us a little time, then.” Andrew made a notation on one list and switched to a second. “We can get some supplies through. More importantly, we can get a few people away from here: the older folk, those with serious medical conditions. Move them off-station to more stable places.”
“And lower our own population,” Phil put in, seeing where Andrew’s mind was going.
He noticed she didn’t question the finer logistics of this scheme of his. Most people would have, especially way out here, where ordering new shoes was a financial decision on a level with having another child. In six years, most people had decided to skirt around the fact that Andrew came from money, but they never forgot. The fact of a technically-rich pastor on a poor station didn’t cause the same spiritual hangups for Phil as it did for Andrew.
“Less strain on life support,” Andrew agreed. He scrolled down the list: names, families, people he had come to know in the last six years; people he was responsible for. “That new family, the Wilders. Their youngest son has a heart condition.”
The Wilders hadn’t been on Zenith a full year yet. Andrew still didn’t know all of their kids’ names. Kids! After years of praying for more young families, there were families with children turning up on Zenith. A new generation to replace the old.
"You should have seen us in the early days," Phil had said yesterday or the day before. "Double shifts every day, and horrible food—bread in a can.”
Phil had seen a great deal in her time. She and Colby and Zus and the rest of the old guard. But even they hadn’t seen war.
Martin and Phil were both looking at Andrew, waiting to hear what other brilliant ideas he had on his lists. None of them had asked why. The answer was that they didn’t have any other choice. They were here, and there were people to look after, so that was what they were going to do.
“Does Nikki know?” Phil suddenly asked.
Andrew clicked to an inventory, avoiding her gaze. “I didn’t want to wake her.”
“You thought that was wise, did you?”
“I’m known to be audacious from time to time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew saw Phil’s smile. She grunted and nudged him aside. “Martin and I can put this in order. And figure out who else needs to know. You go tell your wife before she hears it from someone else first.” She patted his arm as he turned to go. “We need you alive and well to see this through.”
Andrew paused, feeling a flush of pleasure at the praise. “You do?”
He could tell that Phil was about to make a joke. It would probably be something about his money, or his family, or his good looks—one of the stand-bys. Andrew braced himself.
Phil shook her head, dismissing humor for the present. “Yes,” she decided. “We do need you. Well-rested, preferably.” She lifted her chin toward the door and the chapel beyond. “For one thing, there’s a funeral tomorrow.”
Phil started organizing the windows on Andrew’s desk. She paused when she came to the half-finished eulogy buried under manifests and inventories and prognostications of doom.
Andrew scowled at the poor excuse for last respects. Colby deserved better, he knew, but when he’d asked Zus to perform the service instead of him, Zus had firmly told him no. “You’re his pastor, not me. Preaching and speeching are your work.” It was perhaps the one fact of his job that Andrew would never quite resign himself to.
“Stars, boy,” Phil clucked, seeing Andrew’s shoulders sag, “it’s not even breakfast and you already look like you’ve been through a war.” She flapped a hand at him. “Go on, Pastor. There’ll be plenty of work for you later.”
<- Prologue | Zenith Station Masterlist | Part 2 ->
Note: This is a revised version of a piece I wrote last year (here)
May 2026 note: I have further tweaked details in this part to match later story development. Andrew was one of two prisoners, not three; and I changed a couple of minor names.
The Ireyon
Andrew traced his fingers around the edge of his cup and thought of King David and the well of Bethlehem.
The water on this ship tasted terrible. Then again, he’d thought the same thing about the water on Zenith when he’d first moved there, and then, one day, that had become how water tasted and suddenly everywhere else had it wrong. It was like that everywhere, he supposed.
He wondered if the well of Bethlehem’s water had really been sweet, or if David had merely been craving a taste of home. Funny the things you never thought you’d miss.
Andrew would have made a list—the water, the smell from the air filters, the constant thrum of the station engines that was so unlike the higher pulsing beat of this ship he was now on—but they’d cut his link. And not just the public connections. No, they’d gone a step further and blocked him out of his own personal systems. For the first time in his memory, Andrew’s brain was entirely empty.
Minus the ringing in his right ear. He was pretty sure that was getting louder. When he’d mentioned it to the nurse, she’d only given him a look like “Well, what did you expect?”
A cure for tinnitus, naturally. Barring that, a bed where he could sleep and, for a little while at least, escape the pain. Instead they’d escorted him to this ugly room and told him to wait, with nothing to occupy him except trying to figure out what key his ear was ringing in.
What did you expect after the thrashing you got? he asked himself.
Thrashing. Threshing? Boaz’s threshing floor. Ruth, the grandmother (great-grandmother?) of King David. Bethlehem’s well.
A drink of water wasn’t enough. He wanted to go home.
“—understand?”
Andrew lifted his gaze from the dented metal tabletop and peered against the too-bright lights at the woman sitting across from him. He hadn’t heard her come in.
“What was that?” he tried to ask. It came out more like, “Mmmwhuh?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I want to be certain that you understand that this is not an interrogation,” she said. Her accent was polished, with no trace of identifying markers. Artificial. Every clipped syllable rang sharply in Andrew’s single functioning ear.
Andrew scrubbed at his jaw, feeling the bruise concealed by his unkempt beard. He had the impression that he was meant to be reassured. He didn’t know if it was working.
He wondered what a battle cruiser was doing with what looked like a lawyer on board. Then again, his only understanding of space warfare consisted of what he'd read in books. Maybe in real life it was all negotiations and paperwork. Neither the woman’s tone nor her appearance—tailored dress uniform pressed to perfection, hair scraped into a regulation bun with not a strand out of place—gave any hint about where Andrew's circumstances were headed.
The guards behind her, one to either side of the door, anonymous in battledress and visors with active screens covering their faces, served to remind Andrew that he was not yet in friendly territory. They had escorted him from the enemy ship to a holding cell, from that cell to the infirmary, from the infirmary to this windowless room, without a word more than was necessary.
And yet his injuries had been treated and a nurse had helped him wash the blood out of his hair. His beard wasn't the only unkempt part about him; he'd caught sight of himself in a window back in the infirmary and almost hadn't recognized the pale, haggard man looking back at him. Even the nurse had seemed shocked at the sight.
All in all, it was too confusing and his head hurt too much for Andrew to make sense of the whole situation.
And the woman was still waiting for a response.
“I’m sorry, I—” Andrew tipped his head bad ear-down, trying to signal his current impairment. “What did you say your name was?”
“Ambrosia Ward.” The woman started to say something else, but paused to watch Andrew take a drink of water.
It was an exercise in frustration. Andrew essentially had to grip the metal cup with his thumb and forefinger, and in his nondominant hand. His right arm was bound in a sling against his chest. Worse, the water still tasted terrible. He made himself drink it, slowly and with a lot of swishing.
Halfway through this exercise, he paused to say a prayer and realized that he already had one running at the back of his mind, and had from the minute he’d sat down on the far side of that table. Mostly it consisted of an aimless and desperate Please, God, please please please, God, please.
The cup clattered as he set it down.
Ms. Ward pursed her lips and reached for her tablet, bringing up what looked like a report. Andrew felt a surge of pity for the woman. She deserved to be holding an actual folder in her hands, with actual papers inside for her to rifle through. He thought she would have enjoyed the experience. Instead, she was forced to make do with her tablet and retina display.
“Mr…. Breckon.” Ward’s eyes narrowed again, shifting from the report to Andrew. “This is not an interrogation.”
“Yes, I understand.” It seemed the only thing to say to get whatever this conversation was moving. Andrew’s aching shoulders protested as he attempted to straighten them. “Can you tell me what’s happening?”
No one else would. All he knew was that he was on the Ireyon, which meant nothing to him, and that it was part of the Concordia fleet, which only told him that the people who’d kidnapped him probably associated themselves with some other polity or collective.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Ward said, eyes going back to her report. She adopted a conversational tone. “There are people on this ship who recognized you when you were brought aboard, Mr. Breckon.”
Andrew stiffened. Oh, that was just what he needed right now. He braced himself for a lengthy explanation—
“Or Pastor Breckon, isn’t it?”
—and then his mouth fell slightly open. "Er. Yes. How…?"
Ward ignored him. “What was a pastor doing on a marauder ship? And so far from his home station? A station, by the way, that's gone dark, its brand new jump gate apparently inaccessible, just when it might have been useful?"
Andrew didn’t register any of her questions. “Gone dark?” he repeated blankly. When was this conversation going to start making sense?
"Are you aware," Ward persisted, "that before its gate connection went down, Zenith Station had a noticeable increase in traffic? Specifically traffic leaving the station? Now, I'm told that Zenith Station has recently developed—”
“What do you mean its gate connection went down?” Andrew cut in.
Here Ward ought to have closed the folder containing what little information she had on Andrew—for dramatic effect, probably. Instead, she turned her tablet face-down on the dented table and steepled her fingers. “Zenith Station went dark a little over two weeks ago, evidently around the same time that you boarded that marauder. No wave, no explanation, just—” She made a slicing motion with one hand. “As far as I can tell, Zenith Station is just your typical mining station, though it was undergoing retrofitting to be converted into a shipping hub. So why pirates? Why take down the gate? Why go silent right as this trouble with Etana is heating up? I’m sorry, is something funny?”
Andrew hadn’t meant to laugh. It had just come out, a horrible choked sound bubbling up out of his throat. “No. Sorry, no, I— It’s just….” He waved his hand between himself and Ward. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I wish I could help. I mean, I think I do, but I don’t even really know that.” And to his horror, he laughed again.
It wasn't funny. Nothing about this situation was funny. Andrew could feel himself coming apart at the seams. Soon he would be an incoherent disaster weeping on the floor.
He dragged his hand through his hair and found another bruise. "You have to understand, I've been awake for…. Well. And before that I was locked up in a cell, and a very ugly man— Sorry. You had to be there. Although maybe he's in your brig now."
Andrew was aware that Ward and both of the guards were staring at him as he slowly unraveled.
“I don’t know anything,” he said tightly. “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know why Zenith— I don’t know what you want from me. I’m as confused as you are.” All of which he was fairly certain he’d told multiple people at this point. Apparently no one had listened.
Ward considered him in silence for a moment. Then she leaned forward, folding her arms on the table, and looked him in the eye. "I want answers, Mr. Breckon, and you have them. Don’t think I believe for a second that this was all some kind of coincidence. And whatever your answer is, it had better convince me. Otherwise you will be joining your ugly friend in our brig for the duration of this voyage, and none of us has any idea how long that will be. And then when you do disembark from this vessel, it will be under guard, and your next stop will be another cell, where you will remain until this war is over."
Ward sat back and tugged at the hem of her jacket. "So please," she concluded. "Convince me."
Andrew stared helplessly at her. I don't belong here, he wanted to say. I shouldn't be here. My place is back on Zenith, with my wife and child, not here on a battle cruiser God only knows where, getting more and more impossibly tangled up every minute in an intergalactic incident that is two pulser blasts away from all-out war.
Obviously that answer wouldn't suffice to convince Ward or the people she worked for. Neither would the slightly-less hysterical I was just trying to help. Andrew had no idea what would convince her that his presence here was just a monumentally absurd case of wrong-place-wrong-time, and he was beginning to wonder if there was any point in trying to hold it together for as long as possible instead of just breaking down.
Andrew drew in an uneven breath. Up to this point, he'd managed not to think too much about Nikki and Jayme and the rest of his people back on Zenith, but now that he had…. Breaking down was starting to look like the most viable option available to him. Certainly it would be the easiest to arrange. Perhaps then they'd confine him to the infirmary rather than the brig.
But he didn't break down. The spirit of his ancestors asserted itself and, with a second, more forceful straightening of his shoulders, he said, "I want a lawyer."
Ward blinked at him. "Sir, this is a military operation. I don't have a public attorney—"
"Then I want to speak with the captain."
"Commander," she corrected, "and so do I. But the commander is busy, as I'm sure you can imagine, so you have me. Now. Either you can tell me what you're doing here, or I can have my colleagues escort you to the brig."
"I thought this wasn't an interrogation."
Ward's lips quirked. "It's not. It's a conversation."
Right. A conversation where one wrong word could have him—at absolute best—confined to quarters until this intergalactic incident sorted itself out.
Andrew bowed his head. When he tried to draw a deep breath, his lungs made a horrible wheezing sound. And his ribs hurt. He lowered his head until his forehead was pressed against the cold metal of the table. Please, God.
“Mr. Breckon.”
Please.
“Why were you on that ship?” Ms. Ward spoke slowly and distinctly.
“I was a hostage,” he said.
“And did they just cruise up to Zenith Station and take you hostage?”
Andrew raised his head to glare at her. “Yes.”
Ward blinked. Sat back and mentally shuffled papers. Redirected. “Are they the ones who disabled the gate and the relays?”
“I don’t know.”
That had definitely not been part of Zenith’s plan. They had wanted to protect themselves, but not to the point of isolation. Something had happened after that brief screaming match on the bridge that had ended with three dead crew members and Andrew’s capture; something that had resulted in Zenith going dark.
He thought of something else. “The woman I was with?”
“We have her,” Ward said shortly. “But we also have you. Why did they take you?”
What, did she think he’d arranged it all? “I was convenient.” Only an effort of will kept Andrew from shuddering at the memory of warm metal pressed against his temple. He still had a red burn mark at his hairline. He could still hear the screaming.
Andrew rested his hand on the table. His wedding ring was gone; not removed when they were fixing his finger, but taken earlier, when that finger had been broken. “It wasn’t until the dust settled and they realized who I was—who my family is—that they decided to use me as….” The right word escaped him, and after a minute of chasing it he gave up. It didn’t matter what the marauders had intended to do. Thanks to the arrival of the Ireyon, his captors hadn’t had a chance to try out the next phase of their brilliant plan.
Nikki probably didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
They had never had that discussion: “If I die first, please feel free to replace me.” Andrew had considered it, just to have their bases covered, but upon the barest reflection he had struck it from his to-do list. Nikki probably would have punched him and said something about how inconvenient one marriage had been and how a second wasn’t worth the paperwork.
What was Nikki doing now? She’d been prescribed a number of medications, many of which had been in short supply before this intergalactic incident. He hoped she was getting enough sleep.
That was the last thing they had fought about, just before he’d left on what he’d thought would be a quick errand.
“Mr. Breckon?”
Ward had been saying his name for the last minute or so. Andrew really wanted to ask her to stop.
Wearily, he raised his gaze from his bandaged hand and peered at her. The ringing in his ear was worse than ever. “Mmm?”
Something broke in his interrogator’s expression as she searched his face. The edge was gone from her tone when she asked him, “Do you know anything about the people who took you? Who attacked Zenith?”
Andrew was shaking his head before she’d finished. The motion set his vision spinning. “No. I’m sorry.” He blinked heavily. “They weren’t the sharing type.”
“Not very Christian of them,” she muttered absently, and reached for her tablet.
She said something else, but Andrew didn’t catch it. The world went dark.
Oddly enough, that specification had not comforted Andrew as much as his escort had perhaps been hoping it would. And making him sit alone on one side of a metal table bolted to the floor, in a windowless room where the too-bright lights highlighted old stains on the walls, did not help.
Andrew scrubbed at his jaw, feeling the bruise concealed by his unkempt beard. The beard wasn't the only unkempt part about him; he'd caught sight of himself in a mirror as he was being marched to this interview and almost hadn't recognized the pale, haggard man looking back at him.
The woman sitting across from him now, her tailored dress uniform pressed to perfection, her hair scraped back into a regulation bun with not a strand out of place, gave no hint about where Andrew's circumstances were headed. The guards behind her, one to either side of the door, outfitted in anonymous in battledress and visors with active screens covering their faces, served to remind Andrew that he was not yet in friendly territory.
Andrew paused to say a prayer and realized he already had one running at the back of his mind. Mostly it consisted of an aimless and desperate Please, God, please please please, God, please. He slid his folded hands onto the table and constructed a smile around his bruise.
"How much longer am I going to be held here?" he asked.
The woman, who had introduced herself simply as Ambrosia Ward, studied him a moment. "That depends," she said. "Coffee?" Her voice was clipped and businesslike, in keeping with her uniform. Her demeanor suggested this was familiar territory for her.
Andrew wondered what a battle cruiser was doing with what looked like a lawyer on board. Then again, his only understanding of space warfare consisted of what he'd read in books. Maybe in real life it was all negotiations and paperwork.
"Sir?"
The woman's curt voice brought Andrew back to himself. "No, thank you," he said, shifting in his seat. His aching shoulders protested his attempts to straighten them.
"Very well." Ms. Ward reached for her tablet and brought up what looked like a report. "So, Mr….. Breckon." She paused to squint at her retina display.
Andrew felt a surge of pity for the woman. She deserved to be holding an actual folder in her hands, with actual papers inside for her to rifle through. He thought she would have enjoyed the experience. Instead, she was forced to make do with her tablet and retina display.
"I know you," Ms. Ward said in a revelatory tone.
Andrew started. Oh. Oh, that was just what he needed right now. He braced himself for a lengthy explanation—
"You're Pastor Breckon of Zenith Station."
—and then his mouth fell slightly open. "Er. Yes. How…?"
Ms. Ward started to answer before redirecting. "That's not important right now. Though it does add a fascinating layer to this mystery we find ourselves in."
Andrew could have sworn the woman's eyes lit up as she warmed to her theme. "What is a pastor doing on a marauder ship in the Excelsior quadrant? And a pastor from Zenith Station, no less? The same Zenith Station that's gone dark, its brand new jump gate apparently inaccessible, just when it might have been useful."
Here Ms. Ward ought to have closed the folder containing what little information she had on Andrew—for dramatic effect, probably. Instead, she turned her tablet face-down on the dented metal table and steepled her hands.
"Are you aware," she persisted, "that before its gate connection went down, Zenith Station had a noticeable increase in traffic? Specifically traffic leaving the station? Now, I'm told that Zenith Station has recently developed— I'm sorry, is something funny?"
Andrew realized he was grinning. He quickly brought his expression under control. "No. Sorry, no, I—" He cleared his throat. "It's just that no one on the station ever calls the place by its full name like that. It's Zenith."
It wasn't funny. That was the horrible thing. Nothing about this situation was funny. Andrew could feel himself coming apart at the seams. Soon he would be an incoherent disaster weeping on the floor.
And Ms. Ward, with a strangely threatening undercurrent to her words, was not helping things.
"I'm sorry," Andrew said again. He dragged a hand through his hair and found another bruise. "You have to understand, I've been awake for…. Well. And before that I was locked up in a cell, and a very ugly man— Forgive me. You had to be there. Although maybe he's in your brig now."
Andrew was aware that not only Ms. Ward but also the guards were staring at him as he slowly unraveled.
"Never mind. The point is…. What do you want from me, Ms. Ward?"
The woman considered him in silence for a moment. Then she leaned forward, folding her arms on the table, and looked him in the eye. "I want answers, Mr. Breckon. I want to know why you were on that ship, and what they were doing, and how it's connected to Zenith Station. And whatever your answer is, it had better convince me. Otherwise, you will be joining your ugly friend in our brig for the duration of this voyage, and none of us has any idea how long that will be. And then when you do disembark from this vessel, it will be under guard, and your next stop will be another cell, where you will remain until this war is over."
Ms. Ward sat back and tugged at the hem of her dress coat. "So please," she concluded. "Convince me."
The only reaction Andrew could manage was an incredulous laugh. Something at the back of his mind warned him that he wasn't doing himself any favors in the credibility department, but he couldn't help it.
I don't belong here, he wanted to tell the woman in the suit. I shouldn't be here. My place is back on Zenith, with my wife and child, not here on a battle cruiser in the Excelsior quadrant getting more and more impossibly tangled up every minute in an intergalactic incident that is two pulser blasts away from all-out war.
Obviously that answer wouldn't suffice to convince Ms. Ward. Neither would the slightly-less hysterical I was just trying to help. Andrew had no idea what would convince her that his presence here was just a monumentally absurd case of wrong-place-wrong-time, and he was beginning to wonder if there was any point in trying to hold it together for as long as possible instead of just breaking down.
Andrew drew in an uneven breath. Up to this point, he'd managed not to think too much about Nikki and Jayme and the rest of his people back on Zenith, but now that he had…. Breaking down was starting to look like the most viable option available to him. Certainly it would be the easiest to arrange. Perhaps then they'd confine him to the infirmary rather than the brig.
But he didn't break down. The spirit of his ancestors asserted itself and, with a second, more forceful straightening of his shoulders, he said, "I want a lawyer."
Ms. Ward blinked at him. "Sir, this is a military operation. I don't have a public attorney—"
"Then I want to speak with the captain."
"Commander," she corrected, "and so do I. But the commander is busy, as I'm sure you can imagine, so you have me. Now. Either you can tell me what you're doing here, or I can have my colleagues escort you to the brig."
"I thought this wasn't an interrogation."
Ms. Ward's lips quirked. "It's not. It's a conversation."
Right. A conversation where one wrong word could have him—at absolute best—confined to quarters until this intergalactic incident sorted itself out.
Message with attachments from Zenith Station — Annaliese Breckon to HSCS Achlys — Dr. Rejeanne Castelan. Clearance Level: 3B.
My dearest Gigi,
Well, I've gone and done it. I always swore I'd seen my last shuttle all those years ago when Olympia invited me on that ill-fated cruise. I hadn't counted on our comedic God sending my grandson Andrew to a mining station.
I also hadn't counted on Andrew choosing to stay as long as he did. Oh, I knew he sincerely believed in his calling and he threw himself into the endeavor with the same blind enthusiasm he employs in everything. But those first few letters he wrote—when he remembered to write—had us all worried.
Then we met Nicola. (Finally. She had been haunting his letters home like a ghost. I was beginning to think he'd made her up.) And, well, you know what happened then. We all knew, even if it took Andrew a few more days to catch on, bless him.
Now here I am at last, wriggling my toes in boots that were secondhand before I was born and typing out this message on a workstation with a faulty backlight. As for the boots, I must say they do make getting around easier. Thankfully Lona had the foresight to warn us ladies to forego heeled shoes on this occasion, or I might have ended up with another broken ankle. That's all the kids needed. But even a good solid pair of formal slippers aren't enough against the rust and corrugated metal of a mining station, for all it's undergone something of a growth spurt in recent years. I'm given to understand that updating the flooring is neither practical nor economical; and, thus, the boots.
My one comfort is that no self-respecting assassin would last long on Zenith Station.
You'll forgive me if this is the first you're hearing of Andrew and Nicola's wedding. Andrew was very firm on keeping things quiet for as long as possible. Not on account of assassins, mind, or even of run-of-the-mill kidnappers. I'm afraid the recycled air of Zenith Station has somewhat addled Andrew's common sense on that front. He seems to have this notion that he's safe out here.
In general, I'm afraid that Andrew is quite given over to station sensibilities, such as they are. Can you believe he actually seemed proud to give us a tour of the place? He paid special attention to their new rec center, and even drew a chart comparing the new passenger terminal to the old.
But you don't care about all of that, do you, Gigi? I daresay you've seen your share of mining stations in your years. You would probably take one look at this Zenith Station and echo all of Andrew's praise of it. Innovation and whatnot.
It's the station sensibilities that I wanted to discuss, anyway. Do you know, when Lona turned up a few days ahead of us with Nicola's darling niece, Mavi, Nicola actually got angry with her? She didn't yell, as far as I know, but she has this way of conveying her displeasure that I find quite heartening. Suits the family very well, you know. No loss of dignity on her part, just cool sense—even if the rest of us don't understand her line of reasoning in the slightest.
Are we really that snobbish, Gigi? I thought the gesture perfectly natural and not at all worth fussing about. Lona tried to be reasonable about it, too: "Here's your niece because I know she means the world to you and you only get married once" (unless you're Cousin Roy) "so I brought her in lieu of a wedding gift, and I swear Andrew had nothing to do with it". She added that last part especially. Do you suppose it helped?
It did not. Not at first, anyway. Things were still a bit cool between them by the time I arrived with the others. Andrew and Nicola, that is. Nicola was all politeness to Lona, and absolutely doted on Mavi. But as for her and Andrew?
I think it may be the nearest they've yet come to a proper row.
Some people have all the luck.
We had expected to put up in whatever passed for a hotel on-station, and never mind that we would be "roughing it"; but Andrew's little congregation would hear nothing of the sort. Granted, this meant we were all somewhat dispersed among several decks. Dividing the enemy, perhaps? Whatever their motivation, I did not complain for long. I had the privilege of bunking with a charming old dear called Philomena, who holds the distinction of giving Andrew his first pair of station boots (this seems to be some sort of rite of passage). We shared a great deal of gossip.
To do Andrew and his church credit, we've passed our few days here in comfort. It's not their fault we were all somewhat bored in the days leading up to The Event Itself. Lona and Shannon are not uppity people, and they stressed that they wanted their wedding to be as lowkey as possible, but next to Andrew and Nicola, Lona and Shannon's wedding was a once-in-a-century affair. Here we didn't think to bring our own decorations, and so they recycled whatever bits and bobs the church had in its limited storage, which took all of an hour to arrange. The station is under a minor ration injunction on account of pirates intercepting one of their regular shipments, so we couldn't even swing a cake. I cannot recall the last time in my life that I have ever been so bored. I played card games, if you can believe it, as if I was some lackadaisical adolescent on summer holiday. At least a broken ankle would have added some color to the week.
Mavi and Sabine and one of the local girls stood up with Nicola, and Andrew had Cade and Iry and one of his school friends, who hitched a ride over with us. (Very charming boy. Seems he's been tied up with some sort of mission work for the last four or five years and hasn't had time to consider such banal matters as matrimony. He would do well for our Halima, if she could be persuaded to look up from her textbooks long enough to bat her lashes at him. That would about do it, I think.)
I like to think that the order of the wedding suggests how the marriage will follow. Now, this is not an exact science, but I certainly believe I'm correct in this case. By the rehearsal, Andrew and Nicola had sorted out their differences of opinion. (If I had to guess, all it took was Andrew saying, "Darling, I'm on your side," and I do believe he meant it. I fear we truly have lost him to this great calling of his, if he has found it in his soul to contradict his sister. I only hope his church knows what a gift they've received.) By the morning of the wedding, Andrew had adopted that adorable way he has of convincing himself he is perfectly calm and rational, while all of us can see he's scared out of his wits. Lona forced him to disconnect his link so he would stop writing lists.
I will say this for station life: against every odd, it seems to have treated Andrew very well. He cut a fine (if somewhat pale) figure in the suit Lona brought him. No more the scraggly schoolboy you might remember him as. Unfortunately he insisted on keeping his beard. Sabine informed me that it looks well on him, and that plenty of young women on Zenith Station agree with her. In this one thing I find myself at odds with my great-granddaughter. Hopefully Andrew will come to his senses someday.
Nicola was absolutely stunning. I thought she turned out well at Lona and Shannon's wedding, but there's something about a well-tailored dress to really set a woman off to her best advantage. I pride myself on having selected the chief material, though Lona had final say on the cut. We thought pure white would not suit Nicola at all, and settled on a lovely alabaster with accents that glittered like a dream. Lona suggested the cape falling from her shoulders in place of a veil and train. Naturally, Olympia saw to her hair, though several of the local ladies insisted on helping.
I had no idea Nicola was held in such high regard here, Gigi. I shouldn't be surprised, and perhaps I'm doing her a great disservice. She was nothing but polite and engaging when she visited Andraste, but she's so rough around the edges….
Well, that's more station sensibility for you, I suppose. Everyone here seems to love her. She's never one I would have picked for a pastor's wife, but I have a feeling she'll manage just fine. Certainly her composure never wavered for a moment, though she was somewhat more subdued than we've come to expect from her. We none of us have to remind Andrew of what a gem he's found. He's well aware, even if it took him ages to admit it to himself.
And just like that, the wedding was over. Did I mention Dr. Ramsay performed the ceremony? Andrew was all apologies to the locals, but on this he was determined. Fascinating man, Gabriel Ramsay. Incredibly difficult to pin down. I believe he avoided me on purpose.
There was a buffet-style reception meal—Cade pulled some strings for that one, and Andrew and Nicola are not to be told. Let them have their blissful ignorance. They didn't notice, anyway.
Unfortunately, their honeymoon only took them as far as a few decks northward of us, but we're all doing our utmost to pretend they don't exist. We've already said our farewells and, until the next shuttle arrives and can carry us away from here and back to proper gravity, we're making the most of things. Philomena is a treasure trove. If you're ever out this way on one of your excursions, you must look her up.
Though the fees this far out are somewhat extravagant, I am sending along a few snapshots from the wedding. These are Top Secret, Gigi. No games. I swore on my soul that I would only share these with you, and that means you. I can see you smiling when you read this, but I am deadly serious. We will not have a repeat of the Arnaut Affair. Just try anything and you can consider yourself cut out of my will.
Not that it matters overmuch, as I still intend to see you beat me to the grave, if I have to break my ankle again to manage it.
