Her only point of reference for the feelings he was stirring in her was Ned, and she really didn’t want to think about Ned right now. Pendt didn’t know what to do, but Fisher didn’t seem to care. He had to know that her only experience with this type of thing was with his brother, but nothing they had ever done was this intense, this personal. She pulled back a bit from his mouth, and he didn’t stop her. He looked at her, unblinking. There was no regret in his gaze.
Pendt blushed, turning bright pink as he stared at her. It was ridiculous and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She buried her face in his shoulder, unable to take the frankness in his eyes any longer. She started to giggle and couldn’t stop herself. Fisher laughed and tightened his arms around her. It felt like home.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Fisher said. “It’s complicated and kind of a mess, and I have no idea what the future is going to bring, but I’m glad you’re here.”
Pendt knew that he meant the sofa specifically, not the station in general. She was glad too, though she didn’t trust her voice enough to say it. Fisher didn’t seem to expect an answer anyway, which was another reason she liked him, if she was honest with herself. He understood her before she spoke, and he understood her when she couldn’t.
They sat in silence for a time. Pendt wondered if this was the first time in her life she had ever been so at ease, so content. It was an ugly question but confronting the wretchedness of her childhood helped her move further away from it. She decided that it didn’t really matter. She had Fisher and Fisher had her, and they were going to see what came of it.
She’d dozed off by the time Fisher’s communications unit chimed, indicating that he had a message. If it had been her unit, she would have bounced up immediately: that always meant they needed her for the Net or the Well. Fisher’s communications were important, but rarely quite so urgent, and she watched him as he slowly reached out with one long arm to snag the datapad off the table.
He sat up so abruptly that she was nearly dislodged onto the floor. Both of his hands were on the datapad, so she didn’t have anything to hold on to. She scrambled to keep her balance and stay sitting on the sofa, and by the time she’d sorted herself out, Fisher’s face was as pale as if all the blood in it had drained out.
“What is it?” she asked.
But she knew. She couldn’t have said how, could not have given a logical explanation, but she knew.
Fisher handed her the datapad, and she read the words she hadn’t allowed herself to consider long enough to fear. The Cleland had been captured and destroyed in battle, with all hands aboard.
Ned Brannick, the bright boy who did his best to save her and save everyone else, was dead.
“YOU MAKE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY”
Sylvie Morunt was a daughter born to a man who wanted only sons. She gave up trying to understand her father when she was quite young. Some people are bigoted, and you cannot reason with them. They have no redeeming qualities, even if they are talented in other arenas. It was not Sylvie’s job to rehabilitate him.
She became a doctor because her brothers did, and she loved them. They were all gene-mages of varying ability, and Sylvie tagged along to their classes on Katla Station until the teachers accepted her presence. She was young, but she was proficient, and good at working hard, and soon enough she and her brothers were graduating. She was seventeen, which will be important in a minute.
Katla Station flourished. It mostly stayed out of the rebellion, though it did provide raw materials if the rebels were buying. Those who ruled there considered themselves free enough already and weren’t in a huge hurry to help other people if it didn’t directly benefit them. The people mostly followed suit because it was safe. Those few who did feel the call to fight left and were rarely heard from again.
The Morunt family had no rebellious tendencies. The father was heavily involved in business and was not the sort of person to care who he traded with so long as the money was good. He haunted docks for new opportunities, and that is why he was ready when the Harland came into port.
The Harland didn’t come to Katla very often. Passage through the Well at Brannick Station was outside their operating budget, but they had a delivery to make, and so the captain had decided it would be worth the expenditures. None left the ship but him, and the cargo. The first was normal for a spacer family, but the cargo manifest was a little too perfectly accounted for, and the Morunt patriarch sensed an opportunity.
Sylvie often wondered, in the years that followed, what would have been different if she hadn’t stayed home that day. The Harland ran on a tight schedule, and if her father hadn’t been able to find her, they wouldn’t have stuck around to wait. But she was home with her middle brother, waiting to hear about a job he had applied for. She was too young to work officially yet. She had to wait until her birthday so that she could sign a contract.
Her father didn’t give her time to pack. There was no room for nonessentials in space, he told her. The Harlands would give her anything she needed. It all happened so fast that she didn’t realize what was going on until he’d dragged her all the way to the docking port, her brother rushing behind them, yelling questions that went unanswered.
The captain of the Harland looked her over and nodded. Her father let go of her arm, and Sylvie tried to run. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but some instinct told her to try. They caught her immediately, of course, and the captain dragged her screaming through the airlock.
Sylvie learned very quickly that no one cared if you screamed in space.
She was taken to the infirmary and given a daily allotment of calories. She tended to the Family. There were two girls who were a few years younger than she was, but in Harland years, they were almost adults themselves and ready to take their places on the ship, but they ignored her. She thought she had been lonely on Katla, when it was just her brothers and the older students, but now she had nothing, and no one person in the universe cared about her.
The Harland returned to Brannick Station and began another circuit of the mining complexes. Back on Katla, each Morunt brother left. In getting rid of his daughter, the father had also lost his sons. He turned lonely and bitter, blaming her for everything that he had done. The boys scattered to different stations, knowing that they would probably never see their sister again.
Sylvie got older. There was no chance of her leaving the ship. The places they stopped were all dangerous, and by the time she returned to Brannick Station, two decades had passed. The Harland had a new captain, and several children had been born. Sylvie had seen them all from conception to their first breaths, but there was nothing else to their relationships. She kept them healthy and they let her eat.
Two years into her second circuit with the Harland, a new child was born. Sylvie knew immediately that the child had magic like hers, that someday she would use the æther to manipulate bodies. She’d also learned enough about the people she served to know that they would not be welcoming of such a child, worse than her father had been for her. They would actively shunt her aside until they could use her, and she would grow knowing what kindness was only by its absence.