“I don’t think it’s foolish to hope,” Pendt said.
“Maybe,” Morunt said. “But if my sister ever comes back here, it’ll mean she’s bringing your family with her, and that’s not going to be good for you.”
“Your father sold Dr. Morunt to my family.” Pendt had to say the words out loud to make it real.
“Yes,” he said. “Somehow, he knew that they were buying.”
The pieces in Pendt’s head began to circle in some semblance of order, the horror of it dawning full.
“It wasn’t just your sister they trafficked,” Pendt said. “I knew they traded in embryos. It’s how all my cousins and siblings and me were born. But it wasn’t just that either. We never took passengers on board. Those people who lived in the lower hold weren’t going out to Alterra and the other mining complexes by choice. That’s why the hold was empty and so clean when we got to Brannick Station: They scrubbed away the evidence of trafficking because someone on Brannick might notice.”
“You were a child,” Morunt said, quick to absolve her.
“I read messages.” Pendt’s voice was dull and she curled in on herself. “Over the intercom to the hold below. I told them when and where we’d be arriving. I thought it was to give them hope, but it was to let them know who they’d been sold to.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Morunt said. His eyes fogged over, and he couldn’t meet her gaze. “My father figured it out because he knew what to look for in a smuggling operation, but you couldn’t have done that. You couldn’t have known.”
“It wasn’t your sister’s fault either,” Pendt said. She felt like she was coming apart as her world reordered itself into something even worse than she’d already known. “But she helped them. They would have left her or airlocked her if she hadn’t. And I would have helped too, if it meant half a gram more protein on my plate at dinnertime.”
Morunt leaned across his desk and took her hands. Pendt felt immediately grounded.
“There is a difference,” he said, voice desperate. “Between survival and cruelty.”
Pendt wasn’t so sure. She had experienced so much of her family’s mistreatment in the name of the ship’s continued existence. Everything could be counted for on the scales. But the Harland wasn’t a person. It didn’t have feelings. When she was little, Pendt had wanted nothing more than to make the Harland happy. It occurred to her for the first time that she never could. It was a ship. Her aunt and her mother and her cousins and her siblings—those were the people who had used her, not some ideal of a family legacy that she’d been born to uphold.
“Thank you,” she said as her world reordered itself again. She felt freer than she ever had, and it had cost a good person some painful memories. “I—”
“I understand, Pendt.” Dr. Morunt held up a hand. “You were trained from birth to take responsibility for things that were never yours to carry. I’m glad I could help you, even if it hurts a bit.”
Pendt didn’t remember what she said after that or how she made it all the way back to their apartment. When she arrived in the lounge, Fisher was playing a game on the entertainment console, the first time he’d picked it up again since they’d learned about Ned. He set the controller down as soon as he saw her, though, rose, and pulled her into his arms.
“What is it?” he said.
“My family,” Pendt said. “The great legacy and secret of the Harland. We don’t just trade in ore and oglasa. We trafficked human beings. They would have sold me off to the highest bidder for a ‘perfect’ baby, and then used my body and my æther connection to make more Harlands between contracts.”
Fisher’s arms tightened around her, holding her steady as the storm of her emotions rocked through her. It wasn’t sadness or regret that made her cry. It wasn’t even grief. It was pure, incandescent rage, and when she found a way to target it, the Harland wouldn’t stand a chance.
22.
AS PENDT GRAPPLED WITH the realization of what her family’s business truly was, Fisher tried to settle his own feelings. It was easier said than done.
He was excruciatingly aware of the fact that Pendt had viewed her relationship with Ned mostly as a business transaction. They had liked each other well enough, which was nice, but both of them had been getting what they wanted. If asked, Fisher would also say he was getting what he wanted. He ran the station now, standing alone for the first time since he was born.
But in the days where he’d got to know Pendt better, before news of his brother’s death had arrived, Fisher started to realize that he wanted something else. Pendt was a hard worker and absolutely dedicated to Brannick Station. She understood him without speaking but was just as happy to talk to him. She felt wonderful in his arms, even now when she was upset about something he couldn’t start to help her fix. She had this way of cocking her shoulder when she was focused on a plant that flipped his stomach over. He wanted nothing more in the universe than to kiss her again. Possibly, he wanted to kiss her forever.
Except now Ned was dead. And her family was even more monstrous than he’d suspected. She needed his support and his attention, of course, but she was so self-sufficient and so aware of how much space she occupied at any given moment. She seemed reluctant to take any more from him.
But she had kissed him back. That awful day that had started out so well, when he held her on the sofa, and she overbalanced to put all of her weight on his chest. She had kissed him back. Through all of Fisher’s grief and concern over the uncertainties of the future, he clung to that feeling.
He missed Ned, would miss him forever. In a way, missing Ned was easier than missing his parents. At least Ned’s fate was sure. His parents’ lives would always be hanging over him. There was the threat that someday the Hegemony may use his father to open the Net and that would be the end of Brannick Station as he knew it. Missing his parents required Fisher to acknowledge that someday they might come back. Missing Ned required his grief and that was much simpler to give.
Pendt didn’t miss the Harland. She hadn’t before, and she definitely didn’t now. But she had to know they’d come back someday. The month was long since up, and now they could literally appear on the scans at any moment. At some point, he supposed, they would have committed to another two-decade run. Maybe that was what Pendt believed. It would certainly keep her sane. She would be nearly forty when the ship came back. The captain might be dead by then.
She and Fisher weren’t the same, as Pendt had said, but they could understand each other. Ned always accepted him, but Ned was his brother. Fisher knew that didn’t guarantee anything; even before he’d met Pendt, he knew that some families were meaner than his. Pendt’s acceptance was different. She had no reason to trust him that day in the bar, but she had chosen to. And she continued to. She said she didn’t think she’d ever loved anyone, and maybe she still didn’t, but she trusted him, and that wasn’t nothing.