Opalina Outpost

Chapter 23: Bad Weather

Lio sat in numb silence as Ravi finished speaking. It was worse than he'd thought possible. Far worse. He'd lost his lightship, and now he was losing his crew. And his com.

The lounge was deathly silent, in spite of the fact that the entire crew was gathered there. For what was apparently one of the last days they would be together.

Aziri's hand crept into the air. "It's...it has to be so...fast?"

"Yeah." Ravi's voice was dull with pain. "Assigning a permanent crew to the lightship keeps it in Suzerain Aureli's territory. And assigning a new crew means getting rid of us first." He wasn't attempting to soften the blow in the slightest.

Lio twitched, his heart pounding. It couldn't be happening this way. He should've come up with something already.

"So." Ravi took an unsteady breath. "This is fucked up. But we need to make sure you all end up in places where your talents will be seen. Jossen and I are going to take tonight and tomorrow morning to work out a schedule for the next few days, and then I'll meet with everyone to talk through individual options. I'll do my fucking best to get you where you want to be."

No one said anything.

Lio wanted to be here. Or, not here in this horrible camp exactly, but with these people. With his friends who believed in him and in each other no matter what anyone else thought. With Ravi, close enough to touch. This couldn't be happening. He sent up a bewildered prayer to the First Goddess. And then one to the other sister goddesses, even the Wrath Goddess.

In a haze, he watched Jossen and Ravi leave the lounge. Going off to prepare for the end of everything. The crew stayed together, staring at their feet or the ceiling or at nothing. Anything but each other.

Onfenka broke the silence. Her face was blank, but her voice was fragile as cracked glass. "I do not want to leave this crew." She took a slow, deep breath, and her brother shuffled closer to her. "I do not want to go somewhere else and be strange again."

"Same," Teres said. "This is the only place where I haven't been treated like a total fuck-up."

Lio launched himself up from a stupid plastic chair, prowling around the lounge. They were right, and he knew they wouldn't all end up with units that respected them, no matter how much effort Ravi put into the placements. "This isn't acceptable." He didn't realize he growled it aloud, until he saw the others looking at him. "We found the lightship. We're meant to be its crew. I know it."

"I don't think the Archcom will be convinced by that," Aziri said.

Ah, but he had never been one to let little considerations like that stop him.

"Then we convince her." He pressed his palms together and crossed to one of the new imager boards installed in the lounge. When he found an application for a notepad and swiped it open, its blank white surface reflected the crew's dubious expressions back to him. He spun to face them. "We've already found something no one else believed could be found. And now they can't figure out how it works, because it's not meant for them. It's meant for us."

Rosareen combed her hands through her hair, coiling a strand around her fingers. "We don't know enough to—"

"We know more than they do. We'll set it all out." He scrawled on the notepad with one finger, speaking as his adrenaline-spiked handwriting webbed over the virtual page. "We know the layout of the ship. We know that the Mastali used rock, likely taken from the mountain and the Amphitheater, to conceal it. We know the exterior wall failed Tarik's heat test for some reason. We know they're furnishing the ship—"