Kai always joined the diving party when there were souls around who might have suffered the hard death. She and the captain had discussed it once, when they’d both recoiled from a weeping child who had strayed too close to a decaying grav-generator and died within three, agonizing minutes.

“You too?” Lee had asked, glancing at the child.

“Her name was Heather.”

“Yes.”

Neither mentioned it directly again. Seeing was an m-variance, one of an assortment allocated seemingly at random. Neglecting to register an m-variant ability could get your incorporated status pulled, or worse, get you taken in for reconditioning.

Kai liked space because, except for the actual salvage part, ghosts were rare. And while spacers gossiped, they kept it between themselves. As long as you didn’t enchant someone or levitate out their cargo or convince Boggins to take residence in a rival’s hold, spacers didn’t remark on eccentricities. They were all odd. You had to be odd to spend months in sub-light, your comings and goings an approximation as relativity ruled the expanses between gates.

Captain Lee met her husband at the inner airlock and pulled him close. “Wish I could be there.” Moso was a good head taller, but Siobhan Lee controlled the kiss, grasping Moso behind the neck to lower and then seize his lips.

Kendra, environment and hydroponics: “air and fresh food so don’t push me too far” dashed towards them, fabric bag in hand, jewel-blue skirts swishing around her ship-boots. “One of you three pilots had better be staying here!” she called out.

“Mmm-hmm,” Captain Lee murmured.

“I’m serious.” Kendra was short, deceptively soft-seeming, skin pale as processed soya, her fair hair long for space, braided, twisted, and clasped up in a figure eight. “If the ship’s smashed to bits while the rest of you are off gallivanting on someone else’s wreck, that’s no good for any of us!”

On their last mission, the Rhapsody had drifted into a clump of meteorites, nearly pulverizing it, while all but Kendra were stripping an old battleship from the once active third front of the Consortium – Pareidolian conflict: not a ‘war’ because the Pareidolians, or Fae as they were called on the border worlds, refused to acknowledge humanity as sentient, except in limited contexts.

Kendra had insisted on a pilot on the ship at all times, or she’d quit and take her plants with her. “Every seedling!”

Not an idle threat. Kendra didn’t make idle threats.

“I’m staying,” Captain Lee said, adding with a mutter, “I drew the short straw.”

“Wonderful.” Kendra smiled. “I made cookies. They’re mostly for Mx. Obundinjo.”

“But I’m the captain.”

“And a few for those staying here with me.”

“That’s better,” Captain Lee said.

“No it’s not,” Jace argued.

This led to some general grumbling as Kendra handed Kai the fabric sack. “Give this to Mx. Obundinjo. If she hasn’t eaten in a while, her stomach will need some help.”

“Understood.”

“Don’t let Jace eat Mx. Obundinjo’s cookies.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“A captain’s place is on her ship,” Moso said, stroking the captain’s hair. “I can set a tow line on my own. You’d only pace around and distract me. I wish to see the waterfalls and have us drink wine together in hot springs, as someone promised.”

“Yes, well then,” Captain Lee shrugged. “Don’t be stupid.”

Moso laughed, the expression making him a lived decade younger. “‘Don’t be stupid, she says, as though it is I who does stupid things.’”

“Your insults warm my heart, my dearest grump.”

“Idiot,” Mosa said, but he smiled. “‘An easy job, she says.’”

“Kai, ping me when you get their nav sorted. We’ll want to align our systems and shave some corrected weeks off of this pleasure cruise.”

“A cruise, she calls it.”

“Get moving!” Captain Lee said, a laugh grooving the smile lines around her lips and eyes as she smacked her husband playfully on the rear.

Twenty-seven lived years of marriage, and they still acted like newlyweds. Kai sealed her suit and followed Jace to the airlock. Jace stood, eyes wide, gaze focused inwards as he interfaced through his jack to direct the tube. Both ships were in alignment, falling at the same rate. Within minutes, the tube had uncurled and extended across the space between them to seal at the opposite lock. Pressure and air came next, stiffening the tube’s surface.

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“Clear,” Jace said over the com.

Though it was safe to cross without a suit, they followed protocol, sealing the inner airlock before opening the outer to the tube and crossing in skinsuits and sealed helmets. Jace, Moso, and Kai bringing up the rear, a care package with hot rations, a chocolate caffeine bulb, and a bag of Kendra’s hydroponics sourced, ship-baked cookies.

When they reached the other side, Jace entered the code Barker a’ Obundinjo had given them, and they were in.

Obundinjo met them at the Pinter’s inner airlock. She wore neither suit nor helmet, instead a too-large jumpsuit with a stylized Q over a playing card—Queen of Diamonds—over her heart. Obundinjo was even thinner in person, bones jutting through light brown skin, brownish-red spider veins webbing along the sides of her nostrils and cheeks. Even her skinsuit was loose, wrapping meatless wrists, bone-tight over tendons and veins.

Kai felt the weight of hunger in the CO’s gaze, and her stomach twisted. How long had Obundinjo been out here, alone, cutting rations in half and half again? After the first month, most would have broken. It was a spacer’s worst nightmare to drift alone in the dark.

Or in this case, the bright.

Kai retracted her helmet, and the face mask lifted. Icy air smacked her skin. They’d passed through the hotter, star-forming regions, but the Pinter drifted in the space between, dark and cold, flanked by fingers of burning heat and light. With systems conserving energy, Obundinjo must have set the environmental systems at their minimum, forcing a faster loss of calories.

Kai smiled and held out the bag of food.

Obundinjo took it, hands shaking as she stared at Kai as though the sight of a human face offered her the same promise of satiation as a full sack of rations. She stepped to Kai, stopped.

“We’re real,” Kai said. “I’m Nakoma Kai, XO of the Rhapsody. Everyone calls me Kai. This is Jace, our dive leader.” Kai waved a hand towards Jace, who lifted his shield and nodded. “And this is Moso, our engineer. He’ll set up the tow.”

“Commander.” Moso nodded formally, shell-tipped, salted dreadlocks clicking as they brushed over his cheeks. He smiled, a flash of white. “Your ship, the Queen’s Luck, have you record of its destruction?”

“No. EMP knocked out the Pinter’s systems. I saw only the light. Elise was caught outside the shielding, in her suit. I couldn’t find her, after.”

Had Elise burned away in whatever malfunction had taken the Queen’s Luck? Or had the force of it flung her outwards, the long fall?

Whatever had gone wrong, it had happened too quickly to leave a spiritual impression. In fact, the Pinter, thus far, had revealed no troubled spirits. Kai expected that would change as they went further inside.

“What happened to the crew?” Kai asked.

“Don’t know. The ship was empty when we got here. Oddest thing. We’d thought maybe they’d stolen some of the cargo and met with an out-system smuggler, but the cargo weight matches with the manifest.”

“They just vanished?” Jace asked.

“Maybe someone rescued them?” Kai suggested.

“Why didn’t they ‘rescue’ the ship with the crew if they were rescued? I don’t like it,” Jace said.

Kai didn’t either, but she didn’t see the point of further terrifying the poor woman. She said, “We’ll get the tow set up and head back to civilization. If you don’t mind, after you eat, showing Moso around, then we can get you a berth in the Rhapsody.” Kai would offer her quarters. Kendra could hang a second hammock in hydroponics for Kai who slept hard enough to ignore the snoring.

“Did you see the first ship?” Jace asked.

“First ship?” Obundinjo cocked her head. “There was another ship?”

Above, the lights flickered, accompanied by a slight hiss.

“Looks like a short,” Moso said, looking up. “Does it happen often?”

“Sometimes.”

“You should eat,” Kai said, handing her the bag. “Try the cookies. Quinoa, nut butter, and cocoa-banana paste.”

Obundinjo opened it and took a cookie, bit, chewed slowly.

The woman’s discipline impressed Kai. A tray of Kendra’s cookies was lucky to survive ten minutes after cooling on the Rhapsody.

“We’re the third,” Jace said. “First was the Basilisk. Or the Jingo Ace. Both went off about the same time and hadn’t returned when we left.”

“Maybe they went on different jobs then?” Kai put in.

“Or maybe we’re the fourth ship,” Jace said. “That’s not good odds.”

Kai looked to Obundinjo. “Jace is our resident optimist.”

Obundinjo swallowed, met Kai’s gaze and smiled. It was an odd smile, though Kai couldn’t place why at first.

It didn’t crinkle the corners of her eyes.

“Proper term is ‘troubleshooter,’” Jace said. “I shoot trouble.”

Kai laughed. Obundinjo hesitated and did the same, bits of cocoa-banana paste smearing her teeth.

Moso asked, “What kind of tow did your Elise try? Energy and line?”

“Line,” Obundinjo said. She glanced at Kai and reached into the bag, taking a second cookie. “The nebula disrupted the energy field. We’d planned to switch it out when we got back into open space. Before boost. I can show you.”

Moso nodded.

Jace glanced at Kai. “Go with them. I’ll check on the cargo. Anything I should know about, Obundinjo?”

The CO shook her head.

Kai met Jace’s gaze, who walked past Obundinjo to study the opposite bulkhead. Over Kai’s com, his voice, regular from algorithmic enhancement, whispered in Kai’s earbud. “I don’t trust this. Her.”

Obundinjo’s behavior was off to Kai too, but she had suffered three months in deep space alone, marooned and without hope. “It’s odd,” Kai subvocced back, “But she’s been through a lot.”

Jace nodded.

“Keep your coms up, open channel,” he said out loud. “Is there anything I should know about the hold, Obundinjo?”

“No.” Obundinjo took a second cookie. She ate it a little faster than the first, though the sweet did little to settle the hunger in her gaze.

The lights flickered again.

“Four-four cycle, looks like. I bet it’s an easy fix. Five minutes, I say.”

“Tow first, Moso,” Kai said, knowing how quickly the engineer derailed himself with ‘simple problems’. A trait he shared with his wife, not that Moso would admit it.

“Yes, yes,” Moso said. “We’ll be setting this sweet dear to minimal power for the trip anyhow, I know.”

Sweet dear. At least the lack of ghosts here wasn’t bringing Moso down.

Usually, a lack of haunting didn’t bring Kai down either. Maybe it was the nebula itself. Its song had been her background music for the past few days. She missed it.

“I’m off then,” Jace said. “When you’re done setting up the tow, Moso, will you check the drive? And Kai, once Moso is settled you’d better get to Nav to get these systems synced before the Captain wears another groove in the deck.”

Kai had already intended to do just that, but Jace was a triple checker, with himself and others. She’d learned to go with it.

In the earbud, Jace added, “Ping the captain from the bridge. It’s odd the crew is missing, not dead. You’re not... ummm... picking up anything?”

Kai shook her head. This room, at least, was free of apparitions. It felt empty, like the gap of a missing tooth.

Maybe that’s what had Jace set to extra-paranoid today. He wasn’t an m-variant, but even normals picked up on things sometimes.