Pioneer’s Tower, Bennin Residence
Prime Dome, Planet Irkalla
4452.2.16 Interstellar
As before, Janus woke up in the cryotherapy pod feeling cold and vulnerable, but the aches and pains of the previous days had faded away. If anything, he felt refreshed and eager to get going.
Less than sixteen hours until the Trials started.
Lira was already up and getting dressed. Their eyes met through the glass as she zipped up her coveralls. She nodded to him and stepped out of the room, giving him some privacy for what was likely the last time in the next month.
They had less than a day to get in sync before the Trials started, and he barely had time to explain the route to Lira before Ivan threatened to sedate both of them so they got enough rest. Now it was the beginning of early shift on the day they were leaving, and they would have to finish their preparations, grab a few more hours of sleep, and leave for the Trials at last light.
Janus got dressed alone, second-guessing the choice he’d made the whole time. He wasn’t sure if Lira was going to follow his lead when they were alone and out in the dust. She was more political than him, more concerned with power and status, which was both his biggest problem and why she could be useful—if they didn’t spend the whole trip fighting. At least he and Remi would have gotten along. Primer problems, he thought. He’d spent so many nights staring at the bunk above him, wondering how to keep him and his family from being exiled, wondering how he was going to afford to pay the rent. Now he slept in a tube filled with icy medical fluid next to a woman who by all accounts hated him but wanted the job more than she wanted to spit in his face. He used to resent having to share a room with his sister at his age, but he missed the companionship, even if he left for work while she was sleeping and came to bed after she was passed out. Even the sound of her snoring would have been comforting.
His and Lira’s first fight started almost as soon as they got to work.
“We don’t need an auto-disconnect,” Lira said as he inspected the buggies. “They malfunction all the time, and if we’re traveling at speed, we’re more likely to damage our cargo by mistake than need to jettison it.”
Janus set his jaw. “It’s spec. We let the cargo break loose so it doesn’t roll and flip us with it. I care more about you than I do about the cargo.”
“Why am I hauling the cargo?” Lira fired back. “I’ve driven the road between here and Crossroads. I should be leading while you haul.”
“Fine,” Janus said, crossing his arms. “I’ll haul, you clear the way.” At least that way, I can keep my eye on you, he didn’t add.
Lira looked at him suspiciously. “Fine. I still think you’re going to wind up having to either slow down or re-connect the damned thing every time you hit a bump, and our travel time will suffer.”
“That’s my risk assessment to make,” Janus said. “I’m not going to knock us out of the race for the sake of a possible scenario.”
Lira turned red. “If you’re referring to what happened in the airlock—”
“I’m not, okay?” Janus said, cutting her off, which just pissed her off more. “Look, I saw the recording of what happened. I know who triggered the override, and who told him not to. Are we good?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “We’ll be fine. I’m a professional. I swapped half our cargo out for PrimeGro.”
Janus frowned. “I thought that stuff was strictly no-export.”
“It is, but you’re the aspirant, so I bent the rules,” Lira said.
PrimeGro was a semi-organic catalyst that could turn the fine dust outside into soil by bonding the inert, radioactive grit to nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur as well as trace elements. The reaction would happen naturally over the course of months or years, but PrimeGro was a proprietary and almost magical formula that had allowed Prime Dome to expand faster than most of the other habitats on Irkalla. “Won’t it weaken us as a whole if someone reverse-engineers it?”
Lira shrugged. “We got the formula from the wayfinders after winning the Trials in 4422. If we lose, someone else can ask them for it. At least this way, if they try, they’ll have to be smart enough to have come up with the idea in the first place.”
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He couldn’t fault her reasoning, even if abusing the aspirant’s privilege was uncomfortable for him. This is why you asked her to be your second, he told himself, popping the saddles to inspect the buggies’ power plants.
His concerns were mostly forgotten by the time the next argument started.
Janus looked across the room at her as they undressed for their last session in the cryotherapy tubes. “When we agreed you'd be my second, I thought it was pretty clear you’d have to listen to me.”
“I listened to you, and I'm rejecting your overly cautious approach as unnecessary.” She sighed. “I said I'd defer to you, and I will, on matters of the overall direction of our expedition. But when it comes to things I’ve done and you haven’t, or my personal safety, I get to make the call. Don't you agree that's fair?”
“Your safety is my responsibility. If you go down because you weren't safe enough, it’s going to be me hauling your corpse in the trailer.”
Lira stuffed her coveralls into the locker next to her tube. “You have my permission to leave my corpse in the dust. Are we good?” Lira asked, one hand on the tube.
“No, but we’re leaving in seven hours anyway. I’m relying on you, Lira. Don’t let me down.”
“I won't, Aspirant,” Lira shot back before closing the hatch.
Janus climbed into his own tube and closed himself in. Lira was just one of dozens of decisions he was second-guessing, but she was the one he felt the least control over. He winced as the cold fluid washed around his feet, filling the tube from the bottom up. It’s just a hot fix, he told himself, putting on the oxygen mask. Some machines had to be repaired on the go, and that was fine as long as you took the proper precautions.
***
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Ivan said, slapping the outside of the half-drained tube, and Janus came to with a start. His uncle hit the emergency release, allowing the remaining fluid to splash on the sloped concrete floor.
“It’s literally one minute until my alarm would have woken me up,” Janus groaned.
“How could I know that?” Ivan said.
“The tank was two-thirds of the way through draining,” Janus answered.
Ivan stuck out his lower lip. “That’s asking for an awful lot of deduction on my part. Now, come on and have some breakfast with your sister and me.”
Janus pretended to be upset, but he was glad to have a little time with Ivan and Callie before he left.
The pod next to him was empty. He frowned. “Where’s Lira?”
“Allencourt got up an hour before you to go spend time with her father. He was grateful to you for saving her life and secretly pleased she wasn’t going, but then you decided to take her with you after all, and now I think he hates you more than she does.”
“He tell you all this?” Janus said, standing under the sprayers, trying to be nonchalant about his second’s lingering issues.
“Nah,” Ivan said. “It was part of the threat assessment your security detail drew up on him.”
“I have a security detail?” Janus asked, surprised.
“Can’t have a crazy Primer take out the dome’s greatest hope.”
“I never saw them.”
“That’s because they’re good at what they do,” Ivan said. “Hurry up. You don’t have as much time as you think.”
“That’s not ominous at all,” Janus said, wiping the water out of his eyes. “Uncle?”
His uncle was gone.
***
Janus found Callie and his uncle in the kitchen, which was a complete mess. There was white powder everywhere, and sticky yellow smudges, and his sister giggled as she whipped the black pan upward and a round, pale disk flipped twice before landing back in the pan. “Did you see how much air I got on that one?” she asked.
“That was a good one,” Ivan said, patting her shoulder. It was nice to see his uncle engaged, interacting with Callie again like he had with Janus before… everything.
“There you are,” Ivan said, spotting Janus in the doorway.
Callie smiled. She had more of the white powder on her face. “We’re making pancakes!”
“What are pancakes?” Janus asked, although something about all this was familiar.
“Butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, and sugar,” Ivan said from rote. “I like to add a little salt. Your mother used to make them when I’d go on trips outside the dome.”
Vague memories stirred in the back of Janus’s mind. They weren’t specific, but they were celebratory, except maybe people were sad during them. “What’s butter?”
“It’s like margarine but much harder to get,” Ivan said, putting a plate on the kitchen table for him. It was a stack of three pancakes with more of the sugar and margarine substitute melted on top of it and a fork. “Eat.”
Janus didn’t argue. He sat down, grabbed the fork, and dug in. The pancakes were sweet and savory, fluffy and chewy at the same time. The butter was too rich for his taste, but he couldn’t argue that it did taste better—less oily than real margarine. “This is good!”
“Glad you like it,” Uncle Ivan said. He put a plate down for Callie, who joined Janus at the table. Ivan started cleaning up.
“You not eating?” Janus asked him.
“Not today, kid. Pancakes were your father’s idea, you know? He was always more sentimental. Terrible cook, though, so Anika did the cooking.”
“Just pancakes?” Callie asked. “He came up with the recipe or something?”
“No, Bug,” Janus said, although he’d only remembered it now. “The idea was to do something that makes you happy when you’re supposed to be sad.”
Ivan nodded, and Callie’s eyes got a little shiny.
Janus put his head down and focused on his food.
“It’s a good idea,” Callie said.
“Yeah,” Janus said.