I say. “I would have offered it to her. She earned it.”
Thraxa nods. “Catherine hired a pilot to take her back to the human colony ship. She said she wanted to find her sister.”
Good. Maybe she’ll find her then. Maybe she’ll find a place for herself there, or carve one out. Either way, she’ll be happier and better off without me, and I’ll be better off without her, too.
“Did we already celebrate pulling off the job?” I ask. “Did I miss the party?”
“We’ll be back in the swarm soon,” THESIUS says. “It’s going to be a huge fucking party. You’ll find a way to forget about her, trust me.”
I try to smile and act like I’m ready to celebrate, but it all sounds hollow coming out of my mouth. There’s an emptiness at the pit of my stomach, one that I know won’t ever really go away.
35
Catherine
I keep feeling guilty for leaving him. Then I remind myself that he left me the moment he stepped into that ring.
Why did I ever kiss him?
It was probably just being stranded together and freezing that got us together in the first place. As soon as he was back in his old life, the real Krakon came back. That guy from the cave on Glacius was someone else, and he died with that ice storm.
I was looking at things backward thinking that was the real Krakon. It was like when I tried to tell myself that the Thad who didn’t get high and didn’t treat me like shit was the real version of Thad, the one I could have all the time if only I worked hard enough for it. As if it was my job to make him a good person and to keep him in line.
That was always wrong, though, and it’s better to leave now, before Krakon forces himself to leave his life for me. He’ll realize he’s made a mistake, because if he stays with me, he’ll be abandoning his true self.
We’re wrong for each other.
The shuttle bay opens, and I’m greeted by a pure human woman in a baggy grey jumpsuit and a brimmed cap.
“Welcome back,” she says. “I’m Petty Officer Sanchez. How was your trip?”
“Good,” I say. “I mean it was fine. Thank you again for, uh, letting me come back.”
“We understand you were taken,” she says. “Captured. It’s not like you had much choice when you left. You didn’t defect.”
I laugh nervously. I’m not in the armed forces. How could I defect?
“I still don’t quite understand how or why I was on here in the first place, Officer Sanchez.”
“Come with me,” she says. “I’ll get you up to speed.”
She takes me down a corridor. It’s busy and full of uniformed men and women, and no one waves or smiles. They all just kind of look at me like I’m not supposed to be here.
Sanchez takes me through a door that reads “mess hall.”
We sit down at one of the empty tables. It doesn’t look like it’s meal time, since the mess hall is mostly empty.
“I understand you want to look for your sister?”
I nod.
“What was her name?”
“Kara Green.”
Sanchez hits a few buttons on her tablet. “She’s not on the passenger manifest, but we do have a few Jane Does. Would you like to check those chambers?”
“Yes,” I say. “I would very much like that.”
“If you both came from the same time…” Sanchez says. “Look, Catherine, I don’t want you to get your hopes up. We had your name. It’s very unlikely we’d have your full name but your sister as a Jane Doe, but I’ll take you and you can look. Just don’t feel too hopeful.”
We look. There are seventeen Jane Does. None are my sister.
“Why is everyone still frozen?” I ask.
“Well,” she says, “the crew is awake.”
“There are tens of thousands of people sleeping on here,” I say. “And you have been parked outside the system for months.”
When I was on Cygnus with the pirates, I got a feel for the gravity of the situation. The first pure human colony ship in decades, and it was just sitting back beyond the orbit of the furthest, coldest planet in the system. Still over a month away. The ship wasn’t accepting any comms, but the Cygnians were too afraid to make a move, too afraid to look eager and poke at it. Only Krakon was dumb enough to do that, apparently.
“We’re still gathering data,” she says.
“And why was I on here again?”
Sanchez frowns. “You don’t want to take