The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,5
Cayenne. Damn, when had they even bought cayenne? He couldn’t remember. “Where did this come from?”
Marit looked down at her bowl. “I brought it with me. I bought it for Kioko. It was supposed to be a present for our anniversary but… well. That didn’t end up happening.” She tilted her bowl over Laramie’s, dumped the rest of her rice on top of his, and stood up. “Meet me in the cockpit when you’re done.”
Denver looked at his brother, wincing. “Should I have already known that?”
“Probably. When would we ever waste credits on spices?” He sounded bitter but ate the rest of his meal quick. “Let’s not leave her to dwell on it too long.”
Denver stared down into his bowl, his appetite gone. He hated being reminded of Kioko. Hated remembering how his and Laramie’s good fortune resulted from Marit’s loss. Not even cayenne could make the rice palatable with that thought heavy in his head.
Laramie tapped the bowl with his spoon. “Eat up,” he said. “Feeling guilty about it doesn’t change anything.” He tossed his dishes into the sink and walked out.
The first song ended, and a new one began. Something about a woman putting her head down in a pillow, and a whiskey lullaby. Fucking depressing.
“OPAL, turn this shit off.” He forced the rest of his portion down in silence before getting up to join them in the cockpit. Marit had a livestream of the object broadcasting to the viewport, with rows of data running below it as OPAL ran diagnostics.
“Any clue what’s under all the junk?” Denver asked as he stood behind Laramie’s chair.
“It’s hard to say,” Marit replied, and Denver was relieved to hear her sounding normal again. “There are layers upon layers of tracers on top of it. It’s been siphoning off their energy for a long time; maybe decades, if not more.”
“Siphoning their energy?” Denver said. “Is that why they haven’t exploded?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Laramie leaned forward to get a closer look at the image on the monitor. “How do we know it isn’t just a knot of the little bastards?”
“This reading here.” Marit pointed at the screen. “It’s a power signature, but it doesn’t match tracer energy. OPAL’s running comparisons to everything we’ve got in the system.”
“Everything we’re allowed to have in the system, that is.”
Oh yeah, now’s the perfect time for this fight too. Laramie was certainly feeling pugnacious today. Denver tried to interject, but Marit was already jumping into the fray. “Our scanners have ninety-five percent identification accuracy! That’s nearly perfect!”
“‘Nearly’ isn’t good enough. What if it’s that last five percent the Martians won’t share with us that ends up getting us killed?” Laramie demanded. “What if it gets Denver killed? Because don’t think—” He swiveled his chair around to level a finger at Denver. “Don’t think I don’t know that you’ll be the one going out there. You’d have done it before if Marit hadn’t shouted some sense into you.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Marit countered, leaning aggressively toward Laramie. “Is that what you want? Because I’ll go instead, if it’ll make you happy.”
“Of course you won’t go,” Laramie snapped back. “We all know you need to run point here on the Jiminy.”
Denver groaned, wondering why Marit and Laramie both seemed to be itching for a fight.
If they’d had two suits, it would have been different, but they didn’t. Only one of them could go out with OPAL at a time. Denver wasn’t about to let Laramie go, despite the many arguments it caused. And Marit was the worst of them when it came to spacewalks, too accustomed to life on Mars to be really comfortable in the black. Both times she’d tried had led to full-blown panic attacks, but none of them brought that up.
It had to be Denver. It was the only option, and in truth, Denver wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Still, it didn’t stop Laramie from feeling useless, and he hated feeling useless, which was why he turned on Denver next. “And I already know you’ll say I’m not strong enough, but I am.”
“It isn’t about strength. It just isn’t worth exacerba—”
“‘Exacerbating my condition,’ I know.”
“Peace, okay?” Denver held up his hands and glanced between the two of them. “Peace.” They both slumped a bit in their seats, looking mildly ashamed of themselves, and Denver breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ve had this conversation a thousand times. If somebody has to go—and I do mean if—it’ll be me. It’s the only thing that