She laughs lightly. “Not a chance.” She pops a laced burner into her mouth and lights up, I shake my head when she offers me a drag. The ship’s air ducts hum. “Silence is a bitch, isn’t it?” she says after a while. “But I guess you’d know that after the box.”
I nod. “No one ever asks me about it,” I say. “The box.”
“No one asks me about Trigg.”
“Do you want them to?”
“Nah.”
“I never used to mind it,” I say. “The silence.”
“Well, you fill it with more things when you get older.”
“Wasn’t much to do in Lykos, ’cept sit around and watch the darkness in Lykos.”
“Watch the darkness. That’s so badass sounding.” Smoke jets out of her nose. “We grew up near corn. Bit less dramatic. Shitloads of it far as you could see. I’d go stand in the middle of it at night sometimes and pretend it was an ocean. You can hear it whispering. It’s not peaceful. Not like you’d think. It’s malevolent. I always wanted to be somewhere else. Not like Trigg. He loved Goodhope. Wanted to enlist at the local precinct for policing duty or be a game warden. He’d be happy kicking it in the backwater till he was old, drinking with those idiots at Lou’s, going hunting in early morning frost. I was the one who wanted out. Who wanted to
She mocks herself, but it’s curious to me that she’s choosing to open up now. She found me here. At first I thought it was because she came to console me. But there’s already whiskey on the squat woman’s breath. She didn’t want to be alone. And I’m the only one who knew Trigg even a little. I set my datapad down.
“I told him he didn’t have to come with, but I knew I was draggin’ him along. Told mom that I’d take care of him. Haven’t even been able to tell her he’s dead. Maybe she thinks we both are.”
“Were you able to tell his fiancé?” I ask. “Ephraim, right?”
“You remembered.”
“Of course. He was from Luna.”
She watches me for a moment. “Yeah, Eph’s a good one. Was with a private security firm in Imbrium City. Specialized in high-value property recovery—art, sculptures, jewels. A real pretty boy. They met at one of those themed bars when we were on leave from the Thirteenth. Venusian beach regalia. Eph didn’t know about Trigg and me, that we were with the Sons and all. But I got a hold of him after we rescued you from Luna when I was out on a supply run. Used a web café. About week after I told him Trigg was gone, he sent a message saying he was going off-grid, joining the Sons on Luna. Haven’t heard from him since.”
“I’m sure he’s all right,” I say.
“Thanks. But we both know Luna’s a cluster of shit right now.” She shrugs. After a moment of picking the weightlifting calluses on her palms, she nudges me. “I want you to know, you’re doing good. I know you didn’t ask. And I’m just a grunt. But you are.”
“Trigg would approve?”
“Yeah. And he’d piss his pants if he knew were we marching on—”
She’s cut short as the holo above us beeps softly and one of the comBlue’s calls up to me. I scramble to pick up my datapad. A single message is being broadcast across all frequencies into the belt. Our first contact with Mars since we went through the asteroid belt the first time. “Play it!” Holiday says. I do and a recording appears. It’s a gray interrogation room. A man’s covered in blood, shackled to a chair. The Jackal walks into frame to stand behind him.
“Is that…” Holiday whispers beside me.
“Yes,” I say. The man is Uncle Narol.
The Jackal holds a pistol in his hand.
“Sorry, Darrow. But I’ll say hello to your father for—”
The Jackal pulls the trigger, and I feel another part of me slip away into the darkness as my uncle slumps in his chair. “Turn it off,” I say numbly, the past flooding into me—Narol putting a frysuit helmet on my head as a boy, tussling with him at Laureltide, his sad eyes as we sat beneath the gallows after Eo’s hanging, his laugh…
“Timestamp puts it at three weeks ago, sir,” Virga, the comBlue says quietly. “We didn’t receive it because of the interference.”
“Did the rest of the fleet get this?” I ask quietly.
