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  “Thank you,” he said, his heart in his throat, and then Anderson blushed and ducked his head.

  “C.J., could you… I mean… I need a favor.”

  It was embarrassing how badly he wanted to do Anderson a favor. “Yeah, sure, what do you need? Sizes, a guide, a gamma bird of your very own, what?”

  Behind Anderson’s shoulder, Michelle’s expression turned dry, but Anderson himself was abruptly very sober. “In my quarters… in my room, really, there’s a last little memory cache. It’s… you’ll see it. You can download that to public record if you want, but… I’d really like that back, if it’s okay.”

  C.J. swallowed. God, he’d lived in that ship for ten years, and they weren’t letting him back on. The weight of that decision, of Anderson’s easy understanding of it, seemed to press him a little deeper into the brown and tan carpet.

  “Yeah, not a problem, if I have to wrestle my sister to do it.”

  Anderson’s smile wasn’t blinding and whole. It was little and broken, but he gave it anyway, obviously just to please C.J., and then he gestured for the doctor, a courteous gesture, probably learned as a child, and he followed Michelle through the door.

  The seal went whoosh as it closed, and C.J. flopped exhaustedly onto his couch.

  By the seven moons of Ariadne-Omega, what did he think he was doing?

  CASSIE ASKED him the exact same question, only in a different context.

  “Jesus Christ, Cyril, it’s the boy’s quarters. What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was shrill as it came in from the bridge outside the house, and he had a moment to think that maybe he could do his work from the holodeck to get away from her.

  “He’s a grown man, Cassidy, and he made a perfectly reasonable request. Now hang on a minute, he said….” You’ll know it when you see it.

  Anderson’s—and, presumably, Alpha’s, although no one had yet seen the elusive Alpha—room was… masculine. The work desk was made of the same red-tinted wood, as was the end table. The walls were painted that bright, sunny yellow, but with the darker furniture, the dark green and brown rug, and the real and utilitarian obviously makeshift cot, the whole thing felt… male. Not perky and young, but male. C.J. looked around and thought that maybe Anderson really did like C.J.’s living room, and then he saw it.

  He swallowed before walking around the cot to the end table and picking it up.

  It had been jimmied to sit propped up—there was a plastic piece of cannibalized ship furniture duct-taped to the back of it—and basically, it was a child’s electronic school tablet, the kind that held their homework and their journals and the textbooks they were using and whatever else a pre-university kid could need.

  This one had been set on a permanent photomontage, and as C.J. held it, heart pounding painful, singular beats in his chest, it showed him the very last bit of data that had yet to be downloaded into the station.

  The main picture showed a family. Mom had fair hair, much like her son’s, and green eyes. She was smiling spontaneously at her husband, as though he’d said something when the digital image had been taken that made her laugh, and even blushing a little—she was happy. Dad was fair too and had brown eyes very much like his son’s.

  The children were… well, less than perfect. There was a teenager with a hip-length braid of blonde hair and green eyes like her mother who was holding a plump toddler with chocolate cake in her white-blonde hair. The toddler was reaching for something off-camera and threatening to overbalance her sister, and the expression on the girl’s face was a very adult exasperation. There was another girl, probably nine or so, who looked for all the world like she was giving directions to her brother, who was in the midst of shoving a truly tremendous piece of chocolate cake into his mouth and was eating it with swollen cheeks and a winsome expression that said the lure of the cake had just been too much for him to bear.

  Anderson’s smile, even through the cake, was as blinding and as hopeful as C.J. had always suspected, and it held so much promise that C.J.’s stomach hurt.

  C.J.’s hands started sweating as he spun through the rest of the photos—one of Anderson sitting at the homework table, one of his sister, jaw clenched in concentration, about to take off from the mark at a track meet. The littlest girl grew in front of him, from Anderson holding her as a baby to a shot of her naked, the other sister chasing her through the house, both of them with mouths open as they apparently squealed in joy. Dad, sleeping with a baby on his chest, and then a different one, holding a toddler in one arm and a baby in another. A secretly taken one of mom, looking tired and happy, sitting in the front room of a house that had probably never been clean.

  He swallowed, hard, and checked the data banks to see if there was anything else.

  There was.

  Mom had tried—not always successfully—to have the family write letters once a year, apparently to put into the shuttle archive in case of a disaster.

  It was a common practice in the outer colonies—everyone was aware of their vulnerability—but C.J. looked as the letters scrolled before his eyes and had to swallow hard, and again, and still couldn’t stop his eyes from blurring.

  Dear Mom, you said we had to write a letter for Melody’s birthday. Can we ask the shuttle to make her not so bossy because she keeps telling me I can’t bring frogs to the party, and I know she likes frogs….

  Dear Mom, if we read this in ten years, is it okay if Anderson knows what a pain in the ass he is? He threw worms in my hair last week, and I almost killed him. I think he should know that it was mercy alone that spared his life….

  Dear Mom, I’m really glad you had another girl this year. Little brothers suck. I’m just saying….

  Dear Mom, next time could you try for a boy? That’s three sisters, Mom. I’m starting to think you don’t like boys and Dad was a mistake.

  Dear Mom, Anderson and Melody never shut up. Thank you for a little sister who will play dolls with me. I will make a fort with baby Mandy, and we can ignore those other poo-poo heads and play.

  Dear Mom, can Jen really tell me to shut up and stop fighting with Mel? She’s only eight!

  Dear Mom, if this is supposed to be a time capsule, you should know that I had a chance to kiss a boy today. I didn’t, because he was mean to Anderson. The first boy I kiss has to respect that the only one who gets to whale on Anderson is me, and that’s because I know what’s best for him.

  Dear Mom, if Mel gets to read this in ten years, she needs to know that I almost dumped worms in her hair today while she was making out with Mike Saunders, who is actually not a bad person. I need her to know that if it had been with that scumbag Austen, she would have been wearing worms for a hairnet, and she might not be a total loss if she has decent taste in men. By the way, Mom, Bren keeps bringing me new stylus covers for holidays and stuff. Does this mean he likes me? I’m only asking because I think I like him, but no one is going steady in our grade yet, so maybe we’ll just keep playing after school. And he’s the kind of boy who will help me keep that bucket of worms full, in case Mel loses her mind and decides to kiss Austen instead.

  Dear shuttle archives, I’m writing this upon the birth of our fourth child, Amanda Chrysanthemum Anderson-Rawn. Forgive us for the incredibly long, involved name, but James wanted to keep up the tradition of giving the girls flower names in the middle, and we’ve got Melody Rose, Jennifer Violet, and we were going for Amanda Rue, but Anderson complained that he didn’t have any say in having a little sister, so he might as well have a say in her name. We told him he could pick the middle name. We assume that naming his sister Chrysanthemum is a way to continue the incredible boy versus girls rancor that has made our home such a joy since he was born, but since his sisters are his family and he’s stuck with them, he’ll have to make his own peace with them. I know James and I are very much going to enjoy having a front row seat.

  Besides, all the kids are calling her “Mandy Mum” and, well, it’s incredibly cute, even for the seventeen-
year-old.

  Seriously, sitting down to write these letters is a good thing. They remind us that life is short and nothing is guaranteed. I have no idea what my children are sending into posterity with the archives, but I know that I am happy, grateful, and content. My husband is kind—not ambitious, but kind. My daughters are radiant and my son is brave, and as corny as that all sounds, it’s what is in my heart. If our world should end tomorrow, is it so much to ask that the universe at large knows that here, in our tiny house, we lived in joy? I hope not. Because we did.

  Now, on to practical matters, should this archive be found, these messages need to be sent to….

  “Jesus, C.J., what were you looking for, the lost treasure of the Sapphire caves?”

  “No,” he said gruffly, trying to keep his breathing even. “Just… just something… just the last of the files from the mining families.”

  He heard a noise then. The room had two doors, one to the shuttle bridge and one to the rest of the house and the backyard, which took up the entire shuttle when that was the program. He had the feeling that the computer had called up this program so much that it would default there naturally if left alone, and he was very comfortable in this illusion of a house. He could hear the others—Kate, Bobby, Henry, Risa—out in the backyard gardening, so the opening of the door leading to the house caught his attention. There was a weather algorithm, of all things, and seasons. God, poor Anderson. How he must be dying to go planetside!

  C.J. looked up instinctively and caught a glimpse of terrifying, intense blue-gray eyes glaring at him from a lowered brow, and then the door slammed, and Cassie came in through the other way.

  “C.J., can we get a move on? We want to get this part done before Anderson decides to come back today, all right? Hey, what’s that?”

  C.J. was reluctant to hand it over. It felt… private. “It’s the records from Anderson’s family,” he said quietly, keeping his grip on it. “He put them into his school tablet, I guess so they couldn’t be erased, even accidentally.”

  Cassidy let go of a breath that might have been an exasperated sigh. “C.J., honey, here. I’ll just put them into the records and give it right back, okay? Take a minute, pull yourself together—”

  “I’m fine!”

  “Sure you are. Be out on the bridge in five minutes.”

  C.J. glared after her, because she was officious and a pain in the ass. The door shut, and he was about to follow her when he looked at the other door. Moving quickly and silently on non-regulation, soft-padded shoes, he grabbed the handle of the other door and yanked.

  The man who stood there was beautiful, for a monster.

  He had blue-gray eyes and tanned skin and fair hair that was buzzed close to the scalp on the sides and not much longer on top. His jaw was strong, and his eyes were set a little close together for prettiness, and he had a bold nose and lean lips, a wide chest and narrow hips, thick, muscled arms, and thighs the size of tree-trunks, the muscles bulging against the ubiquitous gray and orange jumpsuit. He was like every pinup C.J. had ever seen—every objectified picture of a powerful, strong man—and the expression on his face made C.J.’s blood run cold.

  “You think you’re doing him a favor, don’t you?” hissed Alpha, and C.J. squinted at him, confused.

  “By what?”

  “Taking that picture to him? Those people make him weak. He’s weak. He needs to be strong.” Alpha shouldered his way into the room, leaving not enough space and not enough oxygen.

  God, he was beautiful. He was electric and magnificent and absolutely possessed of his own worth, and he advanced on C.J., who felt, to his horror, the urge to back up against the bed to make room for those bulky shoulders.

  “He survived for ten years,” C.J. said. “He’s strong enough.”

  “Survived?” Alpha barked, curling his lip. “He survived because of me! He’s alive because I made him make those decisions. He would have curled up and died the first time he had to kill off a bunch of holograms if I hadn’t made him do it. I made him do it. I kept him alive. And now you’re killing him.”

  With each word, Alpha pushed himself forward, and although C.J. kept his ground, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. God, the guy was a freaking leviathan—a brutal pulse of testosterone throbbing against C.J.’s senses, and his cock was responding, tingling, filling, even as goose bumps sizzled across his skin. “At least we’re not beating him, you bastard!”

  Alpha pulled up a corner of his mouth then, and his contempt filled the room. “You think I’m horrible because I beat him? Yeah, you do that. You blame me. You think I’m a real motherfucker. Go ahead. Enjoy it. But you remember one thing….” Alpha’s eyes sparked, and he looked levelly into C.J.’s. He knew, C.J. thought, sweating. He knew about that breathless zing that was charging C.J.’s skin, making his nipples tingle, making his cock swell and harden. Alpha knew what he did to a body that responded to men.

  “What’s that?” C.J. panted, resisting the urge to lean forward, to make it intimate and sexual, to yield to anything that would make this more than intimidation.

  “He’s me. I’m the part of him that he didn’t have the sac to own.”

  “No,” C.J. said, floundering and uncertain. “If you’re a part of him, you’ve been warped… twisted… the things you did to him….”

  “It’s only what he thought he deserved,” Alpha sneered. “And you? What do you think you deserve?”

  “I deserve to not be raped by a hologram,” C.J. snapped, putting his hands up on the chest and trying not to marvel that it was warm and the fabric felt slightly moist under his palms, like the man wearing it had been sweating. With a swallow and an act of will, he shoved and felt a completely irrational surge of triumph when that perfectly imagined body stumbled slightly backward.

  “Stay away from him,” C.J. snarled. “Stay away from him, stay away from me, and stay the fuck away from my sister. We will delete you when we know enough. The others are going to survive, but we will delete you!”

  The look on Alpha’s face was complicated—anger, jealousy, triumph, surprise, rage—twisting the handsome features, warping him, making him ugly.

  What came out of his mouth, though, was… surprising. “I didn’t mean to hurt your sister,” he said, and then he spun out of the room and slammed the door so hard the simulated physics of the holodeck made the house rattle.

  “C.J., what the hell was—” Cassandra’s voice was muffled through the simulated wall, and C.J. made a little note to ask Julio about holographic acoustic dampening even as he interrupted her to answer.

  “Don’t worry about it, Cass,” he snapped, unsettled and irritated. “I’m moving. I’m moving, just don’t get your panties in a fucking bunch.”

  He came out of the room with the muscles in his back clenched and knotted and a jaw sore from grinding his teeth.

  “Jesus, C.J., what in the hell happened?”

  “Alpha,” C.J. growled, and then shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Cass. Not now. We’ve got a fucking job to do. Can we do that? I’ll write up Alpha later.”

  Cass nodded soundlessly. C.J. usually made it a point to be professional while on the job, even if he was pissing her off—apparently that cut him some slack at the moment, because she punched some buttons and the larger monitor that she’d been installing in the front of the bridge came online.

  “Are we queuing up from the beginning?”

  Cassie nodded, her hands sure on the controls. “Yeah, from what I can see, the video monitors were activated around the ship for routine maintenance about twenty-four hours before it launched. The shuttles were all out of the bay and near the launch strip, waiting to be washed and monitored. These people knew their shit. Anyway….” Cassie’s chin nodded toward Anderson’s tablet, which was on the console between them, the picture of the family called up as a screen saver, just the way Anderson had fixed it. “The oldest girl, I guess her class was part of the maintenance, like a field trip or something.
She’s sitting in on the classes at the beginning, here. You can see her.”

  C.J. did, and she was beautiful. Her long blonde hair was tied up neatly in a French braid, but strands of it had loosened around her oval-shaped face. She listened carefully to the officer who was giving maintenance instructions and made notations on her tablet very seriously. The boy next to her—possibly the kid who didn’t get worms in his hair—said something to her, and she slanted a look from her green eyes as her full lips curved into a smile.

  C.J. swallowed against a sudden tightness. It was the same smile Anderson had given him in the dark the night before. Definitely not the kid who ended up with the worms in his hair.

  The monitors on the ship—eight outside and four inside—all showed the various stages of the ship being worked on. They watched for an hour or two and then sped through the footage. No one seemed to be worried about meteors or an attack of any sort. Their last day alive, and it was all routine.

  C.J. wondered if it wasn’t better that way.

  The shuttles stood vacant for much of the next day, and then, about the time that maybe, say, pre-university school would get out, there was movement immediately beyond the ship.

  There was the girl again, and she was talking animatedly to a boy next to her—not the boy without the worms, but a smaller boy, one with blond hair like hers and dark eyes and a narrow face with high cheekbones.

  Anderson.

  “Do we have audio?” C.J. asked in a choked whisper. Cass pressed a button, and suddenly it was like he was there, listening to the two of them.

  “Did you really get to work on the bridge?” Anderson asked excitedly. “Wow, Mel, you’re awesome! Can you show me?”

  The girl worried her lip. “Anderson, I could get into a lot of trouble. Part of maintenance meant having the remote out and entering the codes, so it’s ready to launch.”

  Anderson rolled his eyes. “I’m not a cartoon character, Mel. I’d just look. Do they really have holodecks and everything?”