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  All of the holodeck interactions had been recorded, and there was no way to eliminate this function. It would, quite simply, render the entire holodeck inoperative. The problem was that the shuttle only had so much computer memory, and the holodeck archives would consume most of the computer memory, including the entertainment and personnel archives, long before the fuel ran out.

  Those archives were the story of Anderson’s mining colony. Of his family. Of the books, songs, poetry, hell, even the vids—drama, comedy, musical, romance—and, ohmigod, the all-important health and hygiene files, all of it, the collective history, intelligence, and personality of the place Anderson had come from.

  And he was going to have to just flush it away in order to keep the holodeck running?

  Bobby was the one who had come up with a solution, a way of keeping those things by exposing them to the holodeck archives themselves. A picture in the holodeck used up so much less space than the RAM in the ship’s archives, and playing the songs and all of the videos while they were sleeping didn’t impinge on anyone’s consciousness at all.

  At first, Kate had worried about the noise keeping them up, and that was when Alpha had discovered the thing that caused the second fight.

  “We’re all programmed to sleep through the night?”

  Anderson had been surprised. “Yeah, I’d almost forgotten about that.” Things between them had mended in the past month, as they’d spent their energies fixing one problem and their creativity fixing another. Alpha was always happier when he had something to do, something purposeful. When he was happier, he was the young man from Anderson’s dreams again, and things were peaceful in their small community. (Even their home had been made smaller by the elimination of the school. Their entire house, which had been a good-sized dorm complex, now consisted of three bedrooms and a common room, and Alpha had been subtly campaigning to put the other two couples into one room. Anderson had coldly vetoed that one. He didn’t want his privacy violated any more than he imagined anyone else did, but that didn’t stop Alpha from keeping up the argument.)

  “Forgotten it? Why did you do it?”

  Anderson flushed then. This was a secret thing. This was a thing he’d told no one, not even Bobby. Especially not Alpha.

  “I was afraid the random behavior algorithms would disrupt my own sleep patterns,” he said calmly. He was called upon to prevaricate so very rarely that he wasn’t sure if he could do it right. Alpha seemed to be mollified, though, so he let the matter drop. Anderson walked out of their room then, and into Bobby’s, and simply put his finger over his lips for a moment while he leaned against Bobby’s wall and trembled. That had been a near thing. A terrible thing.

  Bobby looked at him hard for a moment, but Anderson shook his head. Neither of them mentioned the moment again, and Alpha never asked, especially when the math revealed that a significant amount of energy was saved by keeping everybody asleep unless they were needed at the bridge.

  Neither Anderson nor Bobby mentioned the fact that Anderson was now afraid of his lover to the point that he’d rather run away than risk Alpha’s anger. Neither of them mentioned the fact that they were both sure the disagreement would have come to blows. They were an isolated few people on a small ship, alone in the vastness of space. Some things simply had to be endured. For the next four and a half years, that’s exactly what they did.

  Endure they did. Even as Kate sent out the all-important hail to the space station, the six of them were still engaged in the painstaking task of calling up data on their tablets and then showing it to the holo-recorders plainly before deleting it. Every deletion felt like a betrayal. Every betrayal made Anderson hate himself a little bit more and made Alpha a little bit angrier.

  The first month after they started the deletion found two more bruises marking Anderson’s face.

  They hadn’t even had to ration the organic matter that the synthesizer used yet. The day Anderson had started throwing paper-based colony manifests into the synthesizer in order to make food, Alpha had split his lip in an argument about whether keeping the name of every last man, woman, and child on the colony was a sacred trust.

  Anderson’s lip and nose had been pouring blood, and still, he’d insisted that it was. Alpha knocked his head against the wall and then stalked out, but Anderson remained convinced that one was a win.

  When they reached the point of deleting their least favorite videos (but the ones Anderson was sure his mother would have liked) Alpha was greeting Anderson at the door by throwing him on the bed, yanking his pants down, and taking him forcefully, sometimes painfully, and never by asking for his consent.

  About the time they reached the archives for the colonists themselves, Alpha’s hands made their first circle around Anderson’s throat during sex. That had been nearly a year before they found the space station at the Hermes-Eight system.

  And now, after a day of celebration and a joyful use of the much-hoarded energy reserves, Anderson was afraid to walk into his sleep quarters with the man who had been built to love him.

  But the fear had never stopped him before.

  He walked into their small house—they’d put it close to the biosphere in the holo-design, so it had been like they’d grown up and taken jobs, instead of like they’d been forced into a smaller bubble of reality—and then into his and Alpha’s room.

  The room itself was… it was pretty. He kept a picture of his family there on his old school tablet, in spite of Alpha’s protests, and looked at them every day and said their names. His mother, Caitlin, with the fine blonde hair and brown eyes and a smile that seemed to stretch her narrow face. His father, James, who had Anderson’s fair hair, brown eyes, and a slyer, more grave smile, but a fond look as he gazed at his children.

  The tablet held more than just the picture, but the picture itself was special. It had been taken the day Anderson had turned twelve. He was smiling in real, honest-to-God sunshine, and Melody was trying to shove cake down his face. Baby Mandy had two fists full of cake and frosting and was coming to plaster it on Anderson’s pants, and Jen was stomping her foot and yelling at everyone to act their age. Their parents were laughing at their antics. A family friend had taken the picture, and when Anderson had found it in the archives, he had sacrificed a day’s worth of power for the food synthesizer to call it up in the highest number of pixels. There was grass beneath their feet, and the sun on their faces, and glee and joy and love….

  None of them had known how wonderful that moment had been, but Anderson knew now.

  He’d painted the walls of this room gold, like sunshine, and made the carpet a deep green. There was a big window next to the same bed he’d made out of cannibalized ship parts, because nothing went to waste, and the window looked out on the biosphere park, so the view was pretty. There was sun during the day, of course, and grass, just like the colors in the room. Anderson wondered if he was getting the colors right—would he even remember real sun and grass anymore if he saw them? The cover on the queen-sized cot was real, taken from the stores, so it was a grim, all-purpose gray. He folded the cover at the bottom of the black-vinyl-covered cot and focused on the pictures on the walls instead.

  He had a few pictures left—some more of his family, one of Bren that he’d found in the archives as well, and a picture of all of them, Anderson, Kate, Bobby, Henry, Risa, and Alpha that had been taken at the beginning, when they were all playing at love and the health and hygiene files had been the best game ever invented.

  Alpha was sitting in a chair by their small workstation table, studying figures from a tablet, as Anderson walked in, and a folk-singer from his colony that Anderson had particularly adored began to sing over the intercom for the nightly recording session.

  “You spent energy making a hail out into space today,” Alpha remarked without looking up. “And you’re late. Care to explain?”

  Anderson swallowed. “We made it, Alpha,” he said hesitantly. “We made it. There’s a space station three days out. Real pe
ople. Energy stores. A planet below it, with Terran level gravity. A home.”

  Alpha’s eyes—a cold gray, ever since that first black eye—glanced up once and then looked down. “You’re deluding yourself. This is home. False hope will kill you, Anderson. We’ve discussed this.”

  Anderson swallowed. This was true, too, and as with so many other things, Anderson knew Alpha was right. But, as with so many other things, he knew that he was right too. “The sensors show it, plain as day. And it’s in the shuttle’s records and star charts, three different mentions. This is where the shuttle was programmed to go ten years ago, Alpha. This is it. We’ve reached our destination.”

  Alpha nodded. He’d cropped his fashionably blown hair shortly after that first black eye, and it was now military short. Anderson had always wondered at the psychological implications of that, but he hadn’t wanted to ask. “Well then,” he said briskly, “what are you waiting for? Go cancel the holo-program.”

  Anderson gasped as though he’d been slapped. “Are you insane?”

  “No. We’ve officially outlived our usefulness, Anderson. You’ve just come in to tell me that you don’t need me anymore. Go do it. Pull the plug. Kill us.”

  “I can’t do that!” Anderson thought about his life without his family and fought valiantly not to throw up or pass out. Lose his family? Again? Impossible. “You asshole! How could you even suggest that?”

  Alpha nodded and started to prowl aggressively around the room. “Yeah, I get it. I’m the asshole. That’s fine. I’m the one who made you fight for your survival. That makes me a bad person, and I can live with it. But in five minutes, I won’t have to. All you have to do is walk out this door, go up to the bridge, and kill us all.”

  “I’m not going to do that!” Anderson protested, angry in a way he didn’t think he could ever be—hideously angry, a black rage falling over his skin like a spiked curtain, blood thundering in front of his eyes for a textured patina of red. “These people are my family. You don’t kill them just because they’ve outlived their usefulness!”

  “Not even me, Anderson?” Alpha taunted. God, he was tall. He was a good six inches taller than Anderson and still muscular and strong. Anderson’s diet had been affected by the synthesizer rations—not as much protein, not as much vegetable matter, in spite of the biosphere—and he was underweight and fragile.

  “Yes, you!” Anderson was shouting, even though Alpha was right up in his face, right in front of him, holding his shoulders in those hard, rough hands. “You’re my family. You’re a bastard and a son of a bitch, and I still love you, dammit! I’m not just going to kill you just because we’re almost to port!”

  Alpha stopped that bone-jarring shaking and moved closer, smiling with that arrogant glint that had first made Anderson love him. God, he’d been so sure of himself, so in charge, and Anderson had been alone and making the decisions without guidance for so, so long.

  “Yeah? Well, that probably means you still need me. Bully for me!”

  Anderson flinched. He didn’t want it to be true. “You are a bully,” he whispered, and he was practically transcendent with joy when the expected blow to the face actually arrived.

  “Yeah? Was that violent enough for you?”

  Anderson closed his eyes. He deserved it. He deserved more. Disposing of people like they were tissue, choosing his own life over the collected lives of his colony, over their culture, over the proof of their existence. He deserved it. He deserved everything Alpha gave him.

  But he’d proved today that he still wanted to live.

  “That’s more than enough,” he whispered, his eyes closed, feeling like a coward.

  Alpha’s mouth covered his, mashed against his until he tasted his own blood. “I think you’re lying.”

  Anderson opened his eyes in real fear. This was Alpha, defying what was best for Anderson. Or was he? Alpha grinned, his mouth hard and uncompromising, and went to kiss Anderson again. This time, the kiss was soft, gentle, sweet, and Anderson closed his eyes in longing.

  He longed that Alpha would be done with him quickly and that the wounds would heal soon.

  Part 2: C.J.

  Chapter 5

  A Collective Voice

  C.J.’S MONITOR was going off unmercifully. He groaned, stretched his nude body, and clambered over Jensen’s sheets, and the five zillion multi-colored pillows on his gi-fucking-normous bed, and then over Jensen’s girlfriend, and then, finally, over Jensen himself, who was, unbelievably, still stroking himself hard, practically in his sleep.

  “Jensen!”

  “God, really?”

  “Jensen, you asshole, if you’re awake enough to beat off, give me my fucking monitor!”

  “But we’re not done fucking!”

  Oh, wonderful. He could make dirty puns in his sleep too.

  “Jesus, you really are an asshole, you know that?” C.J. draped himself over the end of the bed, and over Jensen too, and went hunting for his pants in the puddle of discarded clothing at the bottom.

  “I thought my asshole was the part of me you liked the best!” Jensen feigned hurt, and he also used his opportunity to grope C.J.’s bare bottom as it presented itself. C.J. was busy looking for the monitor—and he enjoyed the touch very much, especially when Jensen found his… oh, yes… his balls… and then a thumb, sliding along his crease—

  “Got it!” he cried in triumph, just when that clever, clever thumb found its way home. C.J. groaned, and for a whole second—long enough for Jensen to trickle a little lube down there and massage with some serious intent—he contemplated not answering this call.

  The monitor buzzed again. It was Cassidy. Her ringtone was undeniable, because he’d programmed the monitor to play an old Terran song about having ninety-nine troubles, “but a bitch ain’t one.”

  Cassie loved that song. She liked to say she was the one bitch who was still trouble, and he liked to tell her that he had plenty of women, and more than a few men, who’d like to say the same thing.

  “Dammit, Cassidy, am I or am I not planetside?” he snapped into the monitor. One of the perks of having a sister who was also your boss was that you got to be a total bear to her when she woke you up when you were down on the planet enjoying some hard-earned leave.

  “You’re gonna want to be here for this one, Cyril,” she said, and he grimaced. God, he hated his given name.

  “What, another ship full of fools who tried to get too close to that nebula cluster?” Once a year there was always someone—somebody who thought that they could brave the time-space-reality-warp of the Ariadne quadrant, complete with the madness that accompanied it. C.J., junior engineer and specialist for all weirdness space related, was particularly good at figuring out what mechanical problems were just wear and tear and what stuff was seriously bizarre—like the time-space parasite that liked to slip between the molecules of the ship’s hull, scuttle along the wiring, and then make its way to the frontal lobe of the passengers and mess with the neural cluster there that humans used to regulate reality.

  C.J. was good at the little mechanical details; in fact, he loved them. The big hairy psychological shit, he left that to his sister, who, in turn, would hand over the worst cases to Jensen. But the small human-engineering interfaces that frequently got fucked up in outer space? That shit was C.J.’s bread and butter.

  He liked that stuff. He liked the people who came with it. Everyone had a story, and he could listen to them all. And the best part was, most of that shit? Most of it was easily dealt with. A little radiation to the right places, some medication that his sister, the space-counselor, had on hand, and it was all good. Those nice people could go on their merry way, and C.J. had another story to tell, and the world kept turning, and space kept being just hilariously fucking weird. The long-term stuff, well, that got turned over to a long-term counselor, someone more able to deal with things deeply rooted in the psyche. (Someone like, say, the big-thumbed, handsome fucker who was currently burying his thumb in C.J.’s ass w
hile getting his girlfriend to spread her thighs and warm herself up. Jensen, you—oh, God, yes, don’t stop—asshole!)

  The basic space things? Hyperdrive side-slipping so that time turned back on itself in small increments? Spaceships developing a fear of space and needing a total memory wipe to start up again? Time-space parasites that dicked with the wiring? Electronics overdosing on a blue sun’s rays and recording stuff that didn’t happen? The basic, nuts—c’mon, Jensen, don’t forget those… uh, yeah… good—and bolts, give-’em-a-dose-and-a-sympathetic-ear stuff?

  C.J. was great at it.

  “What’s right up my alley?” he asked, and he pretended to ignore Jensen’s evil chuckle as something went up his alley that made him want to pant. He was glad he hadn’t triggered the video on the monitor—Cassie would never let him live it down.

  “We’ve got a guy coming in from… Jesus, do you remember that mining colony that got destroyed? Like, ten years ago? You were still at university, squandering your education….” She paused for a second to see if he’d rise to the bait because she had more letters behind her name than he did. He had Jensen, pulling his thumb out and adding two fingers and spreading them, while his erection rubbed up against Jensen’s hairy thigh and Molly caressed his backside. Who needed letters behind him?

  “Go on,” he said, trying to sound bored.

  “C.J.,” Cassie said suspiciously, “what are you doing?”

  C.J. took a shuddering breath and spread his thighs a little more. Molly’s hand snuck down and grasped his cock, and he wriggled in appreciation.

  “Trying to figure out why you’re bothering me on my month off,” he said, thinking his voice sounded firm.

  “You’re having sex, aren’t you?”

  “Not. Yet.” Molly squeezed, right at his head, exactly when Jensen plunged inside his ass with three thick fingers.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. We’ve got a guy who’s been in space for ten years without a soul to talk to coming in three days. He’s apparently tricked out his ship in ungodly ways to make the journey. Do you want the case or not?”