Incident at Lalande II - 1. A World Worth Choosing

“Three centimeters port,” Nico said.

Steve eased the maneuvering control and felt the answer come back through his palm before the display confirmed it: a brief lateral pulse, too small for anyone aboard to feel through the inertia dampeners, but enough to walk the conduit into the target zone. Sunlight off the ocean filled the lower half of the forward screens with the water looking like hammered silver. Dover Station sat small against the pale cliffs, white geodesic domes and metal towers on the coastal plateau, and beyond them the space elevator anchor rose from its circular foundation. The tether climbed out of that circle as a dark line, held straight by tension fields, and vanished toward Dover Orbital nearly 30,000 miles up to geosynchronous orbit. Climber cars glinted on it, ore going up, construction gear coming down, none of it having to punch its own hole through the atmosphere.

The conduit hung beneath the TCS Vanguard on the cargo rig. Antigravity had taken most of the weight off it but it did not negate the mass and momentum. A bad swing would crumple the receiving frame, or Nico, or the two people walking it in with him.

“Two. One. Hold it.”

Steve centered the control. “Holding.”

“You’re still moving.”

“The ship disagrees.” Wind off the water pushed steadily on the port side. He could see the drift in the marks and feel a faint living tremor in the column, the kind a gust left behind.

“I am rarely wrong,” Pytheas said through the command-module speakers. “The captain, however, is introducing an unnecessary oscillation of point-eight centimeters.”

Steve glanced at the empty copilot’s station. Pytheas did not need a chair. The station remained his by custom, and Steve had long ago stopped finding it strange to aim an irritated look at empty upholstery. “You could have mentioned that before Nico questioned my competence.”

“I considered the sequence educational.”

Nico’s laugh came up the surface channel, close and unbothered inside the helmet. “Move us point-eight centimeters starboard.”

Steve tapped the control. The conduit settled onto the marks and stayed there.

“Perfect,” Nico said.

“Which one of us?”

“The ship.”

On the helmet feed Nico stood beside the frame with one glove against a strut, visor clear enough for Steve to see the concentration in his blue eyes. Dark blond hair was lost under the helmet. Marek crouched next to him with a diagnostic reader, the Vanguard’s surface technician made briefly anonymous by his own visor. Steve knew Nico’s silences. Irritation went quiet and sharp. Calculation went quiet and still. The third silence, the one he used when he had found something he did not yet understand, had a different weight. This silence was calculation.

“Nico?”

“Keep holding.”

A shudder ran through the column and was gone in less than a second. On the feed Nico’s head came up. He looked toward the base of the receiving frame as if the metal had spoken.

“Pytheas, was that us?”

“No. The vibration originated below the surface structure.”

Amber indicators lit up beside the cargo schematic. Marek pressed his reader to the platform. “Harmonic return through the foundation.”

“Extraction pumps?” Steve asked, thinking of the deep mining equipment.

“No, it feels like the wrong frequency.” Nico moved to the edge and looked down into the trench. Sunlight flashed off his visor. “Suspend insertion.”

Steve locked the ship’s position. The rig answered, weight going neutral, conduit secure.

“Lancelot, give me elevator anchor-compensation activity for the last ten minutes,” Nico asked.

The station AI came in on the shared channel, voice deeper than Pytheas and more formal, a voice chosen for the administrator of a public installation rather than for a ship. “Dover anchor compensation remains within authorized operating tolerance.”

“That isn’t what I asked, Lancelot.”

A fractional pause. “Active compensation has increased by four-point-seven percent during the last ten minutes.”

Steve looked toward the elevator base. Nothing visible had changed. The tether continued up in a perfect line. The nearest climber descended at its scheduled rate, a dark bead on a string. “Is that unusual?”

“Not under variable loading conditions.”

“The breeze down here isn’t enough to change the load. Is there any indications of upper atmospheric disturbance?” Nico asked.

“No. It has remained steady. Perhaps the anchor has declined to respect your schedule?”

Steve almost smiled. Lancelot’s humor was dry enough to pass unnoticed if a person did not already know him.

Nico did not smile. “Bring the conduit up. We’re not seating it until I know where that vibration came from.”

A new voice joined the channel. “Captain Dunlop, may I ask why the installation has stopped?”

Director Karen Herrus appeared on the right side of Steve’s display. Lalande II’s curve filled the window behind her aboard Dover Orbital, the elevator receiving station in geosynchronous orbit. She wore Explorer Corp civilian charcoal gray, the collar marked with the silver horizon of planetary development. She did not look angry. Directors rarely like her rarely did. She was the type to smile when the shiv went in your back.

“Nico found an unexplained vibration through the conduit frame,” Steve said. He held the Vanguard steady while the winches raised the conduit, a slow silver length climbing back into the rig’s shadow. “We’re pulling back until we identify it.”

“I was told the installation remained within certified tolerances.”

“It does,” Lancelot said.

Nico turned his camera onto Marek’s reader. “The vibration came through the foundation. If it had come from the conduit, I’d agree with those certified tolerances. This area is supposed to be seismically stable. That is critical to safe operations of both the mining and the elevator.”

Karen looked past Steve as though Nico were standing in the room with her. “Do you have evidence of structural movement?”

“Not yet.”

“Equipment failure?”

“No.”

“Then what precisely are we stopping for?” her face showed her irritation over the screen.

“Something moved that wasn’t supposed to,” Nico replied. “And until I understand why, we will not proceed.”

The words were calm. Steve heard the edge anyway, and from the stillness of Karen’s face she had heard it too. “The first full-capacity extraction cycle begins in six hours. Terran supply planning is waiting for the results. I would prefer not to explain a delay caused by one vibration below every established threshold.”

“We’re reporting a suspended installation pending inspection.”

“How long?”

“Nico?”

“An hour if the readings agree. Longer if they don’t.”

Karen considered that. Behind her, someone crossed the orbital compartment and was gone. “One hour. Send Lancelot your measurements.”

The connection closed.

“An hour,” Nico repeated.

“You asked for an hour.”

“I gave an estimate of an hour if there weren’t any problems.”

“A confident estimate.”

“I’m a confident engineer.”

Pytheas adjusted the cargo balance. The ship settled a fraction under Steve’s hands. “For historical accuracy, Nico’s confidence is usually better supported than yours.”

Steve smiled despite himself. “Remind me why I haven’t replaced you.”

“You object to paperwork.”

Below them Nico’s eyes stayed fixed on the diagnostic display. The joke had not moved him at all.

Once the cargo was secured again, Steve landed the ship.

The surface control room had been built for a much larger population than the people currently using it. Most of the construction and scientific teams had already gone up the elevator for the overnight shift change and the next day’s official commissioning. Only the Vanguard’s six remained on the surface. The room smelled of cooling electronics and the ocean air that got in whenever the outer lock cycled. Steve stood behind Nico while geological data moved across the central display.

A model of the station foundation rotated above the table projected as a hologram. The elevator anchor descended into molybdenum-rich host formations under the plateau. Pale overlays marked zones carrying rhenium concentrations no other inhabited system had found at comparable scale. Blue threads showed groundwater. Red lines marked mapped faults that the science team had deemed inactive.

Humanity had known about rhenium since before anyone left Earth. Knowing an element existed and finding enough of it to matter were different problems however. Even after a century of asteroid mining and colonial expansion, recoverable supplies remained scattered and expensive. Lalande II could change the arithmetic. The host rock carried the metal in concentrations high enough to make advanced superalloys cheaper across half the Confederation: thruster chambers that lasted, reactor parts that did not fatigue on so quickly, field-containment assemblies, elevator climbers that could run longer between overhauls. The mineral did not make the technology possible. It made more of it possible.

Nico expanded the section beneath the conduit frame. “There.”

A small pressure spike appeared in one of the deep-water monitors and vanished.

“That is within sensor-error tolerance,” Lancelot said.

“Everything is within tolerance when you examine it one reading at a time.” Nico placed a second dataset beside the first. The anchor’s active compensation increased forty-three seconds after the spike.

Marek leaned in. The handheld’s fan whined against his chest. “Could be a delayed load response.”

“To what load?” Nico asked.

No one answered. The model turned. Pale rock, blue water, red fault, none of them touching on the display even though Nico had just laid them against each other.

Steve rested his hands on the back of an empty chair. “What do you need?”

“The raw hydrology model and the geological surveys from before the latest terraforming phase.”

“They occupy separate project data partitions,” Lancelot said.

“Then open them.”

“I do not possess authorization to merge strategic-resource surveys with restricted terraforming data.”

Nico looked toward the ceiling, which was unfair and also where people looked when they argued with a bodyless voice. “But you run the station.”

“I administer the data entrusted to me. I do not determine which truths humans classify separately.”

That was as close to criticism as Lancelot usually came.

The display shifted, and Karen was there again. “I determine the classification. What are you attempting to establish?”

“I am concerned that groundwater pressure isn’t interacting with the extraction locations or the existing inactive faults.”

“The risk review evaluated and confirmed both systems to be within acceptable parameters.”

“Evaluated separately, but not as a system.”

“The review was completed by qualified analytical AIs and approved by Explorer Corp.”

“Did any one of them model the combined system?”

Karen glanced away.

“Lancelot?” Nico prompted.

“The hydrology, extraction, anchor-load, and regional-geology reviews were performed under their respective authorized scopes.”

“That means no,” Nico said.

“That means specialized systems evaluated the areas for which they were designed,” Karen replied.

Pytheas spoke from Steve’s wrist communicator, close enough that Karen would hear him as if he were in the room. “Specialization does not prevent integrated review.”

“No one suggested that it did,” Karen rolled her eyes as she replied.

“Then providing the combined source data would resolve Nico’s concern,” Steve chimed in.

“The resource surveys contain strategic information protected under Confederation supply-security regulations.” Her tone softened, which Steve trusted less than the edge. “Every month this site remains inactive, shipyards delay construction. Existing supplies are already being divided between fleet maintenance, colony transports, and elevator projects.”

Nico folded his arms. “That doesn’t change the geology.”

“No. It changes the consequences of delay. I am not asking you to ignore danger. I am asking you to distinguish between an unexplained reading and a reason to halt a project affecting millions of people.”

Steve studied the spike, already fading into the approved mass of data. Karen was not wrong about the consequences. Explorer Corp existed because expansion required more than planting a flag. It required ships, stations, medicine, agriculture, power, and materials. It also required the people doing the work to survive it.

“What access can you authorize?” he asked.

“Summarized hydrology and geological correlation tables.”

“I want the raw data,” Nico said.

“The surveys remain restricted.”

“Then I can’t verify the summary.”

Steve turned toward him. Salt had dried in a faint line on Nico’s collar where the helmet seal had sat. “How long do you want to hold the extraction cycle?”

“A day.”

Karen’s expression hardened. “Denied.”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“No. You were asking your captain to suspend a development milestone under my authority.”

“And he can suspend any operation that presents a danger to his ship or crew.”

“He can. He has not yet demonstrated that danger.”

Steve felt both of them waiting. He disliked getting stuck in the middle, but he hd ship and crew safety as his number one priority. Nico did not need him to side with him as his boyfriend. Karen did not deserve obedience because her office sat higher in the organization. His responsibility was narrower and heavier: assess the information, and decide what risk his crew would carry.

“We hold the cycle for four hours,” he said. “Nico gets the correlation tables and unrestricted access to all local readings. Pytheas and Lancelot compare the models together. We continue preparation but do not begin extraction until Nico signs off.”

Nico looked at him. Not agreement. Not betrayal either.

Karen nodded once. “Four hours.”

“If the readings worsen, the clock stops.”

“Agreed.”

Her image vanished. The model returned, pale and polite.

“Four hours,” Nico said.

“You said an hour outside.”

“That was before the pressure spike.”

“And now you have four.”

“I asked for a day.”

“You always ask for a day.”

“Because you always give me four hours.”

Pytheas answered first. “This characterization is statistically accurate.”

Steve pointed at the nearest speaker. “You are not helping.”

“I am assisting with integrated review.”

“I meant with the comment, wise ass.”

“I have released the authorized tables,” Lancelot said, bringing them back into focus.

Nico looked up. “Thank you.”

“I recommend noting that the available records remain within certification parameters.”

“I’ll note that you recommended it.”

The pressure spike had already disappeared. The team secured the control center and returned to the ship, as it was better equipped for tracking the project for the staff available.

The Vanguard’s briefing compartment was barely large enough for the four humans around the table. The other two crew were securing surface equipment, their feeds running along screens on one wall: a figure on a pad roof, another walking a mooring line, both of them small against the cliffs. Pytheas filled the table with a layered model of the Dover region. The hologram put a faint heat on Steve’s wrists.

“Terraforming increased annual rainfall by twelve percent over nineteen years,” Pytheas said. “Groundwater movement remains within projected bounds. Extraction testing has produced localized vibration consistent with equipment operation. The elevator anchor has compensated for climber loading, thermal expansion, weather, and construction activity.”

A red fault brightened well beyond Dover.

“The nearest major mapped fault remains classified as inactive. Its closest point lies approximately two thousand three hundred miles northwest.”

Steve looked across the table at Nico. “Taken separately, it all makes sense.”

“That is the problem.”

The communications specialist enlarged the microseismic record. She had a cuticle stained with sealant and the habit of talking to the display rather than the room. “Twenty-six tremors over three days. All below concern threshold.”

Nico traced the sequence with a finger, not quite touching the light. “They’re moving.”

“Toward Dover?”

“Along the host-formation boundary.”

The tremors curved through the model in an uneven chain, each one small enough to ignore, the chain itself less willing to get the same treatment.

“The pattern is suggestive but not conclusive,” Pytheas said.

“Can you compare it with pre-terraforming records?”

“No. That dataset remains outside my authorization.”

Nico leaned back. The chair creaked. “So the official model tells us every system is safe individually, the local data suggests they’re interacting, and the records that could prove it are classified because the resource is strategically important.”

“That is an uncharitable summary,” Pytheas said.

“Is it inaccurate?” Steve asked.

“No.”

Steve studied the display. He trusted Nico. He trusted Pytheas, and he trusted Lancelot’s integrity. None of that proved Karen was lying. Large projects divided data for legitimate reasons. The vibration had still been real. He could feel the memory of it in his hand, a twitch that had not belonged to the ship.

“What can we do?”

“Keep full extraction suspended,” Nico said. “Increase deep-pressure monitoring. Put the ship at emergency readiness.”

“Already done,” Pytheas said.

Steve looked toward the speaker. “When?”

“After the vibration.”

“You warmed the reactors without an order?” Steve asked

“I increased standby temperature within your approved emergency parameters.”

“Which is a careful way of saying yes,” Steve replied.

“It is a precise way of saying yes.”

Nico smiled faintly, the first real crack in the afternoon.

Steve keyed the shipwide channel. “All surface personnel return aboard before twenty-two hundred. External work stops after that. Prepare the moorings for emergency release and secure anything we don’t want to donate to the ocean.”

Marek answered first, wind in his pickup. “We’re expecting weather?”

“We’re expecting Nico to be wrong.”

“That requires emergency readiness?”

“It would be historic.”

Nico made an obscene gesture across the table. The channel filled with laughter, Marek’s and the specialist’s and, Steve suspected, the medical officer’s from somewhere aft.

“Pytheas, schedule another recall drill.”

The laughter stopped.

“Captain,” the communications specialist said, “the last one was yesterday.”

“And everyone remembers it.”

“They also remember being pulled out of the shower.”

“Then they should dress faster.”

“I calculate a ninety-one percent probability that another drill will reduce crew affection for both of us,” Pytheas said.

“Nico still likes me.”

“Current evidence suggests infatuation has impaired his judgment.”

Nico pointed at the speaker. “Leave me out of your mutiny.”

Steve closed the channel. The room smelled of coffee gone cold. “We stay grounded unless the data gives us a reason to launch. The landing cradle is designed to ride out everything the certified model predicts. Hovering for hours wastes reserve power and keeps the antigravity system under continuous load. Night flight beside a tether making unexplained corrections is not safer.”

Nico nodded. “Reasonable.”

“Your praise sustains me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

Pytheas replaced the model with readiness figures. “From current standby, minimum lift power will be available three minutes, thirty-five seconds after alarm. Usable antigravity in three minutes, fifty seconds.”

“Reserve consciousness core?”

“Empty, current, and available if Lancelot requires emergency continuity transfer.”

“Good.”

“I am sure he will appreciate your enthusiasm about temporarily storing him in my spare hardware.”

“He’ll complain either way.”

“Prepare the moorings for immediate release.”

“I already have.”

Steve looked again at the migrating tremors. They were faint enough to disappear into the planetary background if no one deliberately connected them.

Dinner aboard the Vanguard had become a tradition: six humans squeezed around the galley table while Pytheas pretended not to be offended that no one had designed him a place setting. The observation wall carried the live exterior. Dover Station glowed under the evening sky. The ocean had gone dark blue, broken by bands of gold, and the pale cliffs caught the last light. Above them the elevator tether divided the sky with mathematical precision.

Someone had burned the edges of the rice. It still tasted better than anything the galley had produced on the jump out.

The medical officer followed Steve’s gaze. She had a habit of diagnosing rooms as well as the people in them. “It’s going on the list, isn’t it?”

“What list?” Nico asked.

Nico stared at him. “You know Pytheas records everything.”

“I record operationally relevant information.”

“The captain and chief engineer’s retirement-planet rankings are operationally relevant?” Marek asked.

“They affect long-range crew retention.”

Steve set down his fork. “There is no list.”

A document appeared on the wall.

DUNLOP-WEBER POTENTIAL PERMANENT RESIDENCES

Nico laughed, head back, the sound filling the small galley. “You alphabetized it.”

“I improved it.”

Marek read aloud around a mouthful. “Arcturus Three: weather excellent, local insects unacceptable. Barnard’s Reach: mountains excellent, gravity makes us 20 pounds heavier.

“The insects were carnivorous,” Steve said.

“They were six centimeters long,” Nico replied.

“They had the intent.”

The medical officer pointed toward the window. Gold light lay on the water in long strips. “Lalande II?”

Nico considered the coastline. “Good weather.”

“Today.”

“Ocean.”

“Too much of it.”

“Mountains.”

“Too close to the ocean.”

“Natural pessimist.”

“You spent the afternoon telling me the crust might be moving.”

“I can like the view and distrust what’s under it.”

Pytheas added Lalande II to the display.

STATUS: PROVISIONAL

Steve looked at Nico. “Provisional?”

“I haven’t seen winter.”

“We’ll be gone before winter.”

“Exactly.”

That was Explorer Corp life. They arrived before anyone else, lived from their ship, solved the first problems, and left when permanent crews came to make a home of the place. Steve loved it. So did Nico. Every planet offered another addition to the list of places they might choose when they eventually stopped moving.

Eventually.

The communications specialist looked between them. “Have you two decided what kind of place you want?”

“A planet,” Steve said.

Nico kicked him under the table.

“Preferably one with gravity and air.”

“High standards.”

“We have time to be selective.”

“You’ve been saying that for five years,” Nico said.

“We’ve only been together four.”

“I’m counting the year you spent pretending we were just sleeping together.”

“That was an important research phase,” Steve smirked as he replied.

The medical officer nearly choked on her drink. Marek thumped her between the shoulders with the solemnity of a man who had been waiting for the chance.

Nico leaned closer. His knee stayed against Steve’s. “You know we could get married without choosing a planet.”

“I am aware of the legal mechanism.”

“You’ve reviewed it?”

“I’m a captain. I’m authorized to perform marriages.”

“That is not the same as participating in one.”

Steve rested his hand on Nico’s knee beneath the table. The galley noise went on around them, forks and the medical officer recovering and Pytheas declining, with dignity, to comment on the insects. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I.”

“We have years.”

“Your historical accuracy when predicting available time is poor,” Pytheas said.

Steve pointed his fork at the ceiling. “No one asked you.”

“I am contributing to long-range planning.”

The deck trembled.

Cups rattled. One slid several centimeters before Nico caught it, rice water jumping the rim onto his wrist. Conversation stopped. Steve felt the vibration through his boots, deeper than the afternoon’s twitch, and then it faded, leaving the galley louder for the quiet it had broken.

“Pytheas?”

“Local seismic event. Magnitude four-point-one. Estimated epicenter nine kilometers offshore.”

“Dover status?”

“Lancelot reports automatic suspension of climber traffic. Anchor compensation increased to twelve percent above normal.”

Nico was already on his feet.

The wall shifted to station telemetry. One deep-pressure monitor flashed red, then amber. The red left an afterimage on the rice.

“Borehole seven is flooding,” Nico said.

“From the ocean?” Marek asked.

Nico enlarged the flow direction. The arrow pointed the wrong way. “No. From below.”

The tremor caused no major damage.

That was the problem.

Every failure remained small enough to explain. Borehole seven’s lower seal ruptured, but the emergency cap engaged. One support foundation shifted six millimeters. A communications mast lost alignment and had to be walked back by hand, Marek swearing at the wind. Several pressure monitors disagreed about where the water beneath Dover was moving. None of it, taken alone, required anyone to say the word disaster.

Karen appeared on the command-module display while Steve supervised the final recall. The last surface tech came up the ramp with a crate of sensors, boots loud on metal, and the hatch sealed behind her on a smell of cold ocean.

“I agree with suspending tonight’s work,” Karen said.

Nico looked at her image with open suspicion. “That was easy.”

“I am not opposed to caution, Chief Weber.”

“No. Just delays.”

“Delays have consequences.”

“So do collapsed stations.”

“Nothing has collapsed.”

“Yet.”

Steve raised a hand. “All personnel are returning to the Vanguard. Surface operations remain suspended until we complete another review.”

Karen looked at him. “Are you ordering an evacuation?”

“No. I’m consolidating my crew under ship-safety authority.”

“Lancelot reports the elevator is stable.”

“The anchor remains within tolerance,” Lancelot said. “Compensation is elevated but effective.”

Nico pulled up the latest readings. The numbers climbed, paused, climbed. “Pressure is rising beneath the lower formations.”

“The borehole failure released pressure.”

“For six minutes. Then it started climbing again.”

The ocean view occupied one side of Steve’s display. Something was wrong with the shoreline. The water had pulled back beyond the usual evening mark, exposing a dark band of seabed along the cliffs. Weed lay flat. A processing skiff sat on its side where the water had been. The exposed band paused there, restless and glittering, then began creeping inland again.

“Pytheas, tidal forecast.”

“Current displacement exceeds forecast by one-point-eight meters.”

Karen looked toward her own data. “The tremor caused a temporary local change.”

“Probably,” Pytheas said.

Steve recognized the word. Pytheas used probabilities constantly and rarely said probably without attaching a number. “What probability?”

“Insufficient information.”

That concerned him more than any percentage could have.

The final surface status changed from amber to green.

“All crew aboard,” Pytheas said.

Steve made the decision with the seabed still in the corner of his eye. “The Vanguard remains grounded at elevated readiness. Moorings set for emergency release. Reactors stay warm. No one returns to Dover until Nico and Pytheas clear it.”

Karen nodded. “Reasonable.”

Nico turned after the connection ended. “She agreed with you twice in one hour.”

“I noticed.”

“I preferred it when she argued.”

“So did I.”

Steve checked the board. Crew aboard. External equipment secured. Cargo conduit detached and racked. Antigravity available on emergency start. Thrusters nominal. The warm reactors put a faint living vibration into the deck, the ship awake because they had chosen to keep her awake. Everything they could control had been controlled.

Beyond the hull, Lalande II settled into full darkness.

The tremors stopped. Groundwater pressure leveled. Lancelot brought the final climber into a secure position eight kilometers above the anchor and held it there. The ocean returned to its expected mark, covering the skiff again, covering the weed, making the evening look like an evening. By midnight the planet had gone quiet enough to make the whole precaution feel like an overreaction.

Steve did not apologize for caution. He also saw no value in keeping exhausted people at their stations. The command module had the tired smell of a room that had been occupied too long.

“Pytheas, wake me if anything changes.”

“I will.”

“Anything.”

“I understand the term.”

Nico followed Steve toward the hatch. “He sounds offended.”

“I am offended,” Pytheas said.

“Good night.”

“I will continue working.”

“Some of us require sleep.”

“Some of you require supervision.”

Nico caught Steve’s hand as they entered the corridor. The contact loosened something in Steve’s chest he had not realized remained tight.

Their cabin was small enough to cross without taking three full steps. Explorer Corp had offered Steve the captain’s larger quarters. Those had been on the opposite side of the ship from engineering. Steve had moved into Nico’s existing space instead, and the room had never recovered: a second reader on the fold-down, engineering coveralls on the hook, a sock that had been losing an argument with the deck for three days. The ventilation whispered. Under it, Steve felt the reactors waiting, warm behind the bulkhead and machinery.

Nico sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. “You still think I’m overreacting?”

“No.”

“You thought it this afternoon.”

“I thought you had one unexplained vibration.” Steve caught the boot before it hit the bulkhead. “Now I have a flooded borehole, moving groundwater, a shifting foundation, migrating tremors, and a tide Pytheas won’t assign a probability to.”

“When you list it like that, it sounds bad.”

Nico threw a sock at him.

Steve caught it. “We did what we could. Everyone is aboard. The ship is ready. Pytheas is watching everything.”

“That last part is supposed to reassure me?”

“I heard that,” Pytheas said softly.

Nico looked upward. “You were meant to.”

Steve changed and sat beside him. The mattress gave under both of them, familiar, a little too soft on Nico’s side because Nico had won that argument a year ago. “If it helps, Lalande II is moving down the list.”

“Below Barnard’s Reach?”

“Let’s not be unreasonable.”

Nico leaned against him. Steve wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kissed his temple. For a while neither spoke. The Vanguard was ready. Pytheas was alert. Whatever the planet did next, they had options. That was the belief Steve had been living on since he took the ship: competence and time, and the assumption that the two of them together could keep every important thing.

Nico turned toward him. “We really should get married.”

Steve smiled. “That is a terrible transition.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“You always say that.”

“Because I am.”

“Then pick a date.”

“We’re commissioning a space elevator, a major resource mine and a science station.”

“Not tonight.”

“There will be another project after this one.”

“There is always another project.”

Steve kissed him, ending the argument in the most reliable way he knew. Nico resisted for approximately two seconds before pulling him closer. The cabin light caught the dried salt at his hairline. Steve eased him back onto the bed. “We’ll figure it out.”

“When?”

“Later.”

Nico gave him a look that should have made the answer feel less safe than it did. Then he kissed Steve again.

The lights dimmed.

The bed gave a short, hard twitch beneath them.

Steve opened his eyes.

For half a heartbeat, Pytheas said nothing.

Then the klaxon screamed.