12. Take Off

Li had been on his share of emergency evacuations. Underground, the sequence was always the same: the alarm, the mustering, the roll call, the long walk to the surface. The details were always different. The people were always the same.

This evacuation was new territory.

The LMS-7's living quarter partitions had been ripped out to make room for the beds — the makeshift seats that would hold everyone strapped down through launch and re-entry. Up close, the cargo space smelled like old metal and recycled air. Everyone had looked up the same odds and decided not to discuss them. Li had run the numbers in his head the moment Sam mentioned the tiles, and he had decided the same thing.

He was finishing Cookie's last buckle when Peter and Angie came through the hatch. Cookie had been cooperative about it, which meant the situation had reached her in a way most things didn't. He clipped the final strap and patted her shoulder.

"How is it?"

"I've been in worse," Cookie said, examining the ceiling. "Not recently. But in principle."

Sam and Sue came through behind the McDonnells. Li watched Peter and Angie for a moment longer than he needed to. They were not fighting. They were not carefully not-fighting, which had been the version he had watched for six months. They were just two people walking into a room together, which from them was practically a miracle.

He went back to his buckles.

Sam handed Peter the countdown checklist without slowing down. "Glad you could join us," he said, with the smile he reserved for things he actually meant.

Peter did not look at the checklist. "You two were in on the Wadi job?"

Everyone already strapped in stopped pretending to check their buckles.

Sue answered first. "We were. It's the first time this crew has been united on anything in six months. Every one of us did it, and not a damn one of us is sorry."

"You basically created a five-point earthquake under those people," Peter said.

"We don't think anyone was hurt," said Sam. "They've got a hundred acres of environmentals to rely on."

"It's what they wanted all along. Going natural." Angie shrugged. "We just helped them out."

Li watched Peter look at each of them in turn. Peter quiet meant Peter serious, and Li had learned to read that by now. The Ranchers had killed their captain and nearly gotten away with it. The crew had answered with deep-mining percussion charges and a geology lesson. Someone Earthside was going to have opinions about all of it, very loudly and for a very long time, and everyone involved was on this ship.

He had been thinking the same things, and he was still not sorry, which told him something about the last six months.

"What's done is done," Peter said finally. "And this junker doesn't have a brig." He exhaled. "Let's go home."

The team spread out for last-minute checks. Li got himself into his bed and worked on his own straps. Across the cargo space, Angie tied Peter into his bed and kissed him on the forehead before taking the one next to him. Li found the ceiling suddenly interesting. Some things were not his to watch.

"You know," Angie's voice carried over, "we mostly did it for you. Everyone really thought you were dead there, for a while."

"I know." A beat. "Somehow that makes it worse."

The engines came on under them, low and uneven, like something large clearing its throat for a long story.

Cookie turned her head toward Li without lifting it from the mattress. Her dark roots had grown in most of the way now — she had nearly given up on the blonde entirely, which Li took as either a reliable indicator of station morale or a practical decision about off-world hair care, and he had learned not to ask which.

"For the record," she said, "I have complete faith in your tile work."

"That is very reassuring."

"Complete faith in everyone's tile work." She appeared to consider this. "Mostly."

From across the room, Sam's voice rose over the engine noise. He was belted in next to Khalid, who was looking at a tablet and pointedly not at the ceiling.

"For the record," Sam announced to the room at large, "I'll be back."

A pause.

"Is that the Terminator?" someone asked incredulously.

"Old Earth meme," Cookie said. "Twentieth century. Before the wars. There were movies."

"Many movies," Sam confirmed. "We are the inheritors of a rich cultural tradition."

Li knew the reference. He also knew what Sam meant by it, which had nothing to do with the movies: that the Wadi was still out there, the Ranchers were still out there, Mizmo was still out there, and the long complicated wreck of the last six months was not finished just because they were leaving. They were going home. They were not done.

The engines got louder. Somewhere above them, through the hull, the station they had spent their lives keeping alive was going dark for the last time.

"So you're still kind of pissed about it?" Angie called over.

"Yep."

"Oh. Too bad."

A pause. Li could hear Peter adjusting his straps.

"Why?"

He did not hear Angie's answer over the engines.

The LMS-7 lifted.