“Sveta? You need to wake up…please,” a voice said, wrenching her out of sleep.
Sveta clung to the blankets, turned over and buried her face deeper into the pillow. She knew it wasn’t time. Her shift wouldn’t start for another few hours, and the only thing she refused to share with anyone—even the Party—was sleep. But the voice persisted, hands nudged her awake, pulling her into an upright position.
“No, Tolya—I’m not in the mood,” she groaned, fighting him off.
“Sveta, I know it’s early…in fact, it’s only halfway through the first shift. But you need to get dressed, come to the docks. Quickly.”
“By Lenin’s beard,” she said, shoving him angrily. “I don’t care what they broke, or what I didn’t log properly, or who’s too sick to work.”
“It’s the shuttle,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “It just came back.”
Sveta snapped awake, her eyes fixing sharply on his face, the two-day stubble.
“The Poltava? But it’s not—I mean, it shouldn’t be back this week.”
He nodded, wrapping a blanket over her shoulders so he wouldn’t have to avert his eyes. Not that he hadn’t seen her this way before, but at the moment, it seemed wrong to tell her something like this…like this.
“What’s wrong with them?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer, insisted, “Tolya?”
“Sveta, take a deep breath. This won’t be easy, but I had to tell you first. Before the others know what we know,” he said, taking her hand.
That’s when she noticed the blood on his knuckles, across his arm, over his vest. There were even flecks in his hair, probably from a hand that reached straight for his head, snatching it in horror. That’s when she knew: they were dead, every last one of them.
“You can’t be serious…they’re gone? Are they still there—on the ship? Or did someone—”
“They’re there…I mean, I found most of them,” he said, choking it down. “It’s brutal, Sveta. Someone…I don’t know who or why, but they slaughtered them. All over the ship. In every room, the cockpit, the living quarters, the galley, even the cargo hold. They’re all gone, Sveta. And Grisha—”
“Grisha was there?” she gasped, almost toppling out of bed. “Oh Tolya, not Grisha! Mother of God!”
Normally Tolya would have flinched at the phrase, told her to be careful, since they were always listening. He remembered the old posters from his childhood, with a smiling cosmonaut skipping over the Earth, bearing the legend, “there’s no God in space!” None of them believed in God, naturally, though they felt the presence of the Devil all around them. Some of them secretly wore the cross under layers of underclothes and radiation-proof flight jackets.
“I know, he shouldn’t have been there, it wasn’t his shift. A routine mission to Ganymede, to update surveys, photograph sulci, we’ve done it a dozen times. There was no need for his talents, I can’t explain—”
“Does Zoya know?”
He shook his head emphatically.
“Who else does?”
“Just me and Boris. We logged the Poltava coming in erratically. Ignored all our hails, so we brought it in ourselves. Not a sign on the hull, no damage, no distress.”
“Was there any sign of entry? The logs?”
“Nothing, no sign, no breach,” he said, miserably. “We didn’t look thoroughly, mind, but everything looks precisely in order. Nothing stolen, nothing amiss. Just the bodies.
“Wait—you think he did it? That Grisha could have…but that’s impossible!”
“Don’t you think I know? But what else…?”
“But that’s what everyone will think, they’ll start pointing fingers,” she said, vacantly. “But we’re not capable of that, are we? I mean, it’s not possible…not even for him. Not for any of us.”
Tolya gave a shell-shocked nod. Of course she was right, they weren’t capable of mindless, bloody violence. Each one of them had been bred, conditioned, trained, and monitored throughout the entire lives to be candidates for colonization. They had passed all the tests. No signs of anger or violence; incapable of avarice or betraying the State. They worked in a placid, communal spirit, ready for whatever adversity threw in their path. And so far they had faced critical malfunctions, loss of pressure, petty squabbles, and even a few deaths—all of them accidental—without an appreciable loss of spirit. They were pioneers of a cosmic kolkhoz, armed with the People’s support and the Party’s authority, and would strike a decisive blow to imperialist hopes in deepest space.
“That’s why I came. If it is him, we’ll all bear the blame. They’ll cut us off.”
“How bad is it?” she asked. “Can we do it alone?”
He made a wincing face, haunted by the memory; there was so much blood.
“Then we’ll need help,” she said, dressing quickly, fastening the straps helter-skelter. “Run and fetch Boris. And Zoya. We can trust Zoya.”
“Zoya? But she’ll see…he’s still in there!” he protested.
“Then keep her away from that room. She’ll understand. Besides, she might need it…to say good-bye.”
“I knew it was a bad sign, their going off together. He gave me extra rations to leave them alone, and I was greedy, I should have known. Is that why the Party sent us to the Jovian moons, to make love?”
“They were bored, just messing around,” she said, fastening her boots. “It’s hardly Anna Karenina, no one’s throwing themselves out of air locks. We left such bourgeois values behind us.”
“And brought Crime and Punishment instead?” he countered. “No, I’ve seen things…little things, the hand-holding, the whispers, the scrawled blasphemies in the bathroom.”
“We only write Sashenka has a cute ass in ours,” she said, with a faint grin. “It’s just letting off a little steam. No harm in a curse—or a kiss. I’ve kissed plenty of people on the station.”
“Kissing, sex, who hasn’t?” he nodded. “But what if someone wanted more? Exclusive partners, forbidden goods, a private room? What if that person was Grisha?”
“You fool, that’s what they want us to think! They want us to betray the Motherland!” she snapped. “The whole thing reeks of pirates. They’ve never been able to come this far, but with new technology, or stolen technology? Funded by the Americans, no doubt.”
“Look, just come down and see for yourself. I don’t know…it didn’t look like pirates.”
“Fine, I’m ready,” she said, pushing him out of the room. “You and Boris get the supplies. I’m going to wake up Zoya; she’ll be okay if we go down together.”
The door beeped shut behind them. He just stood there until she gave him a meaningful look—half threat, half enticement. It seemed to awake something deep inside him; he pressed her hand before retreating down the hallway. Only when he disappeared did it hit her, the sheer enormity of what awaited her in the docks. They were some of her closest comrades, people she had grown up with, a united cohort of future colonists. Grisha she had known since Unit 3, when he completed his exam in five minutes and only pretended to be working until everyone else finished (a full half-hour later). He did everything so effortlessly, yet that only seemed to increase his self-doubt and paranoia. I’m not that smart, really, he once confided in her. I just like to solve puzzles, and the closer you look at things, the more you see the pieces. But it’s not genius or real smarts, like they say. I could even teach you to do it. But try as he might, she never could.
She entered the code to Zoya’s room and found her wide-awake, sitting cross-legged in bed staring at the wall above her roommate’s bed. Her blanket was smothered against her like a living person. Sveta stepped inside and waited for the door to beep closed. Once it did, she knelt beside her and took her hand, leaning against her shoulder.
“You know, don’t you?”
“I dreamed it, yes. But it was too real to be a dream.”
“One of your visions?”
“I heard him cry out…I saw him fight for his life.”
“Did you see anything else? Who attacked him?”
“No…but I could taste his fear. He was terrified, Sveta,” she said, clutching her arm. “Someone killed them in there. I know it wasn’t him…you have to believe me, I saw it all.”
Yes, it was her gift. They all had an ability beyond their dogged faith in the system. Zoya had telekinesis, more pronounced once she came of age, with visions that she could make visible to those in the room. Grisha never slept and remained preternaturally sharp, besides his ability to solve puzzles. Tolya could withstand extremes of hot or cold for hours at a time, though they once pushed him too far and he endured second-degree burns that would have incinerated a lesser man. And she…well, everyone knew what she did, and they didn’t hold it against her. None of them chose their gifts, only their selfless duty to the cause.
“Zoya, you have to come with me…we have to clean the shuttle. Remove every trace. We can’t let them think it was him.”
“Why should it be him?” she said, wide-eyed. “There were others on the shuttle! It could have been any of them. Or someone else.”
“I know, but it doesn’t matter now. Someone will squeal—they’ll implicate the entire cadre. Once the Interstellar People’s Congress hears about it—”
“The lunar gulag,” Zoya whispered.
“It’s our only chance.”
Zoya nodded silently, looking like a ghost in the blue slumber lights. She had begun to grow her hair out, longer than the mandated shoulder-length, much longer than Sveta’s. She knew Grisha liked to play with it, even braid it on occasion (his handiwork still remained). And though any kind of makeup was contraband, her eyes seemed darker, the lashes fuller, like one of the svelte models from a travel brochure (Visit exotic New Baku in the shadow of Olympus Mons!). Sveta helped her dress, careful not to turn on any lights that would alert her roommate away on first-shift duties. They quickly made their way to an elevator which descended to the very depths of the station. As the doors hissed open, they saw the ship against the cold, sterile lights of the hangar. Just as he said, it looked pristine, unblemished. The windows reflected the walls and ladders of the dock without comment, like a pupil craftily dodging their teachers’ interrogation.
Zoya clenched her hand, stopped dead. She seemed on the verge of hyperventilating.
“I can’t…” she whispered.
“I know. I probably can’t do it, either. That’s why I was relying on you. But whatever we see in there, it doesn’t change things. He’s still Grisha, he’s still with us. They can’t take him away.”
She nodded, still struggling for breath. Sveta gave her a moment to recover, then nudged her encouragingly. Zoya nodded again, more defiantly now. Hand-in-hand, they lowered the ramp and entered the hold. The smell hit them at once: the acrid stench of blood blowing through the reclamation system. They didn’t see it at once, but Sveta soon found a boot, bloodied, hidden behind a box. The other boot was still attached to its victim, tucked away in a corner, his head bashed in from a metal bar (which was conveniently tucked under his arm). Evidently the killer had dragged the body out of sight and then lost interest.
“Oh, it’s Dimya,” Zoya gasped.
They backed up, almost raced out of the room into the narrow corridor leading to the heart of the shuttle. In the make-shift lounge, someone had been strangled; the wire was still wound tightly around a woman’s neck. Sveta looked closer, almost unable to recognize Irina through the bloodshot eyes and waxen expression. She had clawed the small couch to pieces trying to break free, reducing her nails to jagged shreds. Zoya covered her mouth and wept, but Sveta felt nothing. Surprise, certainly, and a slight disgust, but only for the task at hand. Irina wasn’t the smallest woman, and would be hard to drag out. She also remembered a comment Irina made to her a few weeks ago, when she misplaced some form or other: you smell like shit, you know that?
“Sveta, who would do this? Why all of them?” Zoya whimpered.
“I don’t know…look around, see if you can find anything. A clue. Something,” she said, picking through the debris on a table.
Some discarded food packs. A few scientific journals. Someone’s dog-eared copy of The History of the Communist Party. But nothing of interest, nothing incriminating.
“Everything looks fresh, like they were just here,” Zoya said, white-faced. “Do you think…the killer might still be aboard?”
“No, Tolya said he found all the bodies, even…” she trailed off.
“But what if someone else…like you said, some capitalist swine? Or a stowaway from the station?”
“Yes, we should be careful. Maybe wait for Tolya and Boris. They’ll be along soon.”
While they waited, Sveta viewed the logs, the crews’ individual files, anything her Level-2 security could access. She didn’t find much, as most of it was locked and several video feeds were missing (deleted?). However, she did run across a transcript of a conversation recorded only three days ago, in this very room, between two people who sounded like Anna and Yuri:
Yuri: I don’t know, I don’t feel the same way anymore…it just passed like a summer storm. When I woke up this morning, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, ‘you daft bastard, what have you done?’
Anna: Oh, Yurka, it’s too late for doubts! We’re here. We’ve gone too far. Whatever you felt, you can feel again. It’s just fear; you’ve never done anything like this before.
Yuri: And you have?
Anna: No…but I’m curious. We all felt the same way. We wouldn’t take a step like this lightly.
Yuri: I’ve been so full of it for weeks now, just the thought of it. It all seemed so easy, like no one could stop us. But now…it just doesn’t seem possible. It would be nothing if it was just the two of us, but what about them? Are they with us?
Anna: I don’t know, you spoke to Dimya this morning. What did he tell you?
Yuri: Just that he feels the same.
Anna: Has he told anyone else?
Yuri: I don’t think so. He’s pretty upset.
Anna: Then we’ll have to make sure. Invite him to your quarters, we’ll have a chat. Just the three of us.
And there the transcription ended. It said nothing, but awakened all of her darkest fears. She knew exactly why they were here, why the desire had seized them so quickly and passed. That’s how it always worked. She had learned that the hard way so many times, watched so many lives ruined when they got too close. She collapsed against the chair, slipping to her knees until Zoya rushed up to support her.
“I’m right here, dearest, I’m with you. And don’t worry: we’ll find them, they can’t hide forever,” she said, cradling her head.
“You don’t understand…Zoya, I did this! I think it was me. This mission, the reason they came.”
“You sent them to Ganymede?” she said, with a sympathetic laugh. “But Sveta, all of us go there. It’s the most routine mission in the books.”
“Look at everyone who died here: Anna, Yuri, Dimya, Irina, Aram, Vanya, Grisha…they’re all on my shift. We’ve shared gloves and helmets,” she said, almost panicked.
“Yes, so? We all work together eventually. I’ve worked with them, too.”
“You know what happens when people get too close to me! I try to suppress it, but like your dreams, they come unbidden. I don’t always know it’s there…I forget that people can smell it.”
“You mean your pheromones?” she said, suddenly aware of the brisk, dusky odor surrounding her comrade. “But it’s not like they came here to have sex with you.”
“It’s not just about sex, it’s everything; my moods, my thoughts, they seep into my skin, they stretch out if I’m not careful. They must have caught it…I contaminated the entire crew!”
Sveta told her the truth: that her thoughts these past few weeks had spread like a virus. She had recurring thoughts of abandoning their mission…just now and then, of releasing her air in the coldness of space. But more often, reaching out to American frequencies and offering up her secrets. She had read stories about cosmonauts who defected, how the Americans, the Canadians, even some of the African nations had taken them in, offered them in a new life in one of their orbiting colonies. A few of them, she had read, even found happiness back on Earth, becoming counterintelligence experts in Toronto or San Francisco.
“I’ve been studying English again in earnest, just in case,” she admitted, looking down. “I learned to renounce the Party in British and American English. I memorized every word of the Star-Spangled Banner. When I look back at Earth through the view screen, I don’t see Moscow or St. Petersburg, much less that hole-in-a-wall backwater I came from. I see America.”
“It’s no secret, we all want to escape at some point,” she said, stroking her hand. “But Sveta, that’s no escape; that’s prison. Even if they decided to trust you, could you be content with an endless existence of buying and selling—and being sold in return? Yes, freedom has a price, but think of your mind, your soul; that’s priceless.”
“I don’t know if I even have a soul. And my mind…I’d do anything to escape it.”
“Then what of the Motherland? Would you betray the People? Forget the Party, I’m talking about your friends and comrades, the next generations of Colonists. The future.”
“I can’t look you in the eyes and say it. But tomorrow, when I’m all alone on my shift…yes, I would,” she said, shaking her head. “I think about it every day, during work, during lunch breaks, over tea and supper. They were sitting only feet away. And Grisha…he must have inhaled it.”
“But he wasn’t acting any different, I would know,” Zoya insisted, dropping her hand. “And as for taking another shift, someone probably asked him to trade. He wouldn’t have left me, Sveta, no matter what pheromones he drank in. He loves me, he said so.”
“I know he does, dearest. The whole station knows. And people talk, to each other, to their friends and contacts back home. It’s dangerous, Zoya, not just to you, but to our mission. He had to protect you.”
Sveta could see that she hit a nerve. Grisha must have said something to her, about having to keep their affection under wraps, or that someone important had noticed. She had probably dismissed it as so much talk, though a part of her knew it was their only chance; if they remained here for much longer, one of them would inevitably disappear. And since he had a higher rank and was more critical to the mission…
They waited in silence for the men to return, but there was no sign of them. They couldn’t risk hailing them, since it might wake up someone else who would come to investigate. She checked the time: just 14:05. They still had three or so hours before the next shift. Time enough to make things halfway presentable and invent a more plausible excuse for murder.
“We may as well get started,” Sveta muttered, grimly. “Fetch a bucket of water from the galley. I’ll move Irina so we can get at the stains.”
Zoya gratefully left the room, leaving Sveta to pull, tug, and strain against Irina’s bulk. The woman was in excellent shape, adding pounds of muscle to an already imposing frame. She would be an absolute bear to move, just as she was intolerable to work with. They hardly ever spoke to one another, just the odd command or direction, not to mention their recent exchange. Strange to think she could have influenced her to do anything, and yet here she was, lying dead in the shuttle. Imagine if she had used her powers purposefully instead? Would she have been alive now? Could they have been friends?
Sveta frisked her gently, making sure she was free of contraband lest betrayal wound up in her epitaph. And there, tucked away in an inner pocket, was a small calculator, an antique model that engineers still preferred for on-the-spot calculations. She turned it on and noticed something strange: a series of numbers continued to scroll across the screen, with a delay of thirty seconds or so. She soon realized they were coordinates, not of their own position, but somewhere not far beyond…somewhere in the vicinity of Ganymede.
The Americans. Or whoever it was, waiting to collect them. She tucked it away just in case. After all, they were still on the shuttle, and if she could find some pretext to go after them…
Zoya returned with the bucket, the water sloshing clumsily behind her. She set it down, her face pained, on the verge of confession.
“What is it?”
“I found his room.”
“Oh, Zoya…”
“I didn’t go in. I need you to come with me.”
“I don’t think—”
“I have to see him,” Zoya said, lips quivering. “If I could touch him, I might be able to see…we might be able to know.”
“Why don’t we wait for Tolya—”
“Please. I need to go. I can’t go the rest of my life knowing I was here and didn’t see him. I can’t leave him alone.”
Sveta knew what she would find there. Not just a dead body or a murdered lover; she would see the pyre of their Party’s ideals. Two hundred years of class struggle removed with a single stroke. All because they had to share quarters and work space with a dissident who smelled like shit.
They made their way to the back of the ship, the reek of the bodies growing stronger. Sveta stopped at a door with a bloody handprint. Zoya nodded. As the door whisked open, they found the standard sleeping quarters with two bunks, a table, some cabinets, a few books, and a pair of boots. Beneath a sheet lay Grisha, his arms splayed out, his legs stiff and bent. Zoya began sobbing, falling into Sveta’s jacket. Again, Sveta surprised herself by feeling nothing more than token regret, like seeing a once-familiar name in the obituaries. At one time she felt closer to him than any other person on Earth. But now?
“Go to him, Zoya,” she urged. “See if he speaks to you.”
With a gasp of sorrow, she let go and collapsed beside the body, her arms greedily touching his arms and chest through the blanket. Then, as if willing herself to confront the unthinkable, she reached for the blanket and lifted it gently across his face.
She made a cry which ended in a fit of coughing. His face been battered into mush, eradicating his features, that familiar grin, those quizzical eyebrows. Sveta almost couldn’t tell if it was Grisha or someone else, man or woman, Russian or American. Who would have done this? Even if he resisted, or threatened to inform the Ministry, they were simpler ways to kill him. Unless they enjoyed it…
Through her sobs, Zoya sought out his hand and clenched it. Gradually, her breathing slowed, her tears vanished; she was somewhere else now, with Grisha. But how much could she see of the dead? She had never tried to speak with a corpse, to see whatever scenarios played out in its head before the lights went out.
The minutes stretched out endlessly in the abyss. Sveta remembered the last time she had been on this shuttle, the boredom, the staring into empty space. They had all been conditioned to stand it, to endure the utmost solitude for months and years on end. Their entire lives had been exactly that, solitude, deprivation. A small price to pay combat counter-revolutionary activity and petite bourgeois lies (all the propaganda said so).
“Sveta…I think I can see it! Here, take my hand—I can show you,” she said.
She took Zoya’s hand and the vision swept across her, like a long-lost memory from deepest childhood. They saw Grisha enter the ship, noted the surprise of the rest of the crew.
What are you doing here? Where’s Alexei?
Routine change of roster…he was needed to reconfigure the solar panels.
They accepted it without comment, nursing the darkest suspicions. Grisha wasn’t one of their cabal; he hadn’t been affected like the others. They watched him closely, hid all their movements, their subtle course alterations. Inevitably, he would catch wind of their intentions, and they would be forced to invite him along…or unceremoniously slit his throat.
“Can you see…was he a spy?” Sveta asked.
Zoya looked deeper, the visions changed; a scene much earlier, Grisha alone in his room, talking to the Ministry on a coded channel. They told him of his suspicions about Alexei, how he had compromised himself with letters that refuted the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. He would be dealt with. For now, Grisha would have to go in his place and root out the depth of the conspiracy. Their evidence pointed to a seemingly routine mission on the shuttle Poltava headed for a low Ganymede orbit two weeks from today. Would he accept the mission? There was an implicit threat in the words, as there always was; but it would have taken more than threats to convince him. They had something more, something that made him turn pale and agree without saying a word.
“No, I can’t believe it,” Zoya said, her voice wavering. “Sveta, he never told me. Why didn’t he tell me? Did he tell…did you know about this?”
“Of course not! And he lied to keep you safe, I’m sure of it. The less you knew…”
There was little more the vision could tell them. He watched the crew carefully, noted the signs, reported faithfully back to the Ministry. So that’s why they couldn’t go back: the Ministry already knew. They had to go boldly forward or else. Once they found proof of his crime, they met in secret, decided to kill him. Irina volunteered to do it; she hated him because he was friends with her. He never suspected it, as even on the eve of their betrayal, they were still his comrades. He was writing a letter when she killed him; a blow from behind, but only enough to wound. She wanted him to turn and see her, to beg for mercy and disavow the Party. He tried to crawl under the bed, but she smashed him again and again, the way she would have done to her if she had the chance…
Sveta imagined what happened next. Once her powers wore off, their natural fears and doubts—and loyalty to the Party—resurfaced. They became paranoid of one another, and spent their last days in isolated rooms, hatching schemes, deciding who could and couldn’t be trusted. Then at the last second, someone (probably Vanya, the do-gooder) locked himself in the cockpit and reversed course to the station: he would expose them all, worthless enemies of the State and pro-capitalist spies!
Zoya fell on Grisha’s corpse, her courage spent. Even Sveta felt the coldness creep into her spine and lodge near her heart, wishing she could have arrived a few days earlier and explained, apologized. It should have been her here, not them; she should have fled the station long ago, taking her perfumed poison as a peace offering for the Americans.
“Now what? We’re too late—the Ministry knows!” Zoya said.
“Yes, we’ll be recalled when they hear of this. We’ll have about a week to decide.”
“Decide…what?”
“Whether to be here to greet them.”
“You think they…you think I would choose a coward’s fate?” she said, wide-eyed.
“No, but I think most of them will beg and plead to the end, espousing their loyalty to the Party, and sell the rest of us to the devil,” Sveta said, with a dry laugh.
“I suppose you’ve already made your decision!” she snapped. “It’s not fair, you did this…why couldn’t you go yourself? Why did you have to infect them?” she said, sobbing. “He never trusted you, you know? He told me to stay away from you. That you were cold, a swine, that you envied our relationship. That would you have had him if you could!”
Zoya was right, of course; she wasn’t like the rest of them. Even as a child, she sometimes wondered if they could see the difference. She had no place here among them, great pioneers of the Soviet future. She was a virus, a parasite, and that’s how they looked at her, at best with pity, but other times, as someone expendable who smelled like shit.
“Zoya, it’s not too late,” she said, her voice like gravel. “I have the coordinates. We could go…just you and me. We have the shuttle.”
Zoya held her head and shook it violently, yet she didn’t say no, and something about her air seemed expectant. Like a child feigning a fit, her eyes looked up, querulously, at Sveta.
“We could ask them to go with us,” Sveta said, releasing her perfume, focusing on Zoya. “I’m sure of Boris, he’s weak that way. Tolya I don’t know. He might come if you let me talk to him first.”
“No, we don’t need them,” she said, after a pause. “But I can’t do it, Zoya. I can’t betray my people, my country. I don’t know how.”
“Are you asking me to help? Or telling me no?”
She clenched her teeth, but through them, in the thinnest voice, she answered, “help.”
“Then come and kiss me. I’ll give you strength. We’re sisters now…it’s what Grisha would have wanted.”
Her eyes filled with tears, Zoya nodded, leaned up to Sveta’s face, felt the blue eyes envelop her, the full lips become her own. Sveta kissed her deeply, giving her every thought and desire kindled over long nights and dead-end days. Zoya relaxed and felt it wash over her, no longer cognizant of school years crammed with Marxism-Leninism, or the joy of her first spacewalk, looking out over the Earth, and seeing all Soviet Russia gleam like a marble beneath her feet.
Sveta pulled away, stroking her cheek. This lovely young girl had become a woman in the sterile corridors where time never passed. She deserved better than this penitentiary in space, where her youth and dreams would fade, and more than Grisha would desert her.
“He asked me to go with him once. To leave this place,” Zoya said, in a husky breath. “And I did. I wanted to go.”
“But you couldn’t abandon your mission. I understand,” Sveta nodded.
“No, that’s just talk, the things we say to punish ourselves. I’m done with that now. Even then, I think it was finished.”
“So what stopped you?”
“You did. I couldn’t leave you behind. And that’s what I told him. I wouldn’t leave here without you.”
Sveta didn’t know whether it was true or it was her influence talking, but she liked the story. She would ask her again once they reached orbit around Ganymede, especially after she told her the truth about her and Grisha. That was a much sadder story, but one that belonged to another life, on a world so distant she had already forgotten its name.
