Chapter 1

1

Static filled the communication line.

It was over the Zvezda compartment’s squawk box, from the old communication set up with Ground Control. It hadn’t been severed yet, not until the old wires were capped off. For now, the old speakerslet him keep an ear out for any new orders, without a piece of foam rubber wedged in his ear.

John sighed and put down his tablet. It was standard to lose the ability to talk to anyone at Mission Control due to orbital mechanics and out of date satellite relays, but he was still required to go to Harmony and confirm the loss of signal.

The plain off-white storage cabinets stared at him. After nine months on the Space Station, John still loved his job, though this meticulous check of every little fuck-up drove him up the proverbial wall. When he was a little kid on Earth, and wanted nothing more than to be an astronaut, nobody bothered to tell him about the tedious bits. Once he was back on the ground, he’d have a long talk with his mom about it.

A soft push against the cabinets got him floating through the crowded science section. As he approachedthe passageway into the Zarya, John grinned and rolled right through the entry. That was so much fun. Weightlessness was one perk of the Station that just couldn’t be beat. Luck was with him, he noticed ashe straightened out of the roll. No one was looking into the Zvezda. Such a childish impulse shouldn’t be witnessed by the crew he commanded.

John hit the T intersection and turned down the Unity module. Despite eight years of upgrades and a serious effort to declutter, Unity was still pretty cramped with the bits and bobs of science and John swallowed down the uncomfortable sensation of the walls being too close. It was a terrible issue, an astronaut with claustrophobia. People had asked him for years why he wanted to serve on the Station if he couldn’t stand the enclosed space, but it wasn’t so bad now. When the upgrades first started, two people had a hell of a time being in one passageway.

One thing he was absolutely grateful for, one that he’d have to mention when he got back dirt side, was the reroute of the communications to the Harmony hub. And the change to Columbus as the official crew quarters. Well, he was grateful for a lot of the modifications, including the ones his crew was assigned to carry out.

Saito was the first crewmate he came across on his way through Destiny and he patted the small man on theshoulder as he passed. Their agricultural expert had his nose stuck in some bin on the racks, so Saito didn’t do more than flap a hand at him as John passed, avoiding Saito’s careless hand with a quick dodge to starboard. John chuckled. That man was very diligent in his experiments, enough to forget the Station around him if the rest of the crew left Saito to his own devices.

When their small Japanese peer had walked into the first orientation class, John had been amazed. Saitowas the standard Japanese man in looks, a tawny gold complexion and sharp about the face, especially those tilted onyx eyes, and his accent was thick enough that it rivaled Turlach’s Irish brogue. But Saito didn’t have the fiery temper John had expected once he learned of Saito’s samurai ancestors. Hewas calm, unfailingly polite, and lethal with his sarcasm. Saito didn’t need a sword when his words alone could make someone bleed.

Harmony opened up around him, the feel of the space bigger with all the essentials consolidated and streamlined into tablets, flat screens, and digital keyboards. It had a much sleeker feel, a huge improvement over the cramped hub he’d seen in the old 2016 pictures, ten years prior.

Turlach was perched midair in front of the communications console like some burly dwarf out of a fantasy book. Nobody knew it to look at the man, but their plucky Irishman, one of the crew trained by the European Space Agency, had the most ridiculous, curly cinnamon brown hair when it was allowed to grow out of the severe crew cut Turlach favored.

“What’s the good word, ‘Lach?” John asked as he came up to Turlach’s shoulder. “There was static over the line in Zvezda.”

“Aye, there was.” Turlach pointed up to one of the screens attached to the ceiling. “It’s strange, I grant, but I think a relay station on the ground went dark. We’ll have to wait for the next station tocome in range before we can chatter at Control again.”

That brogue was wild. John grinned to hear its burr. “Anything else I should know about?”

“No, but someone’s snapping pictures,” Turlach said as he scowled. “Find out who it is, so I can embarrass the hell out of them later.”

John scrunched up his face. He didn’t see Saito with a camera, and he looked to the port side, into the Kibo where he was pretty sure Jason and Eli were supposed to be. Both the men were there, just as absorbed in what they were doing as Saito was. Yakecen was supposed to be in the Soyuz attached to Zvezda, running system checks as was scheduled, but he was probably daydreaming. Of them all, Yakecen was the one who got the most homesick. John understood it was a spiritual thing, a lost direct connection to the Earth, but they all knew what they signed up for.