Free Under Strange Suns by Ken Lizzi

she’s space-worthy.”
    “Fine, Captain. If you want me, I’m in. Ready to join the party, sign on the dotted line. Ready to launch today.”
    “I think, Carson, you’re going to fit right in. Consider yourself hired.”
    Aidan smiled. The prospect of setting off into the unknown, away from the despair and chaos, pleased him. The possibility of dying out there didn’t greatly trouble him. He’d lived with the specter of death on his shoulder almost constantly over the last two years. He’d come to terms with the fact that his life span had an established termination date. It would happen when it happened. What buoyed him was the thought that it might happen out there, seeing something new.
    “Terrific, Captain. I’m ready to get to work immediately, go over the crew list and inventory the cargo manifest.” He was already considering his duties, assessing what gear he might need, wondering about living quarters. “Will I be assigned to the Yuschenkov A or B ?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Which of the pair will I be traveling in? With you, or in the other half of the pair?”
    “What pair? The Yuschenkov is flying solo.”
    * * *
    Aidan Carson hadn’t blinked when she dropped her standard interview bombshell on him. Merely raised an eyebrow. Brooklynn liked that. She liked the poise and control he exhibited, even that hint of humor beneath. And he wasn’t bad looking either. Though she hadn’t had time for that sort of thinking over the last couple of years, and it probably wasn’t time to indulge in it now.
    She glanced about her cramped office, realizing this was one of the last times she’d ever see it. She felt no remorse or nostalgia on that account. The next step in her plans impended, after two years of hustling, calling in favors, tracking down friends of friends and the contacts of friends of friends. It hadn’t been easy. Commerce limped along in the aftermath of DC, even as the economy continued to shrink in the chaos of war and political uncertainty and large scale off-planet emigration. Still, investors and entrepreneurs remained. People unwilling to leave Earth: the optimists; speculators in conflict; eccentrics; the blinkered; the set-in-their-ways. Most had turned her down flat, the disappointing culmination of weeks or months of intermittent communication and uncertain or even hazardous travel through the disintegrating international aviation system. But a few she’d convinced to back her long-shot venture, pointing to some spectacular payoffs from other prospecting expeditions.
    In funds, she had turned to buying a ship and hiring a crew, the former proving a simpler matter than the latter. There was no shortage of out-of-work spacers, but most of them preferred the certainty of a two-way trip. As soon as Brooklynn told the candidates they’d be flying without a pair, nine out of ten said “thank you very much” and walked out of the office. And she didn’t blame them. What she proposed was a long-shot. One from which none of them might return.
    Brooklynn looked at the photograph of the Eureka II . Would she ever see it again?
    “I’m coming, Uncle Brennan. I hope.”

Chapter 5
    A IDAN WAS BACK AT THE SPACEPORT a week later, this time tightly belted into a g-force reduction couch in the passenger compartment of a Wyvern space capsule. Captain Brooklynn Vance was strapped into the couch next to him. The other four couches were all occupied but Aidan didn’t know the occupants, just other passengers ready for departure to Cayman Station. His gear, what little he was bringing, was stowed in the cargo compartment. It was cheaper to launch cargo into orbit from the rail-gun systems so the capsule possessed only minimal storage capacity. Besides, Captain Vance told him most of what he would need could be purchased cheaply aboard Cayman Station.
    He wasn’t terribly nervous. He’d been up several times over the last couple of years. But the thought of that enormous bomb strapped to his butt