I know a nanomask when I see one, especially when the wearer’s making eye contact. There’s something about how the mask melds around the lids—it’s just a little bit stiff, but you have to really know what you’re looking for to tell. But people in nanomasks are trouble, and I never want any of that.

I’m not here for eye-contact games—the beat’s pounding as hard as my heart and the DJ is here from Support Station Ganymede. I came alone, and I’m leaving that way, too.

You’d think grounders would stay away. The Canteen’s in the hub, a matte-black-painted dump tucked in between the highball courts and the zerosilk classrooms. It’s the hot spot for the Princess’s working stiffs—the hospitality personnel, the busboys, the strippers, the chambermaids. But you can’t be rude to a tourist, even though you’re in your own zone. They’ll complain to a manager in a heartbeat, and then you’re kicked off the boat.

They hang around, even if they can’t dance. But this grounder is good. Too good, if you ask me. She’s even dressed like a spacer—well. If you call morphostretch short-shorts and a sixpack-baring camisole dressed. She’s a head and a half shorter than everyone else. But she and her nanomask are not my business.

Then she rolls her head, her eyes closed and her chin thrust out, and I’ve seen that move on holo a hundred times—then she jerks her head, left, right, and the movement ripples from head to toe. Her hair shakes down her back and I go tight across the shoulders as all the pieces tumble together.

Holy shit. I’m wrong. I have to be wrong.

Ansa Veda makes eyes at me again, and this time I hold her gaze. Fuck it. Why not? Not like anyone would believe me. Not like there’s anyone to tell.

I face her. Dance with her. And then she’s a mirror, her limbs a reflection of my moves. My best moves, but can I mind when it’s her? I’m in good shape, even if I can’t ever get back that heart mass after living in space. But she dances me into a trembling, exhausted heap, and I bow my head before pointing to the bar and leaving her victorious.

I drink water, squeezing the bulb as the cold, clean liquid chills my throat and pools in my belly. Sweat’s beading all over my skin. I danced my ass off. I danced with the best singer in the solar system. Hell of a night. And then she’s there. She gets a water like me. We drink in silence. She gives the bulb back and shouts over the music.

“You’re Reese, right? You sail the Red Wind?”

Oh. I know what she’s going to say. I know what she wants but I blot sweat off my face and reply, “She’s mine, yeah.”

She sighs. She smiles. “I want you to take me out to see the Siphorophenes.”

Of course she does.

Shit.

“Reese, wait.”

I’m a good twenty meters out of the Canteen when I realize I’d just turned around and left. Pure panic. No excuse, though. Can’t be rude to a tourist. Especially not this one.

So I stop, all two point two meters of me, and I haul my mass around to face her. “I’m an excursion pilot.” I smile. Real pretty, too—when you work for Princess Cruises, your deductible on cosmetic alteration is trivial. “I take reservations for day trips. You want to see Saturn’s moons up close? I’m your woman. But I don’t go to the Outers anymore, and I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t, either.”

“They say that you have the record.” And that’s Ansa Veda getting all fluttery at me. At me. “One hundred and seventeen successful sightings. You are the best in the solar system. I came here for you.”

My heart can’t take this. “I got lucky. And I’m not pushing it anymore. You know what’s in the Outers?”

She huffs. “I know what you’re going to say.”

I say it anyway. “Pirates. The Red Wind is a dragonfly skimmer. She doesn’t even have a popgun, and I am not going to be the woman who lost Ansa Veda to pirates.”

Her eyes bug out at those last words.

“Nanomask.” I draw a circle around my face with one finger. “Your choreography is distinctive. And you are not getting anywhere near the Outers without a full escort.”

“But the Siphorophenes won’t come to an armed ship—”

“I know they won’t,” I say. “But I’m not going to risk becoming the most hated woman in the solar system because I lost you.”

“I’m paying fifty million credits—”

“It’s not enough—”

“A day.”

The math smacks me right upside the head. I wheeze a little. “Ms. Veda—”

“If you can’t take me, I understand.”

Oh thank fuck. “Okay.”

“I’ll just ask another pilot.” She flicks her wrists and floats away.

“Hold on.” I launch myself toward her. “You can’t do that. You’ll be even less safe with someone else.”

One shoulder rises, perfectly nonchalant. “I’ll have to settle, though. Since you won’t do it.”

Fuck. She’s going out there, no matter how many pirates there are. Nobody else can do this the way I can—and from the look on her nanomasked face, she knows it.

“Fine,” I say. “But we do this quiet. I’ll log a full ring tour with all the extras—that should give us enough time to slip. It’ll be a day to lay in supplies. Okay?”

She nods, excitement rising. We’re really doing this.

I feel sick.

It takes a week to slip just a short hop out to Uranus’s orbital path. I’m working on a hunch.

Here’s how I get a hunch: I cut the power to everything but life support. I make it quiet. All the lights off. All the circulation off (and a little countdown that will beep when the CO₂ starts to push it, but it never takes that long). I unstrap from my flight couch and float. I let my thoughts drift without chasing them or trying to make them stop—I’m a chatterbox inside my own head, but I can tune it out.

And then I wait for a sign.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s what happens. I shut up and stay still, and then a little wiggle of curiosity, something at the edge of my vision—hell, I followed a tingle on my scalp once. I get the sign and I slip. No second-guessing—I just go. It’s weird, but it works.

When the soft hums and whispers of the ship come back to life, Ansa floats over to the cockpit to check on me.

I still can’t believe how much she looks like herself. On the holo, I mean. But that first time I kind of stared, and she let me do it without seeming at all bothered. I can’t stop looking at her. She’s real. I’m flying to Neptune with a freaking pop star in my cabin, and she’s a—

She’s a pain in my ass. She wrinkles her nose at printed food—and fuck that, because I bought the best reconstitute you can get and the texture replication is supposed to be really good. She takes too long in the shower—I know the water recycles but that’s not the point. And she asks a lot of questions. Maybe just making conversation, but I’m not really a conversation person.

But she tries to start one anyway. “Wow. I’ve seen roads I thought were full of nothing, but space is so…empty.”

“Welcome to the Outers,” I said.

She rubs her bare arms, staring at the black beyond the windows. “I don’t know if I’d want to be out here all alone. Isn’t it scary?”

“No.” I continue my course calculations. “The lonely is the point.”

She wrinkles her nose at me, and it’s become just something she does instead of a trademark expression. “So. Still with the Stoic Solo Spacer thing?”

I humph. It’s a laugh. “Always.”

“It’s not healthy, you know. You need people. We’re social mammals. Isolation hurts.”

“I’m with people all the time when I’m onboard, with passengers.”

“But are any of those people your friends?”

The Prescod-Weinstein interface is finished. I’m just waiting for her to stop conversing.

“I work a lot.”

“And you settled for day trips to Saturn.”

“Saturn’s pretty.”

“Did something happen the last time you were out here?”

I gesture at her to net in for the slip. “Don’t know what you mean.”

She sighs, a big, gusty huff. “Did you see the Siphorophenes?”

“Yes.”

She buckles herself in as fast as I could have done it. “Did they do anything different?”

I recheck Navcomm. “Remind me to take a look at the distiller once we’re out of slip. You’re still not nauseous on the drop?”

She knows what I’m doing. She shakes her head anyway. “It’s fun.”

“It’s fun. You’d make a good spacer if you cut your hair.”

And with that compliment, I tap the ignition on the PW drive. We plummet through space so fast, the falling reflex flipping my stomach over makes me breathe a little more carefully.

Only it’s an illusion. We’re cheating relativity—just sneaking past it real quick with math I don’t understand any more than I can tell you how to perform microsurgery. I just fly the thing, and while my monkey brain fights terror at falling falling falling I have to get back to work.

It isn’t actually scaring me. I’m still driving the ship, doing everything by reflex while the instincts sit in a corner and stay out of the way.

Ansa knows the drill. She doesn’t say a word or fidget or do anything distracting. But I am distracted, and so I pop out of the slip.

“I have to try again,” I said. “Just real fast.”

I barely even close my eyes before I can feel it—the hunch is that way.

Ansa unbuckles from the jump net. “We’re close.” Her voice is excited. She’s trying to look through the windows without crowding me.

“It’ll be a while.” I reorient my view of Navcomm. “I might be wrong.”

“I don’t believe that,” she says, and I don’t argue. I’m just the driver, and the sooner I get her to the Sirens, the sooner we can return to the cruise ship. But then I feel it. I alter my course, nudging just a little bit thataway, and beside me Ansa tenses.

“There,” she says. She points straight out the window. “What is that?”

I can’t help it. I cock my head at her. “We’re too far away to see anything.”

“There’s a presence…” she says. “I can’t see it. I just know.”

Back in the peaceful days when Siren sighting looked like it was going to become a fashion, I tried to ask other pilots if they’d ever noticed anything strange. One person looked me right in the eye and said no, but other than that, no one knew what I was talking about.

But Ansa is pointing straight at my hunch. I cut the engines and tap alerts to visual only. We get closer and it’s making my skin shiver and Ansa grabs for my shoulder with a little gasp, and I let her because I’m sucking up a breath of my own.

They’re coming.

Everyone has seen images of the Siphorophenes. They’re all over the holoshows in clubs, a symbol of expanding cosmic consciousness. Cults claim to have communications with these benevolent spacefaring wanderers who came to the Solar System to midwife us into a new evolutionary paradigm.

Whatever. Grounders don’t know how trite they sound when they’re talking about Sirens. But I do. I can’t describe the Siphorophenes without sounding like a complete fool.

I have seen Sirens drifting through the black. The biggest are easily two kilometers long, the largest living creatures in the solar system. Their tentacles unfurl and sway, coil and contract, and I get lost in just watching their limbs move, the surface of their flesh mottled with shifting, gentle colors, spangled all over with phosphorescent points of light.

They make you feel so small, but the sight of them is awesome. People break down and weep in their presence. They are greater than us. They are beautiful, and otherworldly, and they look so delicate, even if they’re huge. And this time, one of them heads our way, limbs curling and fanning out like a tattered silken ballgown.

“Stay still,” I whisper. “They’re coming.”

It’s getting closer than I have ever seen a Siren come. The Red Wind is seven meters long, stem to stern. This Siren is easily a hundred. If they want to, they can destroy us with one swipe…but if I start the engine, it’ll retreat.

I don’t start the engine.

They come closer, and I feel its awareness. It knows we’re here. It fills the windows until all we can see are the lights glowing over its skin. If it attacks, we would go tumbling end over end, all our oxygen escaping from a hull breach. We are completely at its mercy.

I don’t move. Beside me, Ansa clutches my shoulder.

“What’s it doing?” she whispers, but fear makes her loud.

“Coming closer.”

“Does this happen all the time?”

“No,” I say. “This is the first time.”

“Then why aren’t you—”

“Feel it,” I say. “It’s not threatening us. The fear’s just a reflex. Forget it. We’re safe.”

The Siphorophene halts—and one of its limbs flows upward, headed right for us.

I don’t move. Ansa’s bruising me. We watch as the limb reaches for the Red Wind and gently rests on the window.

“Hello,” I say, because it’s polite.

The Siren answers with a single note, and every hair on my body stands on end. Then another voice joins, and another, and I can’t get a breath past the ache in my throat. The Siphorophene blurs, and I blink hard.

It sings. It sings for us.

I bite my lips. The sound swells around us. It makes my skin glow with warmth. It feels like love. It feels like joy.

I’m shaking when it stops.

Ansa strokes my shoulder and sings back, one lonely voice in reply to a chorus. Her voice rises on a liquid run and falls down to the basement of her range before soaring again, filling the dragonfly with pure power. She rubs the shaking knob of my shoulder as her voice trills high and sweet in answer.

And then she falls silent, and there’s nothing left but me sniveling, my chest hitching as I try to pull myself together.

But the Siren goes tense. It twists, lifting a delicate limb from the window and gathering themselves up—and then it’s fleeing away, moving faster than I have ever seen a Siren move. It tumbles in my stomach, and I slap the power back on.

Alarms start wailing. Navcomm shows ships. Three. No. More. Shit.

“Net up,” I say. “Pirates.”

I nose down and dive for it, fumbling on the PW interface. No time to math out a destination. I slap the override when the alert pops. I slap it again, screaming. I’m not netted—

I fumble my way into a straight-line course and grab the arms of the couch to keep from getting launched. I need a minute’s lag between me, the hot-green pirate vessel closest to me, and the fleeing Siphorophene before I can slip. Fifteen light-seconds of lag, any direction, it doesn’t matter. I just need to get us out of here.

“How did the pirates find us?”

“No idea.” I’ve secured the belt around my hips. It’s barely enough. It’s all I have time for. Navcomm reckons up the lag between me and the pirate. Five seconds.

I’ve got to go faster. It’ll take fuel, but when you’re slipping, you don’t burn nearly as much. I’ll slip for a minute, pop out, calculate the slip to Saturn, and get into military-controlled space as fast as possible.

Seven seconds’ lag. A hunch twitches my fingers over the controls and we veer in a second direction, twenty degrees off my original heading.

That hunch means that when the pirates pop out of slip, the dragonfly bounces off the displacement like a coracle on a wave, prompting a small yelp from Ansa and I don’t blame her because I’m too busy shouting, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

I grab the sticks and corner hard, diving out of the trap they would have caught me in if I hadn’t zagged on impulse. But we’ve gotta get out of here.

New course, and I’m so wound up I can’t really breathe right. How did they predict my heading and slip to exactly the right spot? And why aren’t they chasing me? I’m pulling away from them. Nine seconds of lag. I change course again, burning hard for Saturn and protected space.

Ten point six seconds. The hot-green ship blinks out. Slipped. We bob on its wake. I can twist course again, or I can let the computer slip us if I straight-line it, if I calculate right now. I’m already sliding my fingers over the display. No time to get cute. We’re at eleven seconds. Just a little more and we’re—

The dragonfly bucks like a spooked horse. The hot-green ship slips into space facing us, the guns are out, and that’s impossible. Even if the triangulation gang had reported Red Wind’s course, it should have taken twelve seconds for Hot Green to get the message.

They can’t do what they just did. There’s no way. But I can’t deny those guns pointed at us.

I turn my lights to Hazard/Distress, the closest thing I have to a surrender signal, and power down.

“So,” I say to Ansa. “Time for plan B.”

The dragonfly flinches as something hits the hull and jerks us sideways. Ansa shouts as it keeps moving.

I try to smile, but when I do it feels weird and wrong. “Does your travel policy include ransom insurance?”

“What? Yes. You want me to—”

“They can get a good sum for you,” I say. “If we’re stitched up by Uranian Anarchists, they’ll be decent.”

“And if we’re not?”

I can’t tell her that. “Let’s hope they’re the Anarchists.”

“We’ve got to do something.”

“I know.” I push myself out of the gel couch.

I open the cupboard with the food printer and put on the pressure pot. I’ve never been captured by pirates. I can’t buckle swashes worth a damn. But I bought real coffee beans, and maybe a little hospitality will be worth something.

The smell’s wafting through the air when they board us.

“We surrender,” I say, and I try not to piss myself when I see them. They have crude blue tattoos on their arms. They’re supposed to mean things—how many ships they’ve taken, how many times they’ve murdered, stuff like that. They’re mixed in with faded, better work—screaming eagles and skulls and roses and squadron marks from their former lives as mercenaries, stranded in space by a lack of war.

We didn’t get captured by Uranian Anarchists.

My throat hurts as I do my best to smile. “I’m Reese Taylor. My passenger is Ansa Veda. We’re both insured.”

My jaw hurts. My ribs hurt. My nose throbs, and I think it’s not bleeding anymore but I don’t want to push it.

We’re aboard the Starhawk. I saw the tags on the walls before they decided to discuss how my resistance pissed them off. Ansa screamed for me as they took me away, and she’s crying now that I’m back. It’s uncommonly kind of them to imprison us together.

Ansa launches herself toward me when they shove me into the hold, but she stops just short of touching me. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not okay.”

She lifts her hands to touch my face, and I twitch away. “Did they interrogate you?”

I grunt and wince. “No. They just beat me up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“S’alright. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Okay.” I test my mobility and hiss. Don’t breathe too deep, got it. I spin, slowly, carefully, and hurt my ribs again as I see it.

We’re in a cargo hold. There’s nothing in it but us. And that right there? That’s a hatch.

We’re in an airlock.

My stomach gets it loud and clear. If they decide we’re not worth it, we’re eating vacuum. And from the size of the hold, we’re still on the hot-green cruiser. It’s old. It doesn’t have the safety features that would prevent a cycle.

I glide to the door leading to the ship. Hope flares at the sight of a ten-digit codepad. How old is this thing? I peer at the buttons. Buttons, and the keys used the most often are worn. Four buttons.

“What are you doing?”

“I might have…listen. Don’t freak out. But they drank the coffee.”

“I know,” Ansa said.

“So, by my reckoning, our boarding party, which was near everyone on the cruiser—those five guys who got us? They’re going to be really sick soon. But that’s only five of them. The other one might come and get me for another shitkicking, or—how much is your insurance for?”

“Eight billion credits.”

I nod. My stomach unclenches a bit. “They probably don’t want to cycle you out if you’re worth eight billion in insurance.”

“Cycle me out?”

“This is an airlock.”

I regret it the moment I say it. She goes ashen, her warm golden color sick and gray. I understand. This is the kind of liminal space you don’t want to be in.

“But here’s the thing. That codepad? It’s likely it’s a four-digit number. I can probably spring us.”

“Probably?”

“Listen. I need you to not freak out. Do you have a pen?”

The buttons are worn pretty much equally. If I’m lucky, and it is a four-digit number, and each button is pressed once…

I jam my little finger up my nose. My eyes squeeze shut at the bright orange flare of pain. Warm wetness seeps out.

I write the possible key combinations on the wall in my blood. 2468. 4268. 4628. 4682. I keep going until I realize there are too many—I’ll have three tries at most. I can’t think about the numbers. I’ve got to think about people.

And people do what’s easy. 2468.

Pin incorrect.

Well, fuck. Okay. It’s a diamond. Clockwise? 2684.

Pin incorrect.

What will happen if I get my third attempt wrong? They might already know I’m trying to bust out of here. They might be watching us. I lift my head and look around for a lens, but that’s just anxiety.

“What happens if you run out of attempts?”

“One, nothing. Two, they come for us and I get to have another talk with the pirates. Three—”

“Maybe we should wait,” Ansa says. “Maybe we should…not make any trouble. Maybe we should—”

I know what she’s saying. I get it. But if we wait, we’re just as fucked. I touch my forehead, my heart, my left shoulder—

Oh.

2864.

The hold door chirps and Ansa squeaks. She hauls it open and we skim into the corridor, shutting the hold door behind us.

There’s not a lot of space on a cruiser. Not a lot of places to hide. I spot a knife in the galley, and I grab it and a wrench. I give the knife to Ansa, remembering she was in a holo where she dancefought on wires; that was choreographed, but it’s better than nothing. She grips it with determination.

The wrench isn’t the best weapon. But it settles my nerves into a different frequency of anxious howling, and we creep along. Nowhere to hide—

But that’s the server room. I suck up a breath and regret it. It’s got the same codepad as the cargo hold. Could they be foolish enough?

I punch in the numbers.

They are foolish enough. I’m so relieved it rushes through me, but I tug on Ansa’s shoulder and open the hatch.

A pirate pops out so fast I shriek. Ansa takes a swing at him and spins herself in a circle. He looks at her and laughs. I grab him by the neck, crank my arm back, and brain him with the wrench.

He shouts as the wrench connects, reaching for me as I try to hit him again. Ansa catches on, grabs his shoulder, and thrusts. The knife buries itself in his side.

He stops moving.

I think we just killed him. We’re killers. They put us in an airlock, though, and now that I’m safe from that room I am hot with a lust that begs for violence. They’re pirates. Not Uranian Anarchists. I get why the Anarchists do what they do, and I feel for them. These guys—no. They’re murderers. They routinely kill crews when looting a ship if they’re uninsured. They put us in a fucking airlock, and now it’s us or them.

I shove the pirate’s body back into the server room and hope the scrubbers take care of the floating blood before anyone notices. “Come on.”

It’s a tight squeeze, but there’s a computer, and the dead pirate’s still logged in. I hunt around for information. Course heading. My ship is connected to theirs, riding piggyback. We’re alone, the other ships that had helped pin us down gone elsewhere, a good twenty minutes of lag to the nearest ship, the Starkiller. Pirates, really.

The way I see it, we have a few choices. We could kill everyone on board and loot the ship. That’s what they would do. But I don’t want to look at the body in the room with us. I don’t want to kill anyone else if I don’t have to.

I want to get out of here. Just escape. If I sabotage this ship, I should be able to unhook the Red Wind and make a run for it. Twenty minutes’ lag is too far for them to catch us.

Ansa gasps and jumps backward, colliding with the body. “Reese. Look at this.”

I rise past the console and follow her pointing finger, and—

It’s a Siren. But it’s tiny, and it’s moving listlessly in the corner of a tank, a metal crown over the pendulous bulge at the top of its body and what is it doing here—

I shudder. I’m going to be sick.

I know what it’s doing here.

It twitches, and a chat message pings on the monitor next to it. “Coordinates in package,” it says.

Navigation orders. Curiosity seizes me. I open the packet from the Starkiller, and I blink.

The timestamp reads 23:18:41. Ship’s clock reads 23:18:47.

That can’t be right. It’s twenty minutes out.

The baby Siren twitches again. Another message pings. “Got that?”

23:18:51.

That’s impossible. I look at the Siren. Could it be—

I reach into the tank and test the crown. It slips off. The Siren wraps a limb around my wrist and I hear music that makes me want to gather the tiny creature in my arms and hold it and rock it and promise that it will never sing that song again.

“What’s it doing here?”

“I think they stole it,” I say. “We have to take it with us. Here. You hold it. I have to do something.”

Ansa holds out her hands and the Siren clings to her, and the look on her face when she hears its song—she holds the Siren to her chest, looking as forlorn and hurt as it feels inside me.

I go back to the main server station. I open the file navigator, call up the file structure, and delete the Navcomm system. And its backups. And its previous versions and registry entries, and then I rise and find their Prescod-Weinstein interface. The wrench takes care of that.

The next minute, we leave the server room and the smells in the halls match the miserable sounds coming from the pirates’ sleeping pods. Ansa wrinkles her nose.

“I expect they stole our reconstitute,” I say on the way to the galley. “Good thing I didn’t poison it. No more coffee for the rest of the trip, though.”

Ansa nods, petting the Siren.

Sure enough, the mealkit box is there. I wrap it in a hauling net and lead the way to the top hatch, where the Red Wind awaits.

They even stole the economical backup reconstitute. Ansa nets up while humming a lullaby to the Siren. I uncouple the Red Wind and thrust just enough to maneuver clear of the ship. I immediately start acceleration to give us fifteen seconds’ lag on the Starhawk and get the fuck out.

Ten light-seconds’ lag. I glance at the tiny Siphorophene in Ansa’s arms. Ansa’s singing lyrics now, a song her mother wrote and performed for her when she was still gestating.

“Is the little guy okay?”

Ansa answers in the voice we use on babies and pets. “Little guy’s name is Jodianthaladan. I don’t think it’s a he. But it doesn’t mind Jodi.”

I lift my hands from the display. “You can talk to it?”

“It’s not exactly talking? But yeah. I’m starting to understand. Where are we going?”

“Anywhere.” We’re moving away from the Starhawk, and I fucked with its brains enough that I’m not worried about it following us. But Jodi is perking up a bit, its colors shifting to match Ansa’s skin and morphostretch suit. That’s good, right?

Just one problem. “Ansa,” I say, carefully. “I’m not sure what to do with Jodi.”

She looks up at me with sparks in her eyes. “You saw what they were doing. Jodi was in that tank, same as the others—all the pirates have them.”

“Did…did Jodi tell you why?”

“The Siphorophenes are an ansible,” Ansa says. “The others—they’re called plyohs. The individuals, that is. The big collectives are just called Bodies. The plyohs have instant communication with the Body and other Sirens across billions of kilometers. They can communicate in slip. And the pirates murdered Jodi’s Body-collective and kidnapped them.”

It makes me breathe fast. It makes me want to hit something. “Fuck. Those bastarding monsters. How many?”

“Every ship in the fleet. One hundred eighty-four.”

“Okay. Then we need to get back to Saturn and report to Titan Station—”

“And then what stops us from doing the same thing to them?” Ansa asks.

“I know. But we can’t just let the others—You’re touching Jodi, you know how it felt in that tank. They all feel like that. We have to do something.”

We bob. Just a gentle little sway, but I twitch right out of the couch and stare at the ship on Navcomm.

“Company. Gotta go.”

I set the first course-swipe the PW interface will accept. Fuck displacement. We’re out of here.

“They followed us,” Ansa said.

“When we took Jodi and sabotaged the Starhawk’s ansible, they probably came to investigate. But we’re in slip. We’re okay.” I undo my net. “We’re in slip for the next hour. I took the first viable route going anywhere. Then we’ll set course for Saturn—”

“Reese,” Ansa says. “Take Jodi.”

I hold out my hand and the little guy scampers up my arm, music resonating between my ears and over my skin, and I can feel him. Wait. Not him. Jodianthaladan sings the correction into my scalp, and the knowledge is language and emotion and tastes that shiver along my skin. Ki is one of the seven genders of plyohs who reproduce via parthenogenesis and nurture the numerous young of the Body.

“I understand kir.”

“Yes. Now listen more.”

I pet the Siren, and it’s like touching clothes fresh out of a hot-air dryer. “What’s up, Jodi?”

Ki answers me. No. They answer me.

The captive Sirens can hear each other. They sing, desperately lonely for the Body, to touch, to hold and be we and not lost in alone, trapped in cold alone. One of them is free. Free. Free and going so far, and they yearn for Jodi to escape, but…

Every single one of them knows exactly where we are.

And they’re all coming closer.

“Oh, no.”

Ansa nods. “They’re all coming. We can’t defend ourselves. They’ll take Jodi back and kill us. Not even eight billion is worth leaving me alive to talk.”

“So we get to Saturn as fast as we can.”

“And they’ll shoot the pirates out of the sky. All of Jodi’s we will die.”

Jodi understands. They understand. They’re afraid. They’re alone. Their Body is gone, and they’ll be gone, too, and—they understand.

But I can’t.

Jodi caresses a limb over my face and sings. It’s the lullaby Ansa sang to kir, and ki’s hum slides along my scalp and I don’t know how to save the plyohs. They don’t know how to save themselves.

Jodi climbs up my neck to curl all kis limbs over my scalp. I hadn’t depilated in a few days. Jodi rubs my head and it’s the best scalp massage ever. It tickles Jodi. That’s why ki’s doing it.

The Sirens sing. We have to escape. If Jodi returns to a Body, that will be enough.

“But we can’t just go find an elder Siren,” Ansa says. “The pirates will, too, and they’ll do something piratey and horrible to them.”

The we falls silent. Jodi sings, alone. Alone. It takes a minute, but I understand.

“You can cut yourself off. You can disengage from the we. But if you do, then you’re abandoning them.”

Ansa floats closer. I take her hand and lay it over my ear. Jodi lets kis limbs descend over her fingers.

The others sing of alone, and freedom, and farewell. They sing love for Jodianthaladan. They sing goodbye.

Ansa weeps as Jodi, limbs violet-indigo with sadness, sings bravery, sacrifice. Jodi sings remembrance of the we, of fear of being I, of shame for being the only one to survive the pirates. Ansa’s shaking. I’m hugging my arms around my punch-bruised chest.

Forgiveness, the we sings back. Forgiveness and pride and love and anger at the pirates who destroyed their lives—and determination to save Jodi, the last of their Body. Jodi must survive. Jodi must sing of their we to the Siphorophenes and never forget.

Jodi sings. It’s the perfectly rendered sound of a human weeping.

And then the awareness of Jodi’s we blinks out, dark and abandoned and gone.

Jodi’s color started fading the moment ki cut kiself off from kis we. Jodi’s silent as ki clings to my scalp, but ki doesn’t tickle kiself on my stubble or react to Ansa’s petting, and I don’t have a clue where the fuck to go. We’re still in slip, and for all I know we’re gonna come out near Neptune and I don’t think I have the fuel and nothing matters anyway. It’s all futile. I’m so hollow, so lost—

“Jodi,” I say. “I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re bumming me out. Can you try talking?”

I, Jodi sings, and it’s so small, so defeated it hurts my throat. I. It hurts. There’s nothing to touch. No one to be. No we.

And I understand the pain means Jodi’s dying.

“Hey,” I say. “You can’t quit on us, buddy.”

I.

“I know. Can we help? Can I sing? Will that help? We have lots of music. Ansa can sing to you, she’s the best singer humanity has. Would you like that?”

Need we.

“Okay.” I pull us out of slip. “Here’s what I’m gonna do, buddy. I’m going to find another Body for you. Just…I’m gonna do my thing, okay?”

I go still. I go still and hollow and hopeless, but I need to work a hunch. For Jodi. There’s no time to waste. I’m thinking too much. I go still. Still. Just a breathing thing, open and listening and feeling and—

That way. Just a trickle. It’s enough.

“Hang on, buddy.” I let my intuition plot the course. I watch the math, my knee bouncing as it calculates, and the moment it’s done, I kick in the PW drive and we slip. “We’re on our way.”

Not that I need to say it, since we’re falling again. The sensation tightens my jaw. I breathe through it.

Ansa’s breathing, too, big belly breaths with her arms stretched out and her head thrown back. “How far?”

“A long way,” I admit. “Hours of slip.”

Ansa bites her lip. “Do you think Jodi has hours?”

“We have to. Jodi, hang on.”

Falling. Falling. Falling. Jodi sings of we, and it takes a few notes to realize ki’s not talking about kis we, the one we left behind. Jodi needs a we or ki won’t survive. Ki needs one now, because alone is every minor key I’ve ever heard. Alone is dark and cold and so much pain. Alone is dying.

“We can’t do this,” I said. “Can you find them again? Can you—”

Lost. lost and far away. No where. No we. Gone.

We can’t lose Jodi. We can’t. But ki needs a we and ki can’t re-touch the others and ki’s hurting so bad and getting so dark—

“Can we do it?” Ansa asks. “Can Reese and I be your we? Can we save you?”

Jodi sings of touch. Of knowing every memory from birth. Everything there, all of it shared, known, understood—a warning. We can. But ki will know everything. Ki will be inside me. Ki will know it all…

No. No. I can’t. I can’t do that. “Can Ansa do it by herself?”

“The more of us, the better,” Ansa says. “Two of us might not be enough.”

“But I have to fly the ship.”

She pinches her lips together and gives me a look. “What are you afraid of?”

“If I tell you that, I may as well do it.”

“You’ll save Jodi’s life,” Ansa says. “What secret do you have that’s more important than that?”

Jodi can’t die. Ansa can’t know. But it won’t matter. Ansa is out of my life once this is over. They both will be. And they were going to be anyway. And Jodi can’t die.

Jodi sings. Brave. Scared. Safe.

“You don’t understand.”

“We will,” Ansa says.

“That’s the problem.”

“Did you murder someone?”

Yes. “The pirate.”

“Then it’s something else,” Ansa says. “What did you do?”

I shake my head. “I can’t explain. It’s not what I did. It’s just what I am.”

Ansa presses her lips together. She looks at me for a long time. “That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? This is the thing behind your Stoic Solo Spacer mask.”

I flinch. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not. And you’re not the only one hiding secrets.”

And her secrets are worth billions. I will know every single one of them. She’s trusting me not to tell. I never would, but she’s trusting me.

She looks me in the eye. “I will do this for Jodi. Will you?”

I close my eyes. She’d be leaving anyway. Everyone leaves. It doesn’t matter how much I hide it. People figure it out, and they leave. They won’t be the first to hate me, but they will be the first to hate me as much as I deserve.

But if I don’t let them, Jodi will die. It doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, they all leave.

What’s two more? They’re going anyway.

“Okay,” I say. “What do we do?”

I don’t look at Ansa. We’re tethered together, touching each other and Jodi as much as we can, and I won’t open my eyes. I won’t look. Jodi’s in my mind. Not just talking to my surface. Jodi’s in there, and I can’t stop the thoughts and the memories and the hurt and the shame. I don’t—I can’t touch anyone. I need to be alone. I need to shut it all up again, I can’t let them see this, I can’t—

Jodi caresses something in my mind. Like comfort. Like being held, only I can’t remember it. It’s not a memory. Jodi’s making the sensation happen.

I’m remembering Jodi in the Body. Jodi in communion with millions of minds, a great, majestic we. Ki weaves a blanket of peace and acceptance over me. It’s a lullaby. And Jodi still hurts, but it’s easier now. I feel the pain, but the comfort, too, and I try to remember comfort for Jodi.

I’m in the house alone. I’m in my bed in a blanket burrito. I have a stuffed moose tucked under my arm and a Rainbow Reader talking softly in my ears. The feeling of being snug in the blankets is comforting. I am alone, and it’s safe.

Beside me, Ansa waits. She’s not in it. My insides shudder. Jodi doesn’t really understand what’s wrong with me. Jodi accepts. Jodi doesn’t know any better. But the most beloved singer in the solar system? She’s going to regret this. She’s going to hate it.

Jodi hums, and I can feel a groping for the light switch, reaching for a point of stability—Ansa. Oh no.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I know it’s for Jodi. I understand. I’ll try to—”

I shut up. Ansa’s in there. She’s in my head. And I’m in hers, and I’m staring at her at five years old in full face makeup and a flouncy lilac princess dress. She’s crying and reaching for her mother, and her mother pushes her away.

“Stop being so dramatic. Pull yourself together. If Grandma could see you, she’d be so ashamed.”

I gasp. Tears flood my eyes. I reach for Ansa. I pull her tight, and she holds on to me.

“She had no right to say that to you. You were five.”

“I lost the pageant.”

“That doesn’t matter. You were first runner-up.”

I’m seven. I’m walking down the hall at school. Kids jump out of my way, shrieking and giggling in disgust. I’m ugly. I have loser germs. They move their desks away from mine.

The teacher says I should try being nice. I save the credits to buy sour candy, the classroom’s favorite, to share. No one will touch them.

“Those little shits,” Ansa says, and she rubs my back. “Kids are so awful.”

“It’s okay. They just knew.”

All her life, Ansa wasn’t ever good enough for longer than a minute. She had to sing hard, dance hard, never let up. Mother always saw her mistakes and corrected them. She never, ever missed a mistake.

“You were good,” I said. “You were really good. You worked so hard.”

Some kids pretended to be my friend. I was thirteen. They asked me which boy I liked. I said I didn’t like any of them. They asked me which girl I liked.

I said Weaver Michaelson.

They told her in front of everyone.

“They had no right to do that.” Ansa hugs me. Jodi hugs me. “They hurt you so bad you don’t trust anyone.”

“People can tell,” I say. “They can tell there’s something wrong with me. They just know.”

“There’s nothing to ‘just know.’ You are not defective. You are scared to be hurt and that’s the only thing that’s really wrong, you’re just scared to be hurt.”

“You don’t have to be the perfect idol,” I say. “You can do music because you love music. You deserve to be loved. It doesn’t depend on whether you made another platinum single. You don’t have to be number one. Your mother was wrong.”

“They don’t love me,” Ansa says. “They love Ansa Veda.”

“I love you,” I say. And it’s true. I know everything about her. I know how she got her first period in the middle of a dance performance. I know how she likes to read stories about magic and other worlds and would rather just eat and read in quiet, but every meal is a networking opportunity or a focus meeting. But the words come back to me and I cringe.

She’s crying. “I love you,” she says. And it’s true. All the loneliness she sees, all the people who couldn’t wait to get away from me, she’s ready to find them all and beat the crap out of them. She’s ready to come into every single memory I have and hold me tight.

She knows everything about me. She cringes with me at all the embarrassing stuff I do and say and shows me her own gaffes, her own slip-ups, and how she just wants to crawl under a rock and die when they happen to her, too.

We, Jodi sings. We hurt alone. We cry pain alone. But we are we now. We are we.

Ansa’s crying, but she’s happy. I’m smiling, but I can’t make it reach my heart. They love me.

But they don’t know.

Jodi stretches kis limbs. Ki presses at me, curious and concerned. Jodi and Ansa haven’t seen the truth. They’re in my childhood, and that’s one thing. That might not be my fault. Ansa might be right.

But I don’t deserve this acceptance. I don’t deserve this compassion, this understanding. Not from Ansa. And not from Jodi. If they know, if they find out…if I don’t tell them, and they find out anyway—

I pull the memory out of its box. I push it into the open where they can see. I screw my eyes up tight and turn away.

I’m in the Red Wind with a married couple. They’ve finally learned to be quiet when the systems are off, but I can feel them watching me and it’s hard to get a hunch. They think I’m weird. I try not to care.

When I finally do hit a hunch, we slip out in time to see pirates shooting down a Siphorophene. It’s trying to flee, but it’s already too hurt. I freeze, horrified. Helpless.

The wife screams. The husband yells at me to get out, get out. We spend a full day in slip returning to Saturn, but they disembark immediately, their vacation ruined. The husband demands a refund. It puts me into debt. It gives me nightmares. And Saturn Defense doesn’t do anything but issue a travel advisory strongly discouraging civilians from entering the Outer sectors.

That could have been Jodi’s Body, and I didn’t fight hard enough. I reported it. It wasn’t enough. I could have done something—

Jodi sings reassurance. I was a tiny dragonfly, not a battle cruiser. The pirates were a swarm. I couldn’t have helped. And if I had tried, I couldn’t have saved Jodi from the Starhawk. Jodi sings comfort.

But I cry anyway.

“You did what you could,” Ansa says. “You survived. You reported it.”

“I didn’t go back. I didn’t try to help. I just holed up in my pod and drowned in guilt and tried to forget. I abandoned them.”

“You saved Jodi.”

They don’t hate me. They hurt for me. They want to hold me, and make it go away.

“Why are you forgiving me?”

“Because you weren’t a coward. You weren’t a deserter,” Ansa says. “You were a witness. Saturn Defense should have done something. That wasn’t on you.”

“But if I could have done something—”

“You can. We can. We can fight for the plyohs. We’re coming back with a story to tell, and I am going to use my power to tell it. Are you with me?”

She hugs me tight. I hug back. “Yes.”

I don’t know what I’ll do. I just know that I’ll do it.

Jodi sings. Forgiveness. Compassion. Gratitude for having returned to save Jodi, so the Body would not be forgotten.

It doesn’t feel like enough. And when we’re done, when we save Jodi and Ansa leaves—

“No,” Ansa says. “You’re going to a therapist if I have to sit in the room and spill everything for you. They can fix this, Reese. You can have friends who don’t need a we to understand you. You can heal from this and not feel guilty anymore. But you’re stuck with me, do you understand? No one knows me like this.”

“But you have to go back to Earth.”

“So what?” Ansa says. “You can get the treatment and go back, too, if you want.”

“I like space.”

“Then you have to get used to me checking on you,” Ansa says. “I’m a complete pain in the ass.”

I humph. It’s a laugh. “You are.”

“But I’m a really good friend.”

She is. And we slip out of each other’s memories to be with Jodi, who sings softly we, we, we until a hunch sets me scrambling out of the nets.

Ansa doesn’t have to ask why. She’s beside me as I race to the PW drive and exit the slip.

“They’re here,” I say, but I don’t have to.

Ansa and Jodi are already staring out the window.

Three of them approach. They’re the biggest Siphorophenes I’ve ever seen, anywhere. They fill space as they come closer, their starlight limbs phasing green, brown, yellow with distress. Or anger. Ansa watches them and helps me maneuver her into the smallest space suit I have.

They’re still the same. Bulky. Awkward. The ones I have for the tourist passengers need me to zip and seal them in, so no mistakes get made. Besides, manual suits are cheaper.

Jodi hates it. Ki can’t get in the suits with us. But that’s the point. We’re bringing Jodi to a new we. I swipe at my eyes and check Ansa’s seals before I latch on the helmet and pat it on the head.

We are still we, and Jodi is intimidated. These are the Eldest. The largest. They hold hundreds of generations. And Jodi clings to my scalp, singing fear and shame and sorry.

I can’t sing. But I think about being proud, about being brave, and I let Jodi stay on my head until I have to put on my comm hood and the helmet.

Jodi sings of loneliness. Our we is all ki has.

“You’ll have a new we,” Ansa says.

Jodi sings doubt. Fear of rejection, of being a stranger. Ansa catches it like a cold, and she looks at me.

“What if Jodi’s fears are right?”

“We’ll deal with that if it happens.”

“You won’t leave Jodi. I won’t, either,” Ansa says. “So let’s go. And if they give Jodi any shit, we’re getting right back on the ship.”

That’s right. I feel fiercely protective of Jodi. We won’t leave you, I think.

Jodi clings to Ansa’s chest as we float into the dragonfly’s tiny airlock, hugging each other as it cycles. Ansa’s afraid of it, even in a suit. I show her a hundred spacewalks. I hold her hand. I won’t lose her. I won’t let go.

She closes her eyes as the outside hatch opens. I guide us into chilly space, and I gasp.

A limb is coming toward us, rising from twenty football fields away. It’s yellow, green, its starry lights shimmering and bright. Ansa squeezes my hand, and I try not to piss myself in terror.

The limb stops just short of touching us. It wiggles at the very tip, green and brown but not cycling in agitation. Still upset. Still not quite friendly.

The Siphorophenes wait.

“I think they want you,” I say.

Jodi hears me, shrinks in Ansa’s arms.

I move closer to the limb tip. It doesn’t move. I stretch out my hand, slowly, expecting it to jerk away or slap me down but it stays still, and I assume it’s consent, but I hesitate.

The limb rises, probing delicately at my hand. I wrap my hand around it, and some ridiculous impulse makes me shake it in greeting.

“Hello,” I say, because it’s polite. “I’m Reese Taylor.”

The Siren sings.

It sings the story of Lithandranarison, the seventeenth Body of the lineage of Rigel. It sings of its life among the stars, the Body of seventy generations. It sings of the Body that was a city that was a world to two hundred million plyohs who lived and sang and existed in its we until the attack. It sings of the pain and the loss and the screaming, the taking of the young, of the Body left to drift in space, its life gone. How the others raced to the Body, hoping for survivors, singing of their coming, to hold hope, to hold strength.

They came too late, and they sing of shame and guilt and pain at having failed the great Body, who would have lived for another seven hundred generations, more. They sing to Jodianthaladan, overjoyed that ki survived. They sing of home and welcome and refuge, of their we and the place Jodi has with them.

Jodi trembles. Ki loosens kis grip on Ansa and floats to the limb. Jodi lands on my hand and sings.

Jodi sings of kis human we, of Ansa, who sings for a mother who only loved how she could live through her daughter. Of Reese, who only knew loneliness until we became we. Jodi sings the names of the hundred and fifty-eight plyohs lost and enslaved by the pirates, of our valor in saving Jodi, of how we overcame fear and shame to become we to save Jodi’s life. Jodi sings of family and group and home and need and of the lost ones. Of a chance. Of hope.

That maybe we can get them back. And so Jodi cannot join the Body yet. Jodi must remain with kis we.

With Ansa. With me. To try one more time to save the others.

The Elder Siphorophenes listen, then sing permission.

Jodi floats back to Ansa’s arms. Ansa, astonished, cradles Jodi close.

The Elder sings. Courage. Valor. Hero. It sings of blessings and promises, of praise and memory and bravery. All three of them regard us, their postures bowed in respect for us.

Return when you can, the Elder sings.

The Siphorophenes move slowly away, leaving Jodianthaladan with us.

“Jodi, what?”

Inside, Jodi sings. Plan. Idea. Help.

Ansa takes a heavy cruiser back to Earth when we find out there’s a systemwide search order for her. She can’t stay with us. We have our part of the plan, and she has hers. We agreed on the long slip back to Saturn. She’ll adapt to space if she stays much longer, and for all my jokes, Ansa’s a grounder.

We still cry when she boards the ship. By the time they make it to the Princess there will be media everywhere. She’s dreading it already. I promise to tell her stupid jokes during the presser to keep her smiling. She promises to find that therapist and to be there for my first appointment. But not yet.

Jodi and I have work to do.

I’m in a brand-new jumpsuit. My head is smooth and shaved. I make my pretty face smile in the mirror, and Jodi perches on my bare shoulder, sparkling and rose-pink with hope.

Ansa smiles inside my head. You look great. Go get ’em, tiger.

Jodi and I leave the suite to take our first meeting with the commander.

© 2021 by C. L. Polk Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March-April 2021. Reprinted by permission of the author.