"Progress?" Warwick asks, stubbornly shunting aside an inconvenient surge of longing. She pretends not to notice the disappointment that shutters across Aida's expression.

  "I think so." Aida no longer seems the slightest bit flustered, as she rises from the floor and wipes her palms dry on the front of her jumpsuit. The faded technician's coveralls—perfect for crawling around the innards of an impossible vessel—fit far too loosely over Aida's compact frame. The pant legs have been rolled up at the ankles, but they're still baggy on her. She looks a bit like a mad scientist, with sweaty hair askew and cheeks brightly flushed. Even the dark oil-stain smudges she just transferred from her palms to her ill-fitted clothing only add to the impression.

  Warwick looks away, lest the distracting tableau draw some outward display of amusement. She maintains her usual stern countenance as she casts a slow gaze along the walls of the compartment. The last thing she needs is to let her guard down and allow Aida to glimpse the inevitable fondness in her eyes.

  "What did you find under there?" Warwick presses, when Aida doesn't expound voluntarily. She doesn't allow herself to glance over, unwilling to risk the possibility that Aida is watching her reactions too closely. As captain, she cannot afford to encourage this distraction.

  Even if she's not entirely sure what this distraction actually entails.

  "Right." Aida gives a jolt in Warwick's peripheral vision, as though the question has jarred her out of her own head. "Yes. Sorry. Any investigation is slow-going, since we can't cut into the bulkheads."

  Strictly speaking, they could expedite the process if Warwick were willing to make a different call. But no one has tried to convince her to change her orders, the decision backed unanimously by her department heads. Until they know whether the ship can feel pain, they are being very careful not to do any harm.

  "But," Aida presses ahead, on a roll now that she's begun, "I think I found the node that connects the ship's natural electrical impulses to the navigation and communications array. This chamber—this console—seems to be both broadcasting the tight beam we intercepted, and receiving the signal that's tethering the vessel in place."

  "So it is tethered to the asteroid?" Warwick hadn't realized this hypothesis had been confirmed. The first piece of data they collected as their thrusters brought the Obershaw carefully in range, was that this vessel seems to be perfectly matching velocity and position with a single large rock within a crowded asteroid field. There's little else of note in the solar system. Three barren planets that might be worth a future geological survey. A handful of moons barely more than rubble themselves. A small star burning brighter and hotter than Sol, but perfectly normal as these things go.

  The field of asteroids is a remarkably effective hiding place, all things considered. The Obershaw would never have found the ship at all, if not for a faint but steady comm signal broadcasting out into the void. Not a distress call or an open frequency, but a signal on a narrow beam, aiming out into the immeasurable distance.

  "Yes," Aida says. "The asteroid is emitting some kind of short-range homing beacon. Probably a device designed for this very purpose. Park the vessel somewhere relatively stationary—easy to chart—and make sure it can't drift off course. The vessel's holding a perfectly uniform distance from the source of the signal. I don't think we'll be able to move it without deactivating the tether."

  "Can you tell how long the tether has been active?" So far, they haven't been able to gauge time frame or age from the ship itself, and Warwick is painfully aware of the gaps in her report where the knowledge simply does not exist.

  "No," Aida admits. "But the signal is degrading. It's barely a noticeable fluctuation at this point, and even that's based on a whole lot of assumptions on my part. But the margin of error... our own technology might run for decades, maybe even centuries, before facing similar distortions."

  "Which could mean anything," Warwick concludes, words crisp to conceal her frustration.

  "It could mean anything," Aida agrees cheerfully.

  "Can you co-opt the signal, or override it somehow?" The vessel is too large to fit inside any of the Obershaw's cargo holds. If it has a functional propulsion mechanism, attaching the ships together seems a dubious strategy. But if it can be compelled to follow where they lead, then they have real options for getting it back to the nearest permanent research outpost.

  "Maybe. I'll have a better sense of what we're looking at once I cajole my way into the system."

  "And that happens how?" Warwick presses.

  Aida steps into the space directly beside her and nudges a sequence of the console's rounded protrusions. "By poking things until they start to cooperate. I think I understand how it works now. Well... maybe not exactly how it works, but... How to use it. How to access something I can interact with and start translating."

  Even before Aida finishes speaking, the smooth panel above the console comes alight, filling with a long sequence of dipping, weaving script. The symbols and patterns scatter across the screen in response to whatever Aida is doing to the console, and Warwick raises her eyes to study the sweep of incomprehensible information.

  "And all this?" Warwick nods toward the string of a language that she cannot hope to make sense of—but maybe Aida can.

  "A security lock screen." Aida grins, clearly pleased with herself. Warwick's mouth twitches at one corner, despite her best efforts at restraint. "Obviously I can't begin to guess the password, assuming it even uses one. I've barely begun to decipher the language. But I've been trying to coax the ship to let me into the less secure sub-menus. I might be able to pull this off, now that I know the shape of the system."

  "Do it." The words come out a gruff and unnecessary command. Even before they're out of her mouth, Aida is reaching for different controls.

  The patterns rolling across the screen dim and scatter, replaced a moment later by a sequence of thicker lines, interlocked into an undulating grid that makes Warwick think of topographic maps or gravitational charts. When she risks a glance at her comms chief, she finds a gleam of victory bordering on smugness in the woman's dark eyes—and has a fleeting span of heartbeats to appreciate the sight before Aida's body goes tense. For a glimmer of a second, Aida stands so taut that Warwick wonders if she's in pain. Then her eyes roll back in her head, her hands jerk violently atop the control panel, and she crumples toward the floor.

  *

  It takes Aida several seconds to figure out why her surroundings seem wrong.

  Her eyes are open. For some reason that's significant. And her senses are near overflowing with input from the crowded market. Even without looking upward, she knows the illusion of open sky above will give way to the vast stretch of an atmospheric dome so far out of reach it's barely visible through a haze of scattered clouds. Stalls and shop fronts form a predictable grid, but the paths grow gradually more winding and confused farther from the center of the square. The aromas of too many regional cuisines to count mingle confusingly, tinged just a little bit acrid by the fuel exchange at the far edge of the dome.

  The cacophony of voices feels like a physical wall around her. Aida remembers this place. And that's the problem. It's a memory, old and dusty and yet strikingly vivid now that she's standing in it. A life she barely remembers, a Mars still clinging to its dome structure in the wake of a terraforming experiment that took generations.

  Aida has not set foot in this particular market in years. Before she received her acceptance letter from the Jemisin Academy for Arts and Science. Before her talent for language, codes, ciphers got her on the list to receive the coveted comms implant that meant a lucrative career with her pick of jobs. Before she signed a contract that put her on the Obershaw, a collision course with Captain Jamila Warwick and a life of deep space exploration.

  She cannot be physically here. In this market, unchanged by the passage of years. Surrounded by sounds, people, structures that are exactly as she remembers them.

  As Aida turns in place, a more immediate scent of food washes over her from the nearest stall. Some kind of curried protein, rich and spicy and thick with potatoes. Her stomach growls, and she realizes she's hungry. Not just hungry. Starving. She can't remember the last time she felt hunger like this, but it hits her with a clench of fear that is just as familiar as the sharp-edged contours of her surroundings.

  She's in a different portion of the market now—hates that she can't tell if she was walking without being consciously aware of movement—standing amid the more chaotic arrangement of stalls and blankets at the less hospitable periphery of the dome. Her hunger mingles with a gut-deep certainty that she is supposed to find someone.

  Are they still waiting for her? She doesn't know, and she's not sure what she's meant to do if she finds them.

  Not all of this is memory, she realizes with a disorientation that feels more like a dream. Yes, she was frequently hungry when she still lived on Mars. Sometimes so hungry that she genuinely feared she might die. But there are cracks in her perceptions. Details that flicker at the edges of her awareness like a bad dream.

  Aida finally looks directly upward and finds a clear sky above her—a copper-tinged atmosphere burning too bright beneath an orange sun—no sign of the cloudy dome that should stretch above the market.

  That's not right. She shouldn't be able to see open sky.

  When she lowers her gaze, she finds Jamila Warwick standing before her. But Warwick also isn't quite right. Yes, she is an unmistakable and welcome sight. Dark skin and close-set brown eyes, broad shoulders above a powerful frame, tightly coiled black hair. She stands a full head taller than Aida, taller than most of the market patrons moving past her like a river parting for a stone.

  But she wears an expression Aida has never seen on her captain's face, scared and hopeful and unguarded. Her posture is uncertain, a stance completely at odds with how easily Warwick always holds herself, how comfortably she exists in her own skin.

  Then Warwick blinks. And Aida is still staring into her eyes when they open to reveal luminescent blue.

  "Will you help me?" Warwick asks. She's standing closer now, and Aida has to tilt her head back to keep meeting the disorienting glow in those eyes.

  This isn't her captain, she realizes with a dizzy hitch of awareness. This is someone else. Something else entirely. But the look on her face is so scared and pleading, and Aida can't bring herself to refuse.

  "Yes," she says. And as the marketplace distorts and fades, she realizes she is falling.

  *

  Aida stumbles toward consciousness an aching eternity later, new information kicking around inside her with fractured urgency. Her limbs are heavy, her mind sluggish and sore, and for several alarming seconds her eyes refuse to open. Recognizing the effects of sleep paralysis does nothing to make the sensation less terrifying, but she forces herself to reach out more calmly with her other senses.

  There's something cool and soft beneath her body, comfortable despite the way she's lying on her side, but it doesn't feel like a bed. Her cheek rests on something significantly warmer. Humidity surrounds her, alongside a subtly pungent aroma that seems to permeate every particle of air she breathes in. She can't be aboard the Obershaw. Nowhere on the ship smells like this, and she doesn't hear the familiar hum of the engine.

  It takes several more seconds for her brain to chime in that, of course she's not aboard the Obershaw. She is on an impossible biological spaceship. And Captain Warwick is here somewhere, which goes a long way towards settling the nascent panic of not being able to move.

  Warwick was here before. She must be close by. She would never leave Aida unguarded in dangerous circumstances.

  The final detail Aida registers is the sensation of surprisingly gentle fingers brushing through her hair. The touch is steady and irresistibly soothing. Aida can't remember the last time anyone touched her this way, a tender trace of fingertips along her temple and scalp. A deep space science vessel—claustrophobic and full of colleagues—isn't exactly a stronghold of physical affection, even where some of those professional relationships have transformed into real friendships. The idle contact is nice. It slows her racing pulse to a more manageable rhythm.

  Gradually, Aida's efforts toward movement start garnering actual twitching responses from her limbs. And when she finally manages to open her eyes and finds the dusky purple of Warwick's uniform jacket directly in her line of sight, she has just enough coordination to shift onto her back so she can stare dazedly up into her captain's face. Her head is resting on Warwick's thigh, and Aida has a fleeting heartbeat to recognize that Warwick really has been carding soothing fingers through her hair, before the touch falls away.

  Aida immediately misses it. She clenches her jaw against the wordless protest that threatens to squeeze out of her chest.

  Her thoughts are still a disoriented quagmire, but rumbling alongside the confused sense of urgency—the new information she has for her captain, no matter how garbled it feels bouncing around her synapses—there hums a more familiar ache. It's a longing she doesn't dare speak aloud, bright and sharp. It burns like an ember behind her ribs as she stares up into her captain's worried face.

  Jamila Warwick is distracting to behold even with her expression tight and worried. Round jaw, stern forehead, warm brown skin, umber eyes that look like they're trying to peer straight through Aida in search of unknown harms. The small scar bisecting one eyebrow has scrunched forward with the furrow of her brow. Her tight curls have started going the slightest bit silver at the temples—a detail Aida has never been close enough to notice before, but she takes it in now as Warwick leans searchingly over her.

  Warwick's wide shoulders and stocky frame look like they could shield Aida from any danger, and the intense expression written across her face says that is exactly what she wants to do.

  It's dizzying to be the subject of such close scrutiny, from a woman who is so habitually careful. The wordless exchange skirts alarmingly near things they don't talk about. For a short span that feels like a slow and rolling tide, Aida stares up at her captain. Her face burns feverishly and her heart beats faster the more she wonders if her own expression is saying too much.

  She's wearing multiple protective layers of clothing. How can she still feel completely naked?

  When Aida braces and tries to hoist herself up from the floor, she doesn't get the chance to find out if her limbs will support her. Warwick's hand is at the base of her throat too quickly, palm big and warm and flat across her sternum, pressing with inexorable strength. Aida has no choice but to melt back down onto the floor, with her head in Warwick's lap and her heart racing faster at the protective fire in Warwick's eyes.

  "Don't you dare." The same fire glints in Warwick's voice, a smoldering undercurrent beneath quiet steel. "I've called for medical support. Doctor Madigan is on their way, and you will keep still until they reassure me you haven't had a stroke or a heart attack."

  Aida doesn't bother trying to argue that she's fine. She still feels far too wobbly to make such a claim in good faith, even if her mental faculties and motor control seem to be steadily returning. She doesn't make a habit of lying to her captain, and the last thing she wants is to give Warwick a reason—or even worse, more reasons—to doubt her judgment. So Aida subsides without protest, swallowing past the lump of inconvenient emotion tightening her throat.

  There is anger in Warwick's voice when—continuing to hold her down, as though she doesn't trust Aida not to try again—Warwick says. "Now. Tell me. What precisely did you do?"

  Aida licks her lips, pretending not to notice the way Warwick's gaze darts lower to track the movement. "I activated a secondary maintenance relay. I think." It's difficult to be sure, considering how little she understands the mechanisms and readouts this ship has to offer.

  Warwick's eyes narrow. "And why did that knock you unconscious?" Her brow has furrowed more deeply than ever, and an edge of fear sneaks through the anger. "I couldn't wake you."

  This is the least of the vital new pieces of information Aida needs to convey, but she takes the time to answer anyway. "Because the ship is capable of direct psionic communication. When it registered a system activating, it... woke up? Came out of hibernation? And mistook me for someone who could help. It tried to... interface... with my brain." Already pretty sure she knows the answer, she asks, "You didn't feel it?"

  "No," Warwick says tightly. "Perhaps it accessed your implant. I've checked in with the rest of the crew, and no one else was affected."

  Aida doesn't much like the sound of that. She'll need to get someone in medical to help her run a full diagnostic on the hardware at the base of her brain. She doesn't feel like her comms implant sustained any damage, but there are infinite ways for technology to go wrong when it's directly connected to human tissue and neural pathways.

  Again Aida tries to sit up—and again Warwick holds her effortlessly down.

  "Stop that." The sternness of Warwick's voice is roughened by a faint growl. "You will get up when Doctor Madigan assures me it's safe for you to do so. Not one microsecond before."

  "Aye-aye, Captain." She tries to make it a joke, but the attempt at levity falls flat.

  Warwick's expression softens almost imperceptibly. "How do you feel?"

  "Dizzy," Aida admits. "But that doesn't matter. I have new information."

  "Surely it can wait five more min—"

  Under normal circumstances, Aida would never consider interrupting her captain, but she presses onward now. "Captain, this ship isn't just a biological construct. It's sentient. It's a living, thinking life form." She pauses, letting an avalanche of information course through her waking mind, until finally she manages to distill enough to add more softly. "She's alive. And she's scared."

 

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