“You’re not meeting anyone on Bloodroot either. We enter orbit, they send shuttles to get their passengers, we turn around and come home. Easy.”

“Won’t I need furlough by then? It’s a ship, Ragtime. It can get boring.”

“I don’t see why you can’t spend time on the surface. You’ve had all the necessary vaccinations. If you want to, just tell me at the time.”

Shell starts to feel woozy. “I’m getting… getting…”

“Don’t worry, that’s the sedative. I’ll wake you when we get to… and…”

The world fades.

Ten Years Later…

Ragtime: Shell

Shell, sweating, heart thumping, bursts into Node 1, overshooting because she didn’t compensate enough for microgravity.

“Ragtime, seal the bridge!”

“Sealing.”

The door shuts, the reassuring thunk of steel bolts.

Shell grabs a handrail and rests for a few seconds, then she calls up her IFC. Red, blinking alarms everywhere. She cannot attend to them yet.

She opens a comm and records a message.

“Mayday, mayday. This is Captain Michelle Campion of the starship Ragtime. I have a situation. Multiple fatalities…”

She stops, deletes. She doesn’t know who might be listening to such a broadcast, what harm or panic it might cause.

Calm down.

Think.

She starts again.

“This is Captain Michelle ‘Shell’ Campion of the starship Ragtime…”

Chapter Two

Bloodroot: Fin

Fin deletes the sentence, starts again.

Hands poised for typing motion, he peeks out of the window. Still dark, but he can sense dawn without looking at the clock. The desk is littered with layers of hand-scribbled studies of CAD models for printing. They are, for the most part, bespoke weapon designs. A lot of them won’t be made – an intellectual exercise for him, but it keeps Fin’s mind active. Aborted designs lie obscured in scrunched up paper on the floor.

Two cups of cold coffee sit beside each other. He made one, forgot it was there, discovered it was cold, got up, made another, and forgot that one as well. This happened sometimes when he got lost in thought. Fin thinks of taking a nap, but the bed is covered in paper. He has a workshop, but he never uses it.

The keyboard shimmers in the air, each letter brighter when Fin hits the key.

Dear Respected One,

My name is Rasheed Fin. I am grateful to you for condescending to read my letter. I do not want to waste your time.

I am not eloquent. I want to apologise for

No. Too trite, too ass-kissy, too pathetic, definitely not the right tone.

Fin rises, disconnects his IFC from the terminal and swears. He runs his hands through his hair and recognises that it’s gone bushy. Not been paying enough attention to grooming. He could go Dada, he supposes. Locs are an option.