Naomi pulled the fabric of her coveralls tight, showing the small bump. Valerie leaned forward and placed her hand on it, just for a second, before her hands dropped to her lap.

“When?” she asked.

Here came the questions she really didn’t want to answer. There was a particular embarrassment of skirting around the subject of sex with the person who basically raised you. “The night before quarantine.”

An exhalation. “Do the others know? Hart?”

“Just her. She guessed before my first medical. I asked her to keep it to herself while I decided. If I’d keep it.”

“And I take it you are. Is the child healthy?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the father?” Valerie asked, point blank.

Naomi swallowed. “Someone I really shouldn’t have slept with. Someone who isn’t mine.”

Valerie steepled her hands over her mouth, elbows pressed together. Naomi could almost feel the power of her mentor’s thoughts as she worked through it all. “God,” she said, blanching beneath skin that had already lost its Earthen colour. “I pulled the plug on the child’s father, didn’t I?”

Cole would have gone into cryo just after Naomi left for quarantine. Naomi chose her words carefully, rolling them in her mouth. “Cole was already gone.”

“Fuck.”

Naomi looked down at Valerie. She rarely stood over her mentor like this. At five-foot-ten, Valerie had always towered over Naomi’s five-foot-four frame, but beyond that, she always seemed larger than life, a magnetic force that attracted any energy in the room and knew how to manipulate it.

“Are you angry?” Naomi asked. “I can often never tell with you.”

Valerie stood, and there was the put-together woman Naomi knew. “I’m rearranging everything in my head. We’ll have our work cut out for us, if you’re to give birth after we land.” She gave a laugh. “I’ll have to design you a nursery, for a start.”

Naomi blinked quickly. The tears snuck up on her, but she kept them back. A tiny part of her had worried Valerie would tell her there was no way she could keep it. That doing so would jeopardise the mission. She wasn’t sure if she’d be strong enough not to bow to the pressure, if Valerie exerted it. Valerie knew, more than anyone, that Naomi wouldn’t have made this choice lightly.

“The child might end up calling you Nana, you know,” Naomi said, striving for lightness. Yet the words gave her a pang. Her child would never meet their grandparents. Wouldn’t even be able to visit the graves. Naomi only had a handful of photos of them, deep in her files.

“Like hell she will,” Valerie said, pulling a face.