I’ve had a partner for a decade, asshole. She squelched the desire to wring her little brother’s neck and took two deep breaths. She needed to win Luis over, not cement his stubborn idiocy. “When you find a good person, someone who you can spend your life with and not hate the world, someone who’s grown with you, moved around with you, who forgives your bullshit and thinks you’re sexy on your off days, someone…” who you leave again and again, who waits for you, not knowing if you’ll come back alive. “When it hurts to live without them, no matter how angry you are, you find it in your heart to forgive their bullshit.” Welga grabbed his arm. “If you don’t go back to her, you will regret it until your last breath. I can promise you that.”

The front door slammed as Oscar came in. A generous coating of dust made his graying hair look shades lighter. Wind whistled through a crack.

As their father washed his hands in the kitchen sink, he said, “Luis, you should help your sister. You can always come back here after.”

Luis blinked. “Even if we could somehow pull off a launch, Welga is in no shape to go up there.”

“You let me work that part out,” Welga said. “The answer to everything, even my neurological problems, could come from a person on Eko-Yi. Your wife told me so.”

“The Machinehood lives up there. You can’t face them in your condition, alone. Think of what they did to you when you could still fight! It’s a death warrant!”

Papa raised a hand. “She’s dead either way, right?”

“We don’t know that, Papa!”

“Back in the seventies,” Oscar said, ignoring Luis, “during the riots, me and my union buddies put ourselves in front of those mech-loaded police. We knew we could die, but the alternative was worse. And we won, didn’t we? Most of us lived, too. Sometimes, for the right causes, you got to risk your life.”

Luis turned his glare on their father. “You don’t get it! We’re not talking about riots or even war. We have juvers, medics, hospitals to take care of people who get hurt. Even back then, you had those.” He thrust his index finger upward. “That station is a giant metal can surrounded by hard vacuum. They push Welga out of an air lock, poof! She’s dead. On Earth, she stands a chance. Off-world, nobody can save her life.”

Welga laid herself on the sofa, as her leg tremors made standing impossible. “Not much of a life anyway, Luis. Right now, we don’t have juvers or medic-bots or antivirals. We’ll all die that way unless we can stop the Machinehood.”

Waves of distortion washed over reality. Her vision went sparkly. Here we go again.