“Yes, definitely, I feel much better, just nerves,” she said. It was oddly true. She didn’t feel good, not at all, but she felt focused. As soon as they launched, she could put even more miles between her and her father, and Josh Girdy with his creepy shark eyes. “But it passed.”

“I hope you mean that metaphorically.”

Rosalyn managed a smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know . . .”

“Was that an actual joke? Fuck. You are feeling better. Girdy doesn’t usually have that effect on people. That guy makes me nervous. Something about his beady little eyes . . .”

Walters chuckled to himself. He sat to her left and a little behind, stationed at the front of the curved wall of monitors that fed them everything from cabin temperature, to speed, to distance to target and so on. Rosalyn understood how to read most of it, a requirement of training, one that had been a snap thanks to the complexity of her former job, but only a few core parts of information were really worth paying attention to at any given time. And as long as Walters stayed alive and vigilant, it wasn’t her job to worry about the details of their flight.

She was cleanup and cleanup only.

You’re leaving to be a fucking janitor?

It was a long leap from studying xenobiological samples against human biology to cleaning up corpses in space. When she left, her father’s disdain for the job only made it that much more appealing.

“Yikes. This isn’t much of a flight,” Walters muttered. The engines purred more insistently, launch window approaching. She swiveled in her seat, watching Walters read over the mission summation. “These poor bastards almost made it back. They’re on the edge of the system.”

“No, they had just fueled up recently,” Rosalyn replied. She had read the briefing the night before and once that morning. Leave it to her idiot pilot to do his homework six seconds before the test. “Whatever was left when they went dark the thrusters would automatically use to bring them back toward the campus. Speeds things up.”

“You want to take bets on the state of things in that ship?” he asked, still looking over the briefing on his personal VIT monitor.

“Not really.”

Walters sighed, leaning forward far enough to clack his helmet against the flickering green-and-black readout screens. “I thought a morbid sense of humor was required for this gig.”

“Only if you’re a dickhead.” Rosalyn double-checked the harness securing her to the flight chair. “Have a little respect, Walters. They had families, families that are waiting to hear about what happened to their loved ones. This is the third crew to go dark this quarter; we need to take this seriously.”