Lio sat on the edge of his stripped mattress, staring at empty shelves. All his crystals and tools and plants and treasures were packed away in boxes and trunks near the outpost's main entrance, ready for transport down to the hov that would take him away from Opalina. He couldn't quite grasp it.

When Ravi had first told them exactly how far their discovery extended, Lio had joined in the crew's uproarious response. There was a lot of shouting about how they'd been cooking and sleeping and brushing their teeth in a lightship the entire time. And then they got the rest of the news, and his euphoria was slaughtered. It was worse than unfair. His lightship had found him long before he knew it, and when he finally recognized it, he was only allowed to have his joy for a single day. A cruel joke.

His holowatch flashed with another missive from Alina. He ought to be preening as the news spread through the network of ziggurats, and his family's stunned congratulations came in. Finally, the odd-duck baby of the family had managed something of consequence. Only for it to be immediately clawed out of his hands by people who spent his whole life scoffing at his beliefs.

He couldn't stay in his bedroom any longer, late as he already was for the crew's deadline to report to the main entrance. Any minute, Ravi would have to send someone to come get him. Perhaps the com himself would arrive, expecting to drag him out by his ankles. One last, longing glance at his little room. The place felt more like home than all the grand estates where he'd grown up.

Tears stinging in his throat, he plodded out the door and through the tunnel, trailing his hand along the rock as he went. If the inspector was to be believed, there was Mastali alloy under every rugged inch of rock. He imagined he could feel it calling to him through the stone, singeing his fingertips with resentment as he abandoned it.

Ahead, light spilled into the tunnel from the main entrance, propped open wide. Teres, her face swollen from crying, glanced up at him as she picked up another box. She turned away for the mag lane without a word. Trying to make anyone feel better about this was a useless effort. Lio grabbed the nearest crate he could carry and staggered after her.

Archcom Huseda had sent enormous hauling hovs for them, and gradually the vehicles filled with all the evidence of a collective life interrupted. The crew worked in silence, with the occasional mumbled directions from Ravi and Jossen as they arranged all the supplies and belongings. Ravi's expression was inscrutable, his gaze passing over Lio without ever pausing. He didn't have energy to wonder at the com's avoidance of him. They were all allowed to be strange today.

It was well past noon by the time they finished. There was no farewell ceremony. No one made the kind of funerary speech that might be appropriate for their sudden eviction. They just climbed into the last of the hovs, slid onto the bare metal benches and sat in silence as the hov pulled away.

Lio leaned his forehead against the cool, scratched glass of the window. Midway down the mountain, Yorune let out a soft curse. He spotted the reason for it a moment later. Rumbling up the opposite side of the mag lane was an enormous hov twice the size of theirs, stamped with the spiked tree symbol of the Fennec region's elite Enlightenment units. The Enlightenment hov towed a bright red excavator, its long neck folded in like a slumbering beast. They were going to take that thing and unleash its jaws on Opalina.

A seat ahead of him, Teres slumped forward, trying to muffle sobs against her arm. Yorune and Rosareen leaned into her, folding her in a hug from either side. Aziri, who had been sitting stiffly next to Lio and refusing to look any way but forward, drooped a moment a later. Lio pulled him closer, tucking his arm through his friend's. Hot tears soaked into the thin fabric at his shoulder.

Most of them took turns crying the rest of the way down. By the time the hov stopped and deposited them onto the flat desert ground at the foot of the mountain, they were a salt-crusted, hollowed-out catastrophe of a crew. Ravi made them all drink water, sitting in a circle in the dust.

The com tightened the lid back on his canteen and stood. "Listen up, Opalina." He sounded calmer than Lio thought it was possible for anyone to be at this particular moment. "Today is going to be—and already is—a tough one. This is a shitty situation. The best we can do right now is stay busy, and let people...deal in their own ways." He smiled sadly at them.

"With that in mind, first priority is getting everyone settled in their new quarters. After that, Jossen will take point on setting up communal supplies and establishing camp tasks. I'll pull people for individual check-ins through the day. I want everybody to have a chance to talk. Whatever is on your mind. If you have worries, or ideas, or if you just want to yell for a bit, I want to hear it, okay? We'll figure this out together."

Ravi's ability to rally was superhuman, and Lio had no hope of matching it. It was all he could do to let Onfenka hoist him up from the ground. He fell into step with the others as they went to explore the new camp.

It was a loose circle of trailers, smaller ones for each crew member, and a pair of larger facilities just big enough to give them all a place to gather. They were each assigned one of the identical personal trailers. Lio stared dully around his new space. Sunlight swirled through broad windows, warming the seats of a study nook and glinting against the heavy curtains that separated the bedroom area from the rest of the trailer. It was bigger and brighter than his room at Opalina, and he loathed it.

"Well," Jossen exclaimed, when they were gathered at the hovs again. "Everyone has their own shower! Isn't that..." He ran out of steam and tried to finish with a smile. It was indeed the end of times if Jossen was attempting to be peppy.

There was some waffling over what to do about the larger trailers, until Ravi decided that one would be part storage for supplies, part mess hall, and the other would be the crew lounge. Jossen took it from there, and Ravi beckoned Yorune away from the rest of the group.

Somehow, the afternoon crept by. Lio emerged from his fog bit by bit. Once all of his boxes were stacked and halfheartedly opened in his quarters, he was beginning to feel something other than grief. Letting Opalina slip through his fingers was unacceptable. He bent over a plastic table Jossen had him constructing for a lounge with actual furniture instead of crates and considered his options. One thought in particular niggled like a loose tooth.

Archcom Huseda would not be particularly compelled to consider him for any future involvement with a lightship unless he made a case for it. He had no Enlightenment specialty, a random assortment of commendations, and more than a few red flags in his file. But there was a shortcut past all that if he leveraged his family name and connections.

The idea sat like a lump of rotting fruit placed directly under his nose. Disgusting, but undeniable. All he had to do was open the sibling line, and in the next minute, Archcom Huseda would have Alonso's smooth, authoritative voice in one ear while Alina thundered in the other. Or he could go straight to the big guns. He could call his parents.

Lio finished attaching the adjustable legs to the table and tried to set it upright. Somehow he'd screwed one of them on at the wrong height, and the whole thing threatened to collapse. He flipped it back down to fix it. He was pathetic. Couldn't even set up a damn table correctly, and here he was wondering if he should call his mother to see if she could get him what he wanted. Even if it might work, it wasn't the way he wanted to go about it. His siblings and his parents had each blazed gloriously into their chosen interests. They had all the wealth and advantages a prestige name in the empire could offer, but there was something more than that, too. His family wielded outsized influence because they all seemed to effortlessly possess the skill and tenacity to prove their reputations. Alina and Alonso had never gone crawling to Mamina.

He'd never held much hope that he could be like his siblings, but if there ever was a chance, this was it. His only opportunity for the kind of high-profile position that could both meet his family's lofty standards and satisfy his own dreams was on board Opalina. And he needed to earn it on his own merits.

It took him three tries to correct his misassembling of the table, but he finished it just as Jossen called them into their new mess hall. There was little chatter as they ate, shoulder to shoulder at stainless steel tables. He couldn't help but notice that Ravi never appeared. One by one, the crew had gone to the miniature office space attached to the com's trailer. Lio was not sure he would ever be called. But when Orvaska showed up late to dinner, he poked him in the shoulder.

"Your turn," Orvaska said.

Lio swallowed and nodded. He got up to let Orvaska take his seat and went to find Ravi.

The com was tucked behind a neat, modern desk next to a window. He barely met Lio's gaze, just gestured him into the empty chair opposite. It was opaque lavender plastic that matched the desk. Shiny brand new and still not a good enough replacement for the junk they'd all grown accustomed to.

Lio sat in the uncomfortable chair and stared across the desk. Ravi was, as he had been all day, the only composed face in the new camp.

He gave Lio a short nod. "Sorry it took me a while to get to you. People had a lot on their minds."

"I can imagine." Unease wrapped around his heart even as he made the reply. It felt too formal, but Ravi might prefer that. The last time they'd spoken alone, Lio had been completely ridiculous and too angry to consider the position he was putting Ravi in. He certainly didn't want to repeat that again. Formality it was.

Ravi rearranged the slate and the papers on his desk, and then switched them back again. When he spoke, he kept his eyes lowered to the desk. "I'm...I understand that you're probably pretty upset with me. And I understand that in normal circumstances, it can be difficult to speak openly to your commander about something like that, and you and I don't have normal circumstances, but I still—" He cleared his throat, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shake something off. "I still want you to be able to talk to me about your concerns. Even if your concerns are my decision making." He looked as though he was physically bracing himself for the reply.

Lio's mind labored to take in everything the com was saying. For one thing, it seemed that he'd misread just how calm Ravi was. He had the distinct impression that he was looking at a smooth surface hiding jagged edges. And it had taken him all day to pick up on it, when he really ought to have seen it sooner. His com wasn't any more superhuman than the rest of them.

"Ravi," he said incredulously, "you can't possibly be blaming yourself for this, are you?"

The gaze that finally rose to his was anguished. "You told me they were going to take it away, and I didn't—"

"Goddess, there was nothing else we could've done! You were right. It would only have caused more problems if I'd tried to hide a damn lightship from the ziggurat, and I'm sorry it took me so long to come to that conclusion. And, since I'm apologizing"—embarrassment flamed in his face— "I should also say that I'm sorry for trying to make you do something so foolish as a favor to me. That was idiotic. And I'm glad you knew better than to listen." He gulped, and hoped Ravi wasn't tired of his apologies for being an idiot. If they had any sort of future, there were going to be many more apologies in it.

Ravi's expression was blank. He folded his hands and looked at Lio. "You're not angry."

"Of course I'm angry! But not at you. I'm angry at—" He flapped a hand toward the window, trying to indicate the horrible irony of the universe that had stolen his lightship.

Infinitesimally, Ravi's mouth twitched. But not with a smile. His entire expression disintegrated and Lio caught a glimpse of an exhausted, desperate, guilt-ridden com who had been holding it together for his crew all day. Ravi crumpled down to the desk, head cushioned by his arms.

Lio rose and was halfway around the furniture barrier separating him from Ravi before he thought better of it. "Ah, I know I just apologized for being an inappropriate recruit, but...can I be inappropriate again?"

Ravi mumbled something that didn't make it through the cage of his arms. Lio knelt beside the chair, dragged him off the desk, and folded him tight into his arms. Ravi buried his face in the curve of Lio's neck. As much as it hurt to see him like this, there was a tiny relief in feeling like he could offer some comfort, be of some use, mean something to someone without accomplishing anything.

They stayed locked together like that until Lio's back started to ache. Gently, he touched a kiss to Ravi's ear and pulled back a little. "This isn't your fault. No one thinks it is. Including me."

"I can't believe this happened. We lost the whole fucking thing." Ravi swiped a hand across his eyes. "And I don't know what to do now. I'm supposed to have a plan to take this crew to the next level."

He climbed from the floor and took Ravi's hand, tugging gently. "Have you been out of this room all afternoon? Eaten anything?"

With a little more cajoling, he got Ravi into the mess hall. He heated up dinner leftovers in the frighteningly new and unstained kitchen and set a plate in front of Ravi. The room was empty, so he took the risk of sitting down as close as he could get without climbing right into his lap.

"You know," Lio began quietly, "at least we're still together. All of us, I mean. If anyone can get the crew to rebound and keep going, it's you."

Ravi picked at a square of cornbread. "We had momentum, but...I don't know, now."

Lio couldn't help but touch him. He stroked knotted muscles in Ravi's shoulders and settled his hand at the nape of his neck. "It's a bad day," he murmured. "But it will be a little better tomorrow. And a little better the day after that."

"How is it that you ended up being the least demoralized person I talked to today?"

"I don't know about that. Jossen is very excited that we have furniture in the lounge."

Ravi snorted, and then looked at him, his expression drawn into a quizzical frown. "Guess I thought you'd be the most torn up."

"I just...I decided I haven't quite given up on the lightship yet." He'd spent years searching, and it couldn't be a coincidence that he was assigned to Opalina in the end. Somehow, that lightship was meant to be his. The certainty of it was illogical, but if there was anyone he might risk attempting to explain himself to, it was Ravi.

"I don't have a plan yet," he continued. "But...perhaps this sounds childish, but I know where I'm meant to be, and somehow it will happen. It seems to me that the most unlikely thing was finding it in the first place. And now it's found. That can't possibly be the end of it."

Ravi's knee nudged his beneath the table. "Not childish. Fearless," he said softly, and the word brought with it such sun-dappled memories that it heated Lio's skin.

He smiled and slid his hand over Ravi's thigh. "Still can't stop going after things I want." The smile grew to a grin, his gaze still pinned to Ravi's. "And so far, that's led to me fucking a gorgeous man in a Mastali lightship. I'd say we're winning at life."

Sputtering laughter escaped Ravi, and then he smiled in that devastating way he had of somehow looking both shy and flustered and dazzled and hopeful in the same expression. Lio wanted so badly to be the sort of man who deserved that look.

Safely hidden beneath the table, he slipped his hand into Ravi's for the rest of the time they sat in the mess hall. He didn't dare say it aloud yet, but he was beginning to think that Ravi was the other dream the goddesses had placed in his path. All he had to do was find a way back to the lightship, and he could have both.