Lio kept part of his attention on the spot where the mag lane unceremoniously ended and the rest of his interest on the half-assembled locator wand in his lap. He launched himself out of the hov as soon as it stopped, eager to test the wand. Snapping the remaining pieces of the handle in place, he examined his new treasure. The treasure that would find even greater treasure.

It looked like a metal spider attached to the end of a fishing rod, but the supplier had assured him many times it was the finest model available. The arachnid-esque legs were sensitive enough to pick up Mastali alloy deep beneath the crust of rock and dirt. This was the sort of toy that only Enlightenment units were allowed. His brother's connections in the capitol had been helpful in getting around the permits. Never mind that Alonso would string him by his heels from the ramparts of the family estate if he found out that Lio had name-dropped him.

The walk from the mag strip back to the outpost gave him ample opportunity to test it. He pressed his thumb to the small scanner and the handle controls blinked to life. A faint buzz emitted from the spidery end, and Lio swept it slowly back and forth over a patch of dirt.

He didn't stray too far from the trail, but even keeping that limit in mind, the trip took him twice as long as it would have normally. But it was pleasant, a leisurely stroll with an edge of anticipation, knowing that at any moment the wand might alert him to the presence of an artifact. The heat had receded to a summery warmth, and the sky was cloudless periwinkle deepening to purple, promising a clear night. Perhaps he could convince Aziri and Teres to stargaze later.

The bulbous rocks that surrounded Opalina's entrance came into view, and he sighed. After a bit of wrangling, he managed to collapse the wand and store it in his knapsack. No luck on his first attempt. But there was plenty of desert to explore. If he could get himself out of bed early tomorrow, he could go to the Amphitheater before the others wandered in and interrupted him.

Lio cranked the wheel beside the entrance just enough that he could slip sideways through the doorway. He moved down the tunnel, keeping close to the wall for a few steps until his eyes adjusted, and trotted to his room.

He couldn't help but grin once inside. His quarters were tinier than his closet back in the capitol, but he loved it. Elevated in one corner, his messy bed held court alongside a painting depicting an aerial view of the famous Fennec canyons. The other walls were covered in sturdy shelves that housed a small rack of clothes, assorted baubles and crystals, a miniature First Goddess fountain, and a vast array of texts on the Mastali he'd collected over the years. He laid the locator wand on a low shelf and stole back into the hallway, knapsack in hand.

The sound of voices led him to the lounge, where the whole crew lay sprawled across the makeshift crate-furniture.

"My nails are destroyed!" Rosareen moaned.

Duhar winced from his spot leaning against the wall. "Can you pull a muscle from washing dishes?"

"Hello, hello, hello," Lio sang.

Aziri, stretched flat across two crates in the middle of the room, sat up sharply and slammed his boots into the ground. "Where the fuck have you been, Lio?"

"I had an appointment. But don't worry, I had time to pick up some essentials." He flipped the top of his knapsack back and dumped the contents out across the top of the nearest empty crate. The crew crowded around, even the twins edging close enough to sample the offerings. They'd forgotten to include any sort of fresh fruit in the last supply order, and the crew had been horribly deprived.

"Clementines!" cried Yorune.

"Lio, I love you." Duhar made a pouch out of his shirt and scooped an assortment of fruit into it.

Teres held a nectarine to her nose and inhaled, closing her eyes. "Where did you get all this?"

"I was in the capitol. Family stuff." He scooped up a pomegranate and approached the only person who hung back, arms crossed and still scowling. "Aziri," he wheedled. "Be nice."

Aziri looked particularly bad-tempered, even for him. His black eyebrows were practically glued together. "While you were off sampling fruit and sunning yourself, we ended up scrubbing the damn mess hall, you idiot."

Lio laughed. "Why would you bother doing that?"

Teres spoke around a mouthful of nectarine. "The new com showed up, Lio. You should probably get ready...I don't think he'll give you a pass on coming back late."

"Joyous." Lio sighed. This was the third new com in his eight month stint at Opalina, and the beginning of their tenure was usually the worst. Most of them tried to pretend this was a real crew, and their little projects and attempts at rules invariably cut into his time researching the Mastali. They all gave up eventually, but while their delusions of grandeur lasted, it was beyond annoying. "Well, Com Erlyn didn't end up being so bad. What's this one like?"

Aziri shook his head and took the pomegranate. "Much worse. Jossen likes him."

"Shit," Lio said.

"Exactly." Teres stabbed the air with a nectarine-stained finger.

As if called by a stage cue, the door rumbled back, and Lio spun to face the worst subal ever employed by any ziggurat. His nemesis, the emperor of persnickety needling and shrill outrage. The human splinter.

"There you are, Alior," Jossen said.

Nobody but his mother and this atrocious excuse for a subal called him by his full name. Lio titled his head and made his voice syrupy. "So sorry I'm late. There was a family emergency last night. Everything's fine now, but I was regrettably delayed in—"

Jossen's face was impassive. "Tell your story to the new com. You're to report to him right away."

"First thing in the morning, I'll be sure to pop over and—"

"Now, Alior."

He made a dramatic farewell bow to his friends. "Yorune, save me a clementine." With a wink, he stepped back into the hallway. Unfortunately, Jossen stayed with him.

"Muster room," grunted the subal.

"Terrible spot for my dust allergies," Lio murmured, just to rile him. Normally, Jossen would already be shouting about abuses of dispensation privileges and spraying everyone with spittle. And then he'd avoid Lio entirely for several days, which suited everyone very well.

Instead, the subal's lips curled back over mossy teeth arrayed in a smile. "Keep making the jokes, Alior. Our new com is going to love them."

The truly ominous thing was how pleased he sounded. Jossen had barely summoned two words for him since he and Aziri had jokingly sent out an advert claiming Opalina was a reclusive luxury resort so they could watch the tourists struggle to find the entrance. If Jossen took it upon himself to stand at the edge of the mountain shrieking at everyone who bumbled up from the mag lane, that wasn't Lio's fault. It was a silly idea, innocent entertainment. Lio had been drunk when he bought all the adverts and he had quite responsibly canceled them all once he shook the hangover.

Jossen poked the pane on the muster room door and waited for him to enter. They never used the space, and it somehow looked even worse than usual, with boxes and files spread across the old table and nearly every chair. Lio watched the door to the com's office. It was propped open, and he could hear someone rustling around, likely trying to unearth the desk somewhere beneath all the papers in their cardboard coffins.

"I've brought Alior, sir!"

Lio whispered under his breath, "Well done. Have a commendation, Jossen."

"What was that?" Jossen snapped.

"Nothing." He pasted on a winning smile and blasted it at the man who stepped out of the office.

"Glad to hear you made—" The com stopped; his dark eyes gone wide. Lio grabbed the nearest chair to keep from stumbling backward.

Jossen was somehow oblivious to the electric charge coursing through the room. "This is the recruit I mentioned, sir. Alior, meet Com Endessen."

Ravi, because it was Ravi, standing right in the middle of Opalina with a com's three rings on his uniform, took a breath. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "You're Alior." His arms twisted tight across his chest, like he was holding his ribs in.

"Hello," Lio said hoarsely. Holy flying fuck.

"You were meant to be back by night-eight yesterday, recruit," blustered Jossen. "Why don't you explain to the com what you were doing?"

Fuckity-fuck-fuck. This had to be a horrible dream. But he couldn't attempt to explain with Jossen right there. "I...what I was doing...ah...was..." He coughed. Ravi was perhaps the only person in the region who knew quite intimately what he was doing last night. "There was"—he forced the words out—"a family emergency?"

Ravi's jaw clenched, a muscle twitching. His gaze turned decidedly deadly. "I see." He didn't relax his position. "And did you attempt to notify your subal of this...delay?"

"That may have slipped my mind."

"You missed quite a bit of work," Ravi said, voice still a bit strangled.

Jossen chimed in. "But we did save a task for you, Alior. It's only fair."

"The subal tells me the outpost uses a sewage tank system that needs to be pumped into transport cannisters."

Lio smiled shakily. "Well, yes, but the whole system is automated. No need for anyone to do anything with that."

"But it's been malfing during storms," Jossen helpfully interjected. Lio imagined windmill chopping him in the throat. "I told the com about it, and he had the idea to shut down the autopump so you could fix the programming." Jossen's hideous smile grew. "It's been off since earlier this afternoon, so I imagine we'll need it back online. Tonight."

There was nothing he could do. If they'd stopped canning the sewage for half the day, it was undoubtedly backed up and filthy and awful and they were going to make him go down there and fiddle with the pumps. And Ravi was certainly not going to save him from it. The com looked as though he wanted to drag him down to the tanks and drown him.

"You'll also be getting a violation write-up added to your file," Ravi said. His chin jutted forward in challenge. "Of course, if you can give me evidence of this emergency, I'll retract the write-up. Until then, it stays."

Anyone else, any other person in the entire territory, and he could easily have supplied a barrage of manufactured evidence to back up his story. But Ravi knew perfectly well he couldn't come up with anything real.

Ravi turned from him abruptly and disappeared back into the office. Dry mouthed, Lio let a delighted Jossen prod him out of the room and down the hall toward the shallow stairs that accessed the sewage tanks. He was utterly numb. Couldn't even summon the appropriate snark while Jossen was shoving a flashlight and a packet of tools into his hands.

A dank, wet, foul smell engulfed him as he descended toward where the half-buried tanks lay. It was as horrible a task as Ravi and Jossen had intended it to be. He was a fair hand at wiring and structuring, but Jossen had messed with the coding too, and that was Aziri's gig. It took him forever to reset and reprogram everything, and all the while the oppressive smell wrapped around him. Then he had to connect the mess of loose tubes to new cannisters, run tester fluid, and log a report. He might die here, a tragic death from shock and fumes, the only fitting end for his mortification. And First Goddess, his shoes were ruined.

But the worst of it by far was the look on Ravi's face. Lio stopped working the wrench around one of the elbow hose connectors and groaned, burying his face in his arm. All of his wildly sweet memories of Ravi in bed were overwritten with the image of the com's barely suppressed horror at seeing him. Every tantalizing thought he'd indulged since tearing himself out of that bedroom, every hope he had not dared to linger in, all of it had just gone to absolute shit.