Lio built himself a creaky throne out of crates and flopped sideways into it, feet dangling over one makeshift armrest. The rest of the crew trickled into the lounge after him. Ravi, with his efficient plans and never-ending checklists, had driven them like mules for seven awful days. Lio had strained every muscle in his back as they carried all the recyclable junk down to the mag lane for retrieval hovs. His muscles were nothing but pulled taffy, and it didn't help that Ravi and Orvaska had kept jogging past him like tall, sweaty, tireless automatons. Ravi had lapped him at least three times between the mag lane and Opalina and looked good doing it. Which somehow made it worse.

Teres ambled over and collapsed half on top of him, ignoring his bleating when her heavy braids smacked his face. "Little Goddess," she groaned, "I swear I was this close to just rolling myself down the mountain to rest with the trash. Shove over, Lio"

"I don't have anywhere to move," he grumbled. The others claimed spots nearby. They were a chorus of limping, groaning recruits who had barely survived the morning's cleaning battle. Even the twins joined the group, or at least positioned themselves within earshot. Onfenka sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, toying with one of the fidget puzzles she always carried. Her brother stretched out near her, a stone-faced bodyguard.

"At least that's the last of it," Rosareen said, twirling her long hair around a hand.

"How do you know that was all of it?" he asked.

"Because Jossen announced that they applied for inspection, and they'll send someone from the ziggurat any day now. He said so this morning. Lio, I swear you don't bring your brain with you in the mornings." Rosareen lifted the miniature camera crane she'd somehow constructed from junk and pointed it at him.

"Since when have we started paying attention to Jossen?" he asked. He expected a round of laughter, but only Aziri cackled, and no one else joined him. Lio squirmed further up from where Teres had him pocketed so that he could see everyone's faces. "What?" he demanded, staring around. They couldn't possibly be picking Jossen's side over his.

Duhar gave him a nervous look but piped up. "Com Endessen said we ought to give Jossen more of a chance."

"I think," rumbled Orvaska from where he sat beside his sister, "it's good to have a com willing to challenge this place. The way it runs. Sloppy. Disgraceful." He made a flicking motion with one hand, as if he were shooing the rest of them away. The twins had been at Opalina for two months now, and the disdain Lio suspected Orvaska held for the outpost seemed to have spread to include the crew.

"Why are you still here, then?" Aziri never missed an opportunity to snipe at Orvaska.

"Wait," Lio broke in, trying to stave off another one of their ugly flare ups. "Duhar, when did Com Endessen talk to you about Jossen? Or did I miss that announcement as well?"

"He mentioned it in my interview."

"He said pretty much the same in mine," Teres added.

No one had said anything about interviews before this. Lio cocked his head at her. "He interviewed you? Why?"

She shrugged one shoulder and opened her mouth, but Rosareen answered before she could. "I think it's what he does to get to know a new crew. Really, it's a smart move. Get to know your audience, one-on-one, all that. He asked a lot of interesting questions."

Wedged against the crate, his already tender back was stinging. "How many of you has he interviewed?" He scanned the circle of faces, counting all the half-guilty nods. Ravi had pulled each one sometime over the course of the last week. Everyone except him.

"That must mean you're next," Teres said. She elbowed him good-humoredly. "I guess he knows to save the troublemakers for last."

"Best for last, you mean." The reply came easily, automatically, but it didn't match what he felt. Of course Ravi wasn't going to interview him. Their com could barely stand to look at him. Maybe this was what it would feel like for the rest of the time they were both at Opalina. Ravi winning over all his friends and ignoring Lio. Slowly shutting him out, making him as invisible here as he was everywhere else.

If it didn't matter what he did, he could at least stop trying to repair things with his actions. He'd lost plenty of time for his own research because he was diligently completing whatever horrible task Ravi dreamt up for him, and it seemed to make no difference to their new com. And he wasn't going to apologize for a mistake he hadn't known he was making. He couldn't even rightly call that night a mistake, because it was wholly an accident. A bad coincidence, for which he was apparently going to be shunned and punished indefinitely.

"Everybody!" Yorune's delighted greeting rang ahead of her as she barreled into the lounge. "You're all here!"

Even Aziri smiled when Yorune appeared. Lio shook off the clouds of his bad mood and extended a hand to receive one of her enthusiastic, palm-stinging high-fives. "The Goddesses saw fit to bless us, and Com Endessen gave us the rest of the day free," he said.

"I saw the trash piled at the end of the mag lane. It looks like you all had quite the morning." Yorune plopped onto the floor and began rooting around in her bag. "I'm sorry I missed it. But when I was at the ziggurat, one of the recruits said she had deliveries set aside for us, and she let me bring them back." She withdrew a long, flat rectangle bundled in canvas out of the bag.

Duhar scrambled forward. "Please tell me that's for me!"

Yorune laughed. "This is for you, Duhar."

He was already clawing at the twine and unfolding the canvas, revealing what looked like a black slab of plastic.

"Stunning," muttered Aziri. He had a mastered the ability to sound as if he were rolling his eyes every time he spoke.

"It is stunning," whispered Duhar. He handled the plastic sheet like it was a goddess relic. "The Storm Harvester console. I can't believe I finally got it. Let's see..." He traced a quick design across the top of the board, and it blinked to life, a rainbow forest of small dots springing up across the surface.

"That looks way too complicated to be any fun," Teres said.

Duhar let out a happy sigh. "It's complicated, all right. And this is only the center console. The full thing has two more pieces. But this is the only controller you can use to really play Supercraft Invasion 3000—"

Lio glanced surreptitiously at Onfenka and Orvaska while his friend prattled on. Supercraft might by the supreme game in Duhar's world, but Orvaska had reacted badly when he'd discovered the game was based on Vashyan dominion forces. None of them knew much about the twins, but even a cursory glance at their washed-out pallor told everyone in the territory that they carried more than a little Vashyan blood.

Yorune seemed to be thinking similarly, because she dove back into her bag and pulled out something new to distract from Duhar's blissful obsessing. "And this is for Aziri!" She flapped a few laminated pages clipped to a ring.

Aziri took it from her and nodded slowly at the pages. "Hand copied. Extraordinary." He patted the shiny pages and set it facedown to the side, giving Lio a tiny nod. They would discuss it later.

"And," trumpeted Yorune, "one last. This is for Lio." She half-stood to reach him, stretching to drop what looked like a glittering gold marble into his palm. First Goddess. Another one.

"Open it, open it!" Rosareen said. She scooted closer, and the rest of the crew leaned in to peer at the glassy sphere. Swallowing back his sigh, Lio pressed his thumb to the surface, light pulsing outward as it read his biometrics. The glass fractured and uncurled like flower petals, fanning out to reveal a hologram of an old-fashioned, balloon born airship. Just as he recognized it, the hologram began to shift, morphing through more and more updated versions of so-called lightships until it expanded into a needle-nosed model with a swollen belly. The latest design from Enlightenment units. A gleaming script appeared over the model, inviting him to watch the launch of the newest lightship at a private party, hosted by Archcom Huseda.

"Wow." Duhar broke the awed silence. "You get a lot of invites from the ziggurat."

Heat prickled in his cheeks. Lio hastily closed his hand, extinguishing the hologram. "Well, I'm definitely not going to that particular event. Far too many dull conversations, and it's depressing watching their attempts at a lightship crash."

"But maybe this one will work!" Yorune said.

Aziri snorted. "A wing fell off the last one before they even got it off the ground. And the one before that crashed midway through the Great Mastali Course."

"As I said. Depressing." Lio went to pocket the invitation, but a soft voice stopped him.

"Can I have that?" Onfenka asked. She wouldn't meet his eyes, but her gaze was fixated on his hand. He shrugged and handed the device to Teres to pass on, aware of Orvashka's watchful glare. The man had to be the undisputed champion of silent glowering.

Lio hurried for some suitable deflection from the current topic. His friends knew his family was wealthy and they mostly seemed to forgive him for it, but sometimes he was uncomfortably aware of rubbing it in their faces. "Yorune," he called, "how did your test go?"

She waved a breezy hand, her smile serene. "Well enough. Or perhaps terribly. I've taken four of these career-selection assessments and they just keep telling me I ought to go into completely different career tracks. I've never gotten the same results twice. They're a complete joke." She nodded at Teres, the only other crew member who'd taken the third year evaluations meant to help them decide on a track after their service years.

Teres let out a soft half laugh, half sigh. If he hadn't been sitting right next to her, Lio might not have noticed how tense she was. But as the conversation moved on and Yorune shared silly stories of her contradictory career placements, Lio could see his friend twitching. A moment later, she slid off the crates and muttered, "I'm going for a walk."

A walk in the afternoon when the heat was highest was nonsensical. Something was bothering her. Lio exchanged a glance with Aziri, and then stood and stretched. In wordless agreement they drifted after Teres, leaving the rest of the crew to chatter, or in the case of the twins, silently stare.

They caught up to her outside the main entry, where she was trudging in the direction of the Amphitheater. He fell in beside her, Aziri walking on her opposite side. She ignored both of them.

Sweat eased down Lio's back and his thighs burned by the time they reached the sloping sides of the Amphitheater. Thankfully, Teres dropped down to sit at the edge, her long legs dangling in front of her. Lio mimicked her posture and leaned back on his wrists.

Silence always made him squirm, and it was only a matter of time before the urge to speak was climbing up his throat. He nudged Teres. "You know, those tests are shit. Might as well pull a career selection out of a hat. They don't know anything about you."

Teres finally spoke. "So everyone keeps saying."

"You never mentioned what your results were," Aziri said. Teres was almost two years in at Opalina, but she'd already completed another year with some other unit, which meant she was close to applying for career positions. It was an arduous process, but in a strange way he envied her. His family was never going to allow him to spend two full years at Opalina.

She looked down at her toes, her hands limp in her lap. "I didn't take the test."

Lio frowned, his confusion mirrored on Aziri's face. Teres had gone to Raffaret for a full day last month to take her assessment, and returned all smiles. She loathed all of the reading required, but she'd gotten through it, and she'd seemed relieved. And now he felt like an idiot for paying so little attention.

"What happened?" Aziri asked.

"I just didn't want to. What's the point? I didn't feel like breaking my brain to make it through all those malfing words, just for a stupid list of jobs I have no actual shot at getting."

"You don't know that—" Lio started, but she swiped aside his protest.

"Yes, I do!" Her voice was scorching. "I never even finished my school certs, Lio. And even if a career placement was willing to overlook that, which the good ones aren't, my resume is fucked. Removed from one unit for poor performance and dumped here. No one will take a recommendation from Opalina seriously."

"Well, your first unit was obviously led by an idiot, and this one is...ah...unique," Lio said. Teres clicked her tongue at him, but he forged on. "And who knows, maybe Opalina is entering a new age."

"Suzerain Ass-kicker might turn it around," Aziri chimed in.

"I don't have enough time even if he does. My service years are up, my specialty scores are so bad I can't file for extension, and I'm supposed to be applying for positions soon." Teres scraped the soles of her boots against the rock, sending a spray of debris down the incline. It didn't sound promising when she talked about it like that.

"Then..." Aziri edged into the question, "what are you going to do?"

Her shoulders slumped. "I don't know. Go back home, I guess. Figure something out. My sisters are doing well, so at least my parents have that to crow about. And every family has their shitty disappointments, don't they?"

Lio swallowed, and waved his hand. "Hello. You're looking at the one in my family." Teres smiled at him through a sheen of tears, and he squeezed her hand. "Careful now, you're going to make Aziri cry too."

"Shut up," Aziri managed, blinking furiously. Thorny and rude and combative as he was, Aziri couldn't seem to help himself if anyone else's eyes so much as watered.

Teres laughed and brushed the back of a hand across her cheeks. "Remember when we watched that movie about the dying girl who fell in love with that criminal android—"

"You're both terrible!" Aziri howled, flinging his arms around her. Lio scooted closer to them, adding his own limbs to their tangled pile in spite of the heat. For a minute they just sat in the middle of the desolate mountains, trying to hold each other together.

It made his throat ache with the thought of how much he would lose. He couldn't pretend that he could stay close with Aziri and Teres once he was plucked out of their world. His friends, who liked him well enough without his shiny trappings.

"Lio." Teres shifted to shake him loose. "Your holowatch."

The band flashed warning orange, and he groaned aloud. Alina was calling again, and he'd already ignored her last two attempts to talk to him. With a sigh, he levered himself up from the ground to get out of earshot. He was still grimacing when he swiped the imager up and saw his sister's face in the heat-haze.

"Finally!" she barked. "Mamina has been trying to speak to you for days, Lio!"

Guilt spiked in his stomach. He'd meant to call their mother back and forgotten. "I was busy."

"Did you get the invitation?"

"Yes, but I'm not—"

"You're going, Lio. The family needs you there. Alonso was supposed to make it out and had to cancel, and two of us declining in a row will look like a personal snub."

He dragged a hand through his greasy hair. "I'm working, Alina. Just make up some reason I can't be there and send a fruit basket."

"Don't give me that bullshit. You're already in the region, and you're going. Whatever little project you've got at Opalina is not an excuse. And call Mamina, would you!"

She hung up on him before he could sputter an answer and left him glaring at his forearm. He swung around and paced back toward the Amphitheater.

"Everything alright?" Teres asked.

He smiled and shrugged. "Mostly."

Aziri leaned around Teres to look at him. "I can't believe you programmed your holowatch to flash a biohazard warning when your sister calls."

Teres let out a stifled laugh, and Lio grinned as he slid onto his back, heedless of the dirt. He couldn't get any worse than he already was, caked in sweat and grime and a fine layer of dust. "Trust me, if you'd met her, you'd agree."

But they wouldn't ever meet her. Or his brother, or his parents. He had two separate lives, and this one only had a few last gasps left in it.