Prologue

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       “Mike-two-one-niner is approved for priority launch,” said Lieutenant Naomi Holloway. “Say back.”

       “Mike-two-one-niner, priority launch.” Ensign Bobby Camus typed for a moment, entering the queue cut for the corvette, then resumed the chat he’d been having with the other ensign: “You see that Lopez header?”

       “Oh yeah,” said Diego Medina. “Should have counted for two, he knocked that defender all the way into the net.”

       “You think it should have been a foul?”

       “Hell no. He just brushed the guy.”

       Camus laughed. “I mean, I’m glad it didn’t get called, but that guy looked like he got hit by a truck.”

       “Brushed by a truck. It’s not a foul to weigh a hundred kilos.” 

       Lieutenant Holloway listened to their conversation feeling vaguely cross. They were talking about the 2274 World Cup, which had occurred nearly six years ago, but the broadcasts were only now reaching Aurora, where the games were billed as “live.” The broadcasts were transmitted from Earth in real time as each game was played, so in that sense it was true, they were as live as they could be. But Holloway just couldn’t get excited about watching a match that she knew was actually six years old. Hell, the 2274 Cup wasn’t even the most recent—the 2278 tournament was already two years past. 

       Holloway didn’t like talking about sports. As an athlete herself—well, a former athlete—she got especially annoyed when people (almost always men) took pride in being sports fans. It was as though when their team won, they themselves won—like they had somehow earned it. It was, she thought, pathetic.

       Holloway and the two ensigns stood at their consoles in the control room of Ascension Station. Glass walls overlooked the 12-story hangar, a cavernous corridor that curved up and out of sight to either side. On the floor of the hangar far below, automated tractors, which had been towing queued ships toward the elevators, now began to pull the ships aside, making way for the corvette. Holloway wondered absently why the Navy needed a priority launch. 

       “You following the Cup, ma’am?” Camus asked Holloway.

        “Not really,” she said. Then, annoyed at herself for equivocating: “No.”  

       “Oh, that’s right, you’re a bolo fan, huh?” 

       “Mmm.” She wasn’t merely a fan. 

       “What do you think of—” Camus broke off to speak into his mic: “ATC, go ahead P-one-six.” He listened for a moment and then Holloway saw him smirk and shake his head. “Do you need emergency medical assistance? … Acknowledge, no medical. Pulling you out of the queue and transferring you to arrival elevator. ATC out.” 

       “Puker?” Medina said. 

       “Two in one,” Camus said. “Niece and nephew.” 

       Spinning down—when a ship rode the elevator to the center of the rotating colony tube—was gradual but could still wreak havoc on the vestibular system if you weren’t used to it. As Navy recruits put it: spin down, throw up. 

       Still, it was hard to feel too bad for someone rich enough to have a ship for private use. Probably one of the mining families, Holloway thought. 

       “Y’all catch any of the new pro bolo league?” Camus asked. 

       “More like pro bono league,” Medina said. 

       “Huh?”

       “Pro bono.”

       “The hell does ‘bono’ mean?” 

       “Jesus, Bobby, read a book. It means they don’t get paid anything.” 

       “They’re semi-pro,” Holloway said, feeling a bit defensive about her beloved sport. “They all have day jobs. There’s only, what, ninety thousand people in the colony? Just not enough market for a big-time league. But did you hear they’re going to stream games back to Earth?” 

       “Yeah,” Camus said. “Kinda wild to think of them paying to watch our sports. You think it’ll catch on?” 

       “I don’t know,” Holloway said. “I hope so. You ask me, it’s a great spectator sport. But maybe the zero-g thing is just too weird if you’ve never—”

       She broke off as an incoming call popped up in the center of her screen:  

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Hóngxīng Shěng Traffic Control 

Captain Yang Tengfei, Director

Alert level: Non-Urgent

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       She stared at the pop-up, feeling jarred. Generally, communications between Hongzin and Aurora were confined to high-level diplomatic channels. This channel between the two control rooms had been set up to handle any issues with the shuttle service, but over time everything had become sufficiently automated to eliminate the need for personal communication. While her training had covered this channel, in her two years here it had never been used. 

       The “non-urgent” tag also seemed incongruous. She was both apprehensive and curious. 

       As she accepted the call, she realized she couldn’t remember if there was a particular in-call protocol, so she just said, “Lieutenant Holloway, Ascension Traffic Control.”

       Captain Yang appeared on her screen on a digital white background, presumably to prevent her from learning anything about their hangar operations. Her system did the same thing. The captain was thin with soft features and black hair parted sharply down the middle (which struck her as a strange choice, but then, she knew nothing about Chinese hairstyles). He was wearing a Hongzin Navy work uniform with a steel blue coat and a white shirt open at the collar. 

       “This is Captain Yang, director of Hóngxīng Shěng Traffic Control.” The computer translated his words to English in real time while capturing his actual voice and tone, which were friendly despite the formality of his introduction. “I’m hoping you can help us understand what has happened. The regularly scheduled shuttle arrived today, flight Alpha-two-one, tail number Charlie-Delta-three-eight-five. The manifest said there were three people on board but it was empty.” He repeated the last point with an almost embarrassed smile: “The shuttle had no passengers.”

       Some kind of clerical error, obviously, Holloway thought. “Can you give me the flight number again?” 

       “Alpha-two-one.”

       She typed it in, pulling up the logs. “Confirm tail number Charlie-Delta-three-eight-five?”

       “Confirmed.” 

       “Departed Aurora last night, passengers Collins, Peng, and Xuam?” 

       “Correct. Except, as I said, they weren’t on board. We checked the verbal confirmation from Ascension. The operator confirmed three passengers. I personally listened to the audio.” 

       “And I assume you’ve double-checked the tail number of the vessel itself, to make sure it matches the logs?”   

       “I’m standing next to the shuttle now.”

       “Huh.” Holloway paused, thinking. “Was the arrival on time?” 

       “Yes. Right on time. I’ve reviewed the transponder logs and flight recorder and it appears the shuttle came directly from Aurora to Hongzin. No deviations.”

       “Okay, let me pull up the boarding video…” She did so and fast-forwarded to where she wanted. It was against policy to share hangar video with the other two colonies, so she described what she was watching. “I have one man and two women boarding. No crew, obviously. … Hatch is closing. … Okay, let’s fast-forward from there… Shuttle is being towed… And it’s entering the elevator up to the launch platform.” She paused it and looked back at Yang. “Three people definitely boarded and they didn’t get off. Sooo…I don’t know, maybe there was some kind of mix-up at your end?” 

       “The thing is, I watched our videos as well. I saw the shuttle enter our airlock and watched it in the hangar right up until the moment I checked it myself. I can assure you, there was no one on board when it entered the airlock. So either they found suits and took a walk or they got off before they left Ascension.” 

       He was smiling, but now Holloway’s mind was racing. She’d watched the shuttle enter the elevator with the passengers on board. After that point, disembarking would require the ship to be diverted; that would be in the log, which it wasn’t. Also, removing all three passengers? That would imply something had gone wrong with the ship, so the flight would have been canceled. She couldn’t imagine any scenario that involved removing all passengers and launching the shuttle anyway. 

       So there had to be a mix-up on the Chinese end. Yet Yang was pretty convincing. 

       Holloway still needed to check the rest of the video—the 15 minutes between the shuttle entering the elevator and launching. She needed to do every bit of due diligence, and she needed to be very careful in her communication with Yang. Because if this wasn’t a mix-up…well, then she didn’t know what it was, but it was above her pay grade.