Whispered Dark

"Nineteen minutes," Kate said.

She was awake before the words were. The warning had come up through her sleep whole — the place and the time already folded into it, nothing to chase, nothing to piece together. They used to arrive broken, and she used to wake gasping and assemble them while the minutes bled out. Most of them arrived finished now.

Across the passage a cot creaked, and by the time Kate had found her boots the hatch was open and Chelsea stood in it, dressed, sidearm on, one side of her hair flat from the pillow. Two years had worn the fumbling out of her.

"Where?"

"The old dock. Under the number two fuel cradle." Kate pulled her boots on in the dark. "It's a small one."

"Nineteen minutes." Chelsea was already at the wall panel, keying the channel, but her eyes held on Kate a half-second longer than the work needed. "You've never given me nineteen."

"It came early."

Chelsea let it go. There wasn't time not to. "Control, this is Park. Breach call. Old dock, lower level, under the two cradle. Nineteen-minute window."

"Copy, Park." The duty officer didn't ask her to confirm. Didn't ask for a sensor cross-check, or a second source, or whether the child was sure. "Clearing the dock now."

Nobody had written that change down anywhere. Their first month here, the watch had made Kate repeat herself three times and then run their own sweep before they'd clear a section, and the sweep took eleven minutes, and a rigger had paid for those eleven minutes with most of a hand. Nobody swept first anymore.

***

The outpost had one real corridor, a long cold spine with everything else hanging off it, and at this hour the spine belonged to boots. The deck plates rang differently over the aft third where the insulation had been pulled. Garrison moving aft in pairs with seal kits and burn units. Somebody's gloves had been tucked behind a pipe run and left there long enough to go stiff. A hundred-some people this far out on the fringe, and by now every one of them could do this in their sleep. Most of them had.

Lucas was at the section hatch with the burn team, tank already on his back, faceplate up. The old scarring along his jaw caught the worklight when he turned.

"Under the cradle?" he said.

"The near end," Kate said. "Left of the drain."

"Left of the drain." He nodded, slow, and turned to his crew. "You heard her — near end, left of the drain, short strokes. And nobody steps back, whatever it looks like."

"Short strokes," one of the burn team said, already moving.

Nobody on the burn team looked at anybody else. Two years ago they would have.

Chelsea put Kate in the dock control box, behind the blast glass, and went down the ladder herself to take the dock apart the only way that helped — power off the cradles, the fuel lines blown down and locked, the section's air crashed to a whisper so whatever came through would have nothing to ride. Her hands moved through the isolation panel without hurrying.

Rylee came into the box with the garrison lieutenant and took the room in two looks, one for the board, one for Kate.

"Count," she said.

"Dock's clear," the lieutenant said. "Twenty-two out."

"Twenty-two." Rylee set the number down somewhere inside herself and kept it. She walked to the glass. The glass had a strip of tape across a chip in the corner.

Below, the dock sat empty under the floods, cradles throwing long shadows across the deck. Kate watched the place where it would open. Nobody had taught her how to do this.