Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel

Author:Elizabeth Bonesteel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Late at night, when her conversation with Admiral Herrod had finally drawn to a close, Elena ducked into one of the small kitchens on Galileo’s lower level and pulled up a vid of her mother.

Over the years since Elena had left home, they had fallen into the habit of sending vid instead of chatting over live comms. Elena’s mother worked air traffic control, backing up the automated systems over the Alaskan Islands and the Chukchi Sea, and her ever-shifting schedule meant her free time rarely synced up with Elena’s. Elena was fond of her mother’s vids, full of randomness and acidic observations about people; Maggie Shaw had never much cared what people thought of her, and led her life with cheerful tactlessness. Elena had managed to pick up some of that attitude, although she had never quite managed her mother’s complete obliviousness; but the more important lesson her mother had taught was to trust her instincts. And right now, in the face of this fragile, ill-formed mission from which she would not return, Elena needed to remember that lesson.

The vid had arrived a few days after Budapest had left Io en route to their first cargo drop, and was little more than a laundry list of meaningless details her mother had forgotten to mention the last time they spoke. Elena watched as her mother, dressed in trousers and boots and kneeling in front of a flower bed, trowel in hand, ran down the mundane school accomplishments of Elena’s cousins. Elena tuned out the words, focusing instead on her mother’s hands and their methodical digging, her ungloved fingers growing grimier as she made room for seedlings. Her mother had always enjoyed starting gardens more than tending them, and Elena couldn’t remember if it was the right time of year to plant.

“Your uncle Mike said to remind you not to cross Bear,” Maggie said, cleaning some dirt out from under a thumbnail with brisk efficiency. “I don’t know what he means, really. Savosky’s a good person. Do you remember, when you were eighteen, and he brought his crew to dinner? There was that nice woman who was not as standoffish as the rest. I showed her my garden. She made polite noises, but she didn’t know a damn thing. People think they can fool you, don’t they?” She laughed. “Anyway. Mike is full of shit, as usual. He worries what everybody else thinks, and when I yell at him, he says he’s too tired to fight. I think some things need doing even when you’re tired, don’t you?” She dusted off her fingers. “Drop me a line when you can, love. Bye.”

Elena played the message three times, studying every moment. She did not resemble her mother. Her mother was short and slight, fine-featured and fair-haired and pretty, like the rest of the family. Elena didn’t look like any of them, not her uncle or her cousins or even her irritable, thin-lipped grandmother. It would have been easy to grow up feeling

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