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Never in a million years would Cass Eaerhart have expected to find herself hiding out in a farmhouse with a pack of nobles, diplomats, and high-ranking Crown military officers.
Then again, losing her captain and her entire crew to a bomb planted in an emergency supply pickup wasn't exactly something she saw coming, either. She didn't have much choice but to join up with the princess and her pack of runaways when they were the only survivors of the explosion, and since then their options have been a little limited by the Crown declaring them legally dead.
Cass has thought about reaching out to her family. Dad, Lydia, maybe Aunt Ethel. At the very least, they deserve to know she didn't just go out in a nuclear blast. At best, maybe they could get her the hell out of whatever this is becoming. The way the others talk, the way Prince talks, they're only going to find more trouble.
But she has to admit that Colonel Tuco, in her rare moments of lucidity, is probably right— announcing their survival would be suicide. As little as Cass normally trusts somebody with an accent that fancy on principle, Tuco knows what she's talking about. For the time being, they're all stuck here.
It's not like any of them are in any fit state to travel, anyway. The remains of the Andersen crashed into that dead field two weeks ago. All of them are still in a bad way.
Cass got off easy. She's healing from some nasty strain injuries and minor burns, but she's stopped coughing and Lorenzo doesn't think she'll have long-term damage beyond a chronic case of tendonitis, so long as she rests up.
Dunwich still coughs and wheezes whenever he walks for too long, or even when Cass manages to make him laugh. Tuco injured her spine; even if she gets to a point that she can manage without so much medication she can't think straight, she's going to need a wheelchair (they're already drawing up plans to fit the farmhouse porch with a ramp, once enough of them are well enough to work on it). Prince has been shut up in her room since she woke up, but she was shot and had a broken leg even before the bomb. Not to mention whatever mental breakdown it is she's having in there.
They're all lucky, really. They're still alive to be in pain and shock and grief. Well over a hundred other people didn't even get that. Cass's crew and Captain White didn't even get that.
Cass and the other seven are alive, and thanks to an old friend of hers and the sheer dumb luck of blowing up someplace close to Winthrop, they have shelter. When she suggested the old farm as a place to land, she'd been banking on Harper being willing to put them up and keep them hidden. She'd been right to. Harper and their son Jasper are off-planet, like usual, but they still haven't sold the place, and they've agreed to hold off for at least a few months while Cass and the others get their feet under them. So for the moment, they're also relatively safe.
When Cass talks to the others, she focuses on those things. If they want to keep surviving, they don't have a choice but to keep their spirits up. Like it or not, the eight of them have become a team. Just like on the Andersen, when they had to pump in tandem or suffocate in space, they don't have a choice but to work together. There'd been more than one reason she started singing an old work song then, and kept singing until everyone with an ounce of breath to spare joined in. Morale and coordination. They go hand in hand. You lose one and the effort splinters apart, and they can't afford that now any more than they could then.
So she tries to keep up morale. She says that they're lucky. She cracks jokes, points out the prettiness in the landscape and the comforts of the farmhouse, praises the stars that they're here. Thinking of Captain White, she invites them to play dusty old board games with her or share stories around drinks. She does her damnedest to keep smiling.
She mourns, too. Stars, does she mourn, both for her birth family and her chosen one. But that she does in private.
It's not like the others can help her mourn her crew. Their de facto leader, the girl sulking in the hallway bedroom and calling herself General White, has made it clear that she doesn't give a damn about their memories.
Cass heard along with all the others what Lady Snow Prince has decided to do— despite having considered herself a career peacemaker, she intends to start a war. Lorenzo had passed along the warning about calling her a general, explained, with great trepidation, that she considered the eight of them the seeds of a force that would kill King Cole. The idea is laughable. He's ruled the galaxy as implacably as a black hole for two millennia. In the time since they crashed, though, Cass has lost count of the times Prince has sent for the former Major Dunwich to answer some question or another about strategy or logistics or recruiting. Possible or not, Prince does seem determined to try it.
She understands her fury. They all lost everything they had left in that blast, and Prince lost a lot more even before that. She understands, too, probably better than Prince does, how much in the galaxy isn't right. She even understands needing a name other than the one you were born with. Maybe if it had just been the revenge quest and the identity change, Cass would stand behind her. But one thing stops her, makes bile rise up in her throat every time she thinks of it, makes her head spin with the stunning callousness of it. Because of all the names Prince could have chosen to adopt, she picked Cordelia White.
When Cass ventured to her room and confronted her about it (careful not to call her anything— from the look in her eye, Cass believed that she meant her threat about using any name but her captain's), Prince had just stared at her, hard and silent, chin lifted like the princess she'd been until recently. Cass had done her best to be gentle as she laid out the reasons a different name would be better. Captain White was nearly twenty years Prince's senior, she spoke nothing like how Prince does, and Prince didn't know the first thing about the kind of stellar storeship Captain White commanded. No one who knew Captain White or even worked on a ship would ever believe her lie.
She'd allowed herself a brief mention of the disrespect. Prince never even met Captain White, doesn't see her as anything but an alibi. She was Cass's captain, a devoted sister, a proud professional. She deserved better than to have her life taken over like this after death. She deserved to be laid to rest.
Prince waited for Cass to finish speaking. Then she straightened, clearly trying not to wince with the movement. "I've already considered the practical issues you've raised. By the time we're prepared to make ourselves known to the public, I will have addressed them."
Cass tilted her head, wary. "What about Captain White herself? Her memory?"
Prince seemed to deliberate, but her manner didn't soften. Cass got the sense she was thinking less of what to say and more of how to say it. "I'll tell you what I told Lorenzo." Her words were slow, careful. "Captain White ensured our survival. It seems only fair we offer her the same, in the way we're able."
The way she said it, it sounded more like a curse than an honor.
Besides, no matter how Cass thought of it, she couldn't imagine Captain White wanted to ensure Prince's survival. She has no idea what she knew about the bomb she carried, but before it went off it was set to be transferred onto the Andersen on Captain White's orders. The fact that it went off while it was still on the Huntsman, the fact that she sealed herself in with it… Cass would bet anything that Captain White was only trying to save her own crew.
Cass didn't know how to tell Prince that right now.
"It isn't fair," she said instead, low. "It isn't what she would have wanted. Fight for her memory, honor her sacrifice. I'll stand with you. But don't do it as if you're her."
Prince seemed to consider her. Cass couldn't have even guessed what was going on in her head. Finally, she looked out the window to the brown, frost-covered fields beyond, the wreckage of the Andersen still heaped there. "There are a great many luxuries none of us can afford anymore, Eaerhart. Sentimentality is one of them."
Cass drew in a sharp breath and opened her mouth.
Before she could speak, Prince said, "My orders regarding my name have not changed. If you don't have anything else to discuss, you may go." She didn't even look at Cass as she said it, though there was something odd in her tone.
If she'd stayed in the room, Cass would have only started shouting at her. Pissed as she was, she didn't want to test Prince's threats. She turned, teeth gritted, and left without another word.
She still hasn't called Prince anything at all. When she addresses her or speaks of her, she talks around any name. She'll keep doing it until she chooses something different. Cass feels for her in some way; she does. She can't imagine being so young and losing everything like this. She'll go along with her plans, even, at least for now— it isn't like she's got other options. But she refuses to call this rich, sheltered, barely-more-than-a-child by her captain's name.
Prince never heard Captain White's loud, braying laugh or saw the terrifying glare she leveled at new crew members who tried to cut corners at their jobs. She doesn't know about the picture she carried in her breast pocket of a brother who died two decades ago in Cole's army. She doesn't know how White talked about him in present tense, like he was still just a comms call away. Prince doesn't know how deeply she cared for her crew, what a brilliant leader she was, how she fought for their well-being. She doesn't care about any of that.
If she ever wants to make the kinds of changes she claims she's after, she's going to have to learn that she isn't a princess of the Empire anymore, and that not everything in the galaxy is hers for the taking.
The others seem uncertain of her plans, to different degrees. Brookes, Greyditch, and Tuco know she has no idea what she's doing, even as they stand behind her goals. Dunwich is on the fence. Hastings keeps arguing for keeping their heads low and not pushing their luck. Lorenzo mostly seems worried about Prince herself.
None of their concerns match Cass's, not really. She isn't like them. Cole's brutality isn't new to her; she's known to watch for it her whole life. Cass should have been slightly safer by virtue of working as a civilian contractor with his military. But being fucked over by the Crown isn't a total surprise like it is for them, even if it still stings.
They're also grieving like her, she knows, but more for their own people than for Cass's. They're just as staggered as she is by the death toll of the explosion, but they didn't know the Huntsman crew any more than Cass knew Greyditch's longtime colleague or Prince's secretary. They grieve in parallel, but they can't grieve together. They can't honor Captain White and the rest of the crew like they deserve.
Cass never liked taking it easy. She's always gotten restless too quickly. But she'll need her energy for what she has planned, so she forces herself to rest for a few days, only letting herself move around the house for food, ice packs, pain meds, and the handful of supplies she needs. Candles, lighter, knife, wine (Harper won't care; they probably forgot they had any). The makings of a low-budget solo wake.
She hides all the items in a bag, forces her face into pleasant neutrality until she's outside. She doesn't tell any of the others what she's doing.
It snows the night before she sets out, so she has to bundle up before she treks out past the shed, past the wreckage of the Andersen, past the pond and out to the bare trees. Her breath fogs out in front of her. Winter is only beginning; if it's this cold already, Cass isn't looking forward to the months to come.
The exertion quickly reminds her why she's meant to be taking it easy; she has to stop several times to let the ache ease again. Eventually, though, she finds a decent enough place to set up. A tree with the space for what she needs, deep enough snowbanks to stick the candles into, a rock she can sit on once she dusts it off. Satisfied, Cass rests there for a few minutes before she begins.
She lights the candles and opens the wine. After taking a swig from the bottle, she sets it in the snow and pulls out her knife.
Back when she and Harper were in their early twenties, Harper talked about people carving trees. The idea had been foreign to Cass; the gardens of the station she grew up on could barely get fruit trees to grow. You aren't supposed to cut them, Harper explained, but people do all the time. Names, symbols, initials for them and their lovers, random gouges just for the sake of leaving a mark. Somewhere in these woods there's supposed to be a tree where Jasper's father carved his and Harper's names years ago. When you carve a tree, it scars over same as skin and lasts decades.
It's the best memorial Cass has the ability to make for the people she lost.
The first name she carves is her captain's. It's harder than she expects, messier, but it seems to be coming out just about legible. *Captain Cordelia White*. The rank is important. Captain White was proud of it, proud of how far she'd come in life. She was a leader and she knew it. She'd earned it.
Cass remembers the first time they spoke one-on-one. She'd been relatively new to the crew and still awkward and out of place. She didn't yet know where she fit with everyone— hell, she barely knew where she wanted to. She was so new to being herself back then, only a few months into living as a woman, still not used to the feeling of wanting much of anything. Except when a snarky comment slipped out before she could think better of it, she kept to herself and focused on doing her job.
That day, she'd been checking the supply manifests against what they actually had before they set out. According to the quartermaster, they'd had issues lately with discrepancies, and Cass had been instructed to be extra thorough. Better to take longer to launch than to get clear out to the edge of the galaxy and realize they were short five crates of rations.
She hadn't expected to turn around and see the captain entering the storage bay. Cass hurriedly straightened and saluted, holding her breath. On any other ship she'd worked on, the only reasons for the captain to be here would be that someone had fucked up or that she was waiting for someone to fuck up. Which was this?
Captain White studied her for a moment, mouth twisted slightly to the side in concentration. She was the picture of a ship's captain: uniform crisp, black hair pulled back in a tight braid, dark eyes sharp and canny. If you didn't know her, she was terrifying. Finally, she said, "You're new. Remind me who you are."
It was a strange mix of a command and an invitation. "Cass Eaerhart, sir," Cass said. "Junior Supply Specialist."
"Captain Cordelia White. At ease." She smiled.
Cass shifted. "Can I help you with anything, sir?"
"That depends. Do you have a few minutes?" She glanced at the datapad in Cass's hand. It must have been some kind of test. Was White the sort of officer who expected her to stick to her task, or to drop everything for her whims?
"Supply Officer Mendoza asked me to check the cargo before we take off," she said carefully. "If there's something more pressing…"
"No." Captain White waved her hand. "I won't take you away from your job. But I'd appreciate if you stopped by my office when we're starborne."
Shit. Cass had managed to fuck up royally, then, though she had no idea how. She hadn't even been on board long enough to have the opportunity to earn that kind of attention.
Maybe noticing how the blood drained from her face, Captain White shook her head. "I'm not singling you out, Eaerhart. I'm asking all the new crew to chat for a few minutes. We'll be in space together a long time; I just like to know who's on my ship." She gestured at the supply crates. "For now, don't let me keep you. We'll talk soon."
The clarification did nothing to assuage Cass's suspicions, and neither did her short, awkward chat with Captain White later that day. She was used to the kind of people who moved up high enough in the military and its partners to get to be in charge of people. You didn't get trusted by the Crown by being nice. You did it by getting results. A nice officer was just one you had to watch even closer for when they'd show their true nature.
Over the next two years, Cass waited for Captain White to prove what was underneath the caring mask. No one could keep their composure forever, and supply logistics was a stressful field. Something would happen eventually.
But even when Captain White's frustration got the better of her, the worst she was was a little harsh. If someone was truly incompetent, she might snap at them to think or to slow down and do their job correctly. Even then she rarely held it against them once they'd corrected themself.
Years later, Cass asked her about it. Everyone else had turned in for the night, but it had been one of those evenings Captain White spent with her crew in the common areas, and the two of them had agreed to one more card game. Captain White shrugged, eyes fixed on her hand. She said that she was a lot more interested in having a crew that could learn from their mistakes than one so terrified of her they'd hide an issue until it exploded in everyone's face.
It worked— none of the handful of ships Cass had worked on in the years before ran nearly as smoothly as the Huntsman.
The only time Cass saw her truly lose her cool in ten years serving under her was when a mechanic was caught smoking outside the designated room. One room on the ship was equipped with systems to keep a cigarette from igniting the entire oxygen supply; everywhere else was off-limits for damn good reason, and everyone on board knew it. You didn't get certified to work in space without passing a dozen trainings on basic spaceflight safety.
Captain White had been furious. She must have laid into the man for ten minutes straight about how he recklessly endangered the lives of the entire crew. She fired him on the spot, confiscating all his cigarettes until the next shore leave when he could actually be kicked off the ship. Under other circumstances, it might have been the proof Cass was looking for that Captain White would abuse her power if given the chance. As it was, it only made Cass respect her more.
She cared for her crew. More than anything, she cared for her crew. She died to try to save them.
And now they're all dead and this group of nobles is still alive instead.
Cass's vision blurs as she moves on to Supply Officer Mendoza. Mendoza, who met Cass as an aimless twentysomething who barely meant to end up on the Huntsman and guided her into becoming a junior supply officer proud to thrive in her responsibilities. Who taught her how to manage supply orders, how to supervise staff, how to organize cargo transfers. Who put faer feet up on faer desk while fae talked over comms with vendors and kept an impressive selection of snacks in faer office. Fae had kids at home in the Aesop sector. What happens to them now that their parent is gone?
She pauses with a shaky breath when she finishes Mendoza's name, takes another swig of the wine. There were a hundred eighteen people on the crew, counting Cass. A hundred seventeen dead. She doesn't remember all their names, not the ones who worked in the kitchen or navigation or mechanical. But she has a long way to go before she's carved all the names she can remember.
There was Pratima, probably Cass's best friend on the ship. The first time she'd seen her, she'd wondered if she came from Tagore like Cass's mother. When she asked, it turned out that she was not only from the planet, but the same region, too. Talking to her offered the rare pleasure of getting to chat in her own family's language rather than Constantine, and often they'd laugh uproariously over stories that apparently were the same wherever in the galaxy their families had landed.
She worked in comms, so they mostly talked during their off-hours, and the rest of the crew was grateful for it. Pratima shared Cass's sense of humor near-perfectly. On long trips the two of them would be menaces— drawing eyes on items in the communal refrigerators, covering people's faces in posters with cutouts of a washed-up rock star from decades back, cracking puns back and forth until everyone else in the room was sick of them.
The last time Cass spoke to her, it had just been a quick comms check-in to make sure they were ready to dock with the Andersen and transfer the supplies over. They'd been planning on watching a movie later that evening; right then they were focused on the job. They'd barely said anything to each other. Now Pratima is gone.
There was Kreutzwald, who drove Cass crazy by whistling through any task he was assigned. He was good at his job; she has to admit that. And he was kind, especially to animals. He'd tell anyone who would listen about the cats he'd had throughout his life.
There was Ruskin, who'd been on the ship longer than anyone. She worked janitorial and took full advantage of the fact that her job gave her access to most places on the ship. She knew everyone and everything that happened there going back decades, down to the last three people who had occupied Cass's bunk. When she was off rotation, she'd sit in the mess hall or rec room and tell tall tales to anyone who would listen. She was only a few months away from retiring.
There was Herring, who Cass avoided every time she was in the mess hall. They acted like they were smarter than everyone else and all the peons of the ship should be grateful to be graced with their brilliance. The first few times Cass encountered them serving meals, they stared at her with her food tray in hand but didn't offer it. At her blank look, they prompted her to say please. She told them to fuck off, and they eventually gave up on it with her. They never stopped being an asshole, though. Still, they didn't deserve to die in an explosion like that.
There was O'Faolain, who was brand-new to the crew, fresh out of training. She was so fucking excited to see the galaxy, wouldn't shut up about the places she wanted to visit someday. She got along with everyone, and Cass rarely saw her without a smile across her freckled face. She had an instrument she said wasn't an accordion with her personal effects (Cass can't remember what it was called) and was shy about playing it, but she was damn good the one time she heard her. She was only nineteen.
Cass carves long after her fingers go numb, the knife shaking in her hands. The names get less legible, but she can't stop. She has to remember them. She has to honor them in some way, to make them matter.
The Crown says they died in a fusion drive malfunction. They're fucking liars. They planted that bomb in their cargo; they decided one of their own supply ships was an acceptable casualty to get rid of the witnesses to whatever the fuck they wanted with Prince's sister. Her crew was nothing to them.
Maybe if Cass had checked the supplies better— but then, Captain White knew about the bomb. She knew to seal herself in the aft chambers. If Cass had found it, she would have been ordered to leave it.
If Captain White had known what would happen, she never would have accepted the emergency supply refill. Cass is certain of that. She was betrayed just as much as the rest of them.
Years of service to the Crown, and in the end all they were to them was collateral damage.
The knife slips, nicking deep into Cass's finger where she's bracing herself against the tree. She hisses in pain as red wells up from the wound. For a moment, her head spins. It's all too much. Her crew is dead. Her career is over. She's never going to get to go home, never see her sister or parents or cousins again, never be safe again. Her finger hurts, her whole body has hurt for two weeks, and she barely knows where she is right now.
Then she reorients herself. Her ears ache from the icy air. The candles have burned low; the wine tipped over at some point. The tree in front of her is covered in names. It would take half a dozen more trees to carve them all.
She closes her eyes and lets herself sob out loud, just once.
Then she pulls herself together and starts the trek back to the farmhouse. Better disinfect and bandage that cut before she can add another medical issue to the long list of what everyone has going on.
Lorenzo is on the porch when she gets back, looking up at the gray sky. Hopefully her eyes aren't swollen. She shifts everything she's carrying to her uninjured hand and shoves the other in her coat pocket before he notices her.
His expression crinkles into concern when he sees her coming. "I didn't realize you were out here. Are you all right?" he asks, glancing at the half-empty wine bottle in her hand.
Cass knows he means it. If she told him what she'd been doing, he'd be sympathetic. He wouldn't understand what all she's lost, not fully, but he'd be kind. She still can't ask it of him. She can't let that crack in their fragile collective resolve show.
She pastes on a smile. Bright, cheery, as if she's been invigorated by her errand. "Just taking a walk."
His concern doesn't lift, but he lets her pass into the farmhouse. A weight seems to settle on her as she crosses the threshold. The others will all be inside, busy with their own grief. Their rest and recovery. All the things they desperately need.
Cass straightens her shoulders, buries her pain, and keeps smiling.