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1. A Morning Like a Cradle, a Silver Rest
The artificial lighting of Subaru Station cycled into its morning setting, and pale light filtered into the Silver Anchor's living quarters.
Ledea Mace woke to warmth.
Her slight fifteen-year-old frame was enclosed in something larger and warmer than herself.
"...Mm."
She looked down.
Shutia. Twenty-four years old, and deeply asleep.
Under normal circumstances, the moment Ledea's eyes opened would trigger an immediate: "Good morning, sis! Your sleeping face just scored the highest artistic marks in the galaxy!" — followed by an embrace that left no room for argument. Or alternately, Shutia would already be pressing her nose to the curve of Ledea's neck, breathing in with unhurried focus.
But now she was quiet.
The sharp, beautiful face — softened in sleep into something that looked almost startling in its gentleness. The arm around Ledea's shoulder rose and fell with each steady breath.
"...You bypassed the lock again."
Ledea exhaled. She updated the electronic lock on a regular basis. To Shutia, it was apparently a puzzle, and apparently not a difficult one.
The Shutia of waking hours was something specific: overwhelming, certain, a weight of love that arrived without warning and stayed without permission. The year-older sister who was somehow also the younger one in every way that made sense.
But this — this was just a younger sister, asleep.
"...You're quite sweet, when you're like this."
Ledea reached out carefully and ran her hand through Shutia's hair. She was usually on the receiving end of this particular attention. It occurred to her that returning it, occasionally, was not unreasonable.
Shutia's warmth transferred through her fingertips. Ledea stayed there for several minutes, in the quiet, and let herself have it.
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2. The Storm at Breakfast, or: Daily Life Accelerates
Some time later.
Ledea stood in the kitchen in her apron, plating synthesized protein with her usual efficiency.
From the corridor came the sound of footsteps at a velocity that suggested something had gone wrong.
"SIS—"
The automatic door registered Shutia's arrival as a near-structural event.
Her hair was slightly undone. Her eyes held the expression of a small animal that had been betrayed, or possibly a true believer witnessing the end of the world.
"Why — how — you woke up without me?! I'm supposed to burn your waking face into my retinas in 128K resolution, that's my morning obligation, and now you've been awake, breathing air I didn't witness, making breakfast I don't have footage of—"
"Shutia. You're being loud. Sit down before it gets cold."
Ledea turned, took in the sight of her sister in full crisis, and — before she could manage it — made a sound. Small. Quiet. The particular sound of someone who finds something genuinely funny.
Shutia stopped.
"...Sis just — sis laughed. The real kind. I need to — the recording device is in my room, I left it in my room, this is the worst mistake of my entire—"
"It doesn't matter. Sit down. We have work today."
"Okay... okay. Sis, I'd eat this breakfast completely even if it were full of debris."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
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3. A Fading Output, an Echo
An unnamed asteroid belt, somewhere in the frontier.
The Silver Anchor moved through the quiet dark between drifting rocks, unhurried.
"...Sis, I still don't accept it. You woke up while I was asleep — were you communicating with someone behind my back? Sati? That gold-plated woman?"
"Shutia. I was in my own room, with a lock on the door, which you had no authorization to open. The person who entered without permission and slept beside me without asking was you."
"Sis's security settings are basically an invitation. Love cuts through that in seconds."
Ledea did not dignify this with a response. The controls held her attention, and she let them.
"...There. Forward — behind that debris cluster. High concentration reading. Grade-A ore."
"Copy! Sis, through that gap. Anchor — firing!"
The conversation ended. Something else came in to replace it.
Ledea's precision at the controls, Shutia's anchor work — seamless, as always. The Silver Anchor threaded through the collision zone between two large rocks without touching either, and came out the other side with the ore field open in front of them.
Shutia fixed the anchor. Ledea used it as a pivot and brought the ship around.
"Mining laser, activating."
The blue-white beam touched the ore surface.
And felt wrong.
"...Shutia. The output reads lower than before. A few percent, at least."
"Mm, yeah. Old ship, right? Maybe it's time to look at replacements. Sis, next port — we go shopping. You wear something cute, I'll have suggestions prepared, very date-like atmosphere—"
"I'll consider it. ...Though I'm not sure it's a replacement issue."
The race came back to her. The armor plating from Katrine's ship, moving fast, closing the distance — and then gone. Consumed. A pale geometric light, there and not there.
*(If the laser output was already dropping, then—)*
Ledea stopped the thought. Her hands resettled on the controls.
The work continued. She was about to speak when—
"...I had a feeling something would interrupt us right about now."
It did.
From behind the nearest rock formation, an armed ship came out fast.
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4. A Raider's Miscalculation, or: The Silver Swing
"Ha — there you are. That junk heap that made fools of us last time!"
The voice from the comm was recognizable. Raiders — the same ones from a previous job, returned with the particular confidence of people who had learned nothing.
"Please stop. What you're doing is an explicit violation of frontier law. We acted in self-defense. That's all."
"We're not big on manners out here! Nice ore you found. Leave it and go."
A plasma round came from their ship. Ledea moved the thrusters by a fraction — the shot passed close enough to heat the hull and detonated against the rock behind them.
"...Why is there always someone like this."
She assessed the field. Normally Shutia would already be asking whether to launch debris. But the evasive move had left them clear of anything useful in range.
"Ha! Not getting out of it like last time! That rust bucket doesn't have real weapons!"
The raider ship advanced, certain of itself.
Behind Ledea, Shutia's voice came through — short, and very calm.
"Sis. Get closer to them."
Ledea understood immediately. The specific quality of the air when Shutia shifted into this mode was something she had learned to read without thinking about it.
"...Understood."
She pushed the throttle to maximum. The Silver Anchor drove straight toward the ship that was expecting it to run.
"What — are they insane?!"
The two ships passed each other at close range.
In that instant, Shutia's hand came down on the console.
"Honestly. So much trouble."
The anchor left the ship with a sound like air being cut, and found the raider's hull.
The anchor was Ledea's most insisted-upon component. She had specifications for it that she had revised more than once — because it was the instrument through which Shutia's precision expressed itself, and that precision was not a thing to be limited by inferior equipment. Built for rock, for ore, for the work — which meant built, incidentally, to punch through a small ship's shielding if it arrived with enough momentum behind it.
It had enough momentum behind it.
"You little—!"
"Shutia — matching your lead!"
"Go, sis!"
Ledea rolled the ship hard. The centrifugal force built. Shutia controlled the anchor length to the millimeter, establishing the pivot point, and the raider's ship began to arc — wider, faster, a circle with the Silver Anchor at its center.
"AAAAH—?!"
At the peak of it, Shutia released the anchor.
The raider's ship departed on the trajectory inertia had selected for it — uncontrolled, into the debris field in the far distance — and became a small point of light, and then nothing.
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5. A Skewed Afterglow, or: The Shape of It
"Good teamwork, sis!"
Shutia's voice returned to its usual warmth as if a switch had been thrown.
"...Yes. Good work, Shutia."
Shutia had moved to Ledea's side without Ledea noticing the moment it happened. Her arms came around her from behind.
"Honestly, I can't stand that someone like that got to hear sis's voice. It gets dirty when it goes to people like that."
"You can't say things like that about people."
Ledea said it with the mild exasperation she kept for this specific category of Shutia's commentary, and reached for the controls again. Shutia settled her chin on Ledea's shoulder and looked out at the stars through Ledea's silver hair.
"Sis. When we're done — will you pat my head again?"
"...I'll see what I can do."
"Yes! I love you, sis!"
The Silver Anchor moved on through the artificial stars, quiet again.
Two people in a small ship — one who held on, one who was beginning, in her own way, to hold back. Dependency and protection and something that was slowly, without announcement, changing shape.
The strange and fortunate ordinary of their lives continued.