"The ship is called the Arcadia."

Leanne entered the cockpit, only to have her voice echo through an empty room. She paused, looking around at the soft blue console decks and the wide windows. Phaethon still lay on a table, innards unceremoniously dragged out. She took a careful step around it and tried to see if Ryan had taken a seat at the controls. The other woman was nowhere to be seen.

"Ryan?" she asked, realising she did not know her surname. "Are you there?"

When no reply was forthcoming, Leanne looked up at where she imagined Valkyrie to be located and asked, "Where is she? What has happened?"

"She is in the canteen, Miss Ziegler," Valkyrie said casually, with exactly the same tone as she had when telling Leanne of the ship's true name. She, Leanne thought. She had just considered Valkyrie as 'she'.

"The canteen? Where's that?"

The canteen turned out to be down one of the many spiralling corridors which Leanne had passed earlier. It was a small space, bathed in clinical white light, with a circular table in the centre and short kitchen islands surrounding the walls. Ryan was tinkering with one of the many machines as Leanne entered. Finally, here was something familiar. No matter this ship's origin and identity, it still had the same processed food as every other station Leanne had served on. She read identical labels to on Helios and Endymion and Wells: dried cereals, pastas, fruits and nuts, rice, pureed goods, anything long-lasting, easy to rehydrate, and able to store simply.

"I got the coffee machine working," Ryan announced with a smile. "I can't guarantee what it'll taste like but it's a start."

"I found the entry to the centrifuge," Leanne said, feeling as though that statement came across as trying to one-up Ryan.

"You did?"

"And the name of the ship. She's called the Arcadia."

"The Arcadia," Ryan repeated. "How very idyllic. It beats the BASE's nickname of the Chimera, for sure."

Leanne slowly came into the room and approached the coffee machine. Ryan indicated her to start it up and she did, realising suddenly how thirsty and hungry she was. The adrenaline of the past thirty hours or so had barely allowed her to think of more than her survival. The smell of fresh – or 'fresh' by space standards – coffee made her yearn to sit down and indulge some of her other needs and simply to get off her feet for a moment.

"You go sit," Ryan offered, as if reading her mind. "What do you want? Soup? Pasta? Rice? This dried meat-looking stuff?"

"I'm vegan," Leanne said, "so pasta would be good."

"I don't think it really is meat," Ryan replied.

Leanne took a seat at the central table and watched the Martian woman get to grips with the food and drink dispensers. She could not understand her and her kindness. Leanne had been nothing but abrasive to her and her culture but it barely seemed to unsettle Ryan at all. Instead, she brought her rich-scented coffee and a dish of pasta she had made with some kind of tomato-based sauce, or what looked like it, anyway. Regardless of aesthetic though, it was delicious. Leanne had never tasted space-made food so flavoursome. Perhaps that was Ryan's doing, or perhaps that was whatever technology this ship had.

"Are you not having anything?" she asked.

"Oh I had something before you came in. The cereal leaves a bit to be desired."

Leanne nodded. She stirred her fork around the pasta and considered her next words. She did not know what to say, did not know if she should even speak of what had led to the both of them being here. BASE operations were always lonesome for her, full of paperwork and solo interviews and investigations. She had not made many acquaintances that she still spoke to, so the prospect of being in such close social proximity with someone else always made her feel a little awkward. Cliff had settled her. Everything had been natural and easy around Cliff.

Leanne pushed the memories down.

"So, you... You must be second, third generation Martian?" she asked, trying to ignore the ugly thoughts of Cliff.

"Yep. Second, I guess."

"You guess? Was your mother one of the first colonists?"

"It's always been just me and my father."

"I'm sorry."

She couldn't help but feel a spark of remorse for Ryan. Losing a mother was painful in any time and place, certainly on Mars where every colonist knew each other and formed such a close kinship. The first batch had landed in 2055, some time following the automated robotic building of Nerio's foundations. Though Leanne had been born fifteen years after the first landing, she had read of their historic struggles in the early days: the adjustment to a new planet, the frequent collapses and implosions across their base, the inevitable deaths – then the birth of the first child to Raja Mandala. From then, over the course of the last forty years, Mars had progressed beyond all estimation and expectation.

Soon, she knew, they would progress beyond the boundaries of the BASE

"Why are you sorry?" Ryan asked. "Many Martian colonists have lost loved ones. The planet isn't kind to her settlers, and she shouldn't be. But we're learning to work with her, not against her."

"I've never been," Leanne said. "I've served on Wells station, but that is as near as I've come."

"That's because we keep a close watch on our borders now. Earth was overpopulated and ruined by the time you at the BASE decided to search for other worlds. You colonised Mars as an outpost and trophy of Earth's empire. Now the years have turned enough for us to consider ourselves native, we want to cherish the planet, not end the same way as Earth."

Leanne had never heard it spoken like that before. She had simply thought that Mars and its peoples were naturally war-like, as the name of the planet suggested.

"Have you ever been to Earth?" Leanne asked.

Ryan shook her head. "I don't want to. Mars is my home. It always has been."

Leanne nodded, though she couldn't ignore the rush of jealousy. She did not feel as passionate about her birthplace as Ryan did about hers. It must feel comforting to belong somewhere, rather than flit about the stars and stations, always driven by the next case, the next goal.

"What does your father do? You say it has just been you and him."

"Why the interrogation?" Ryan asked, tilting her head. "Are you here to investigate Mars as well as this ship?"

"No, I..." She pushed another curl of pasta into her mouth to avoid saying something unprofessional again. Through chewing, she said, "Isn't there anything you want to know about me? As we're both stuck up here for now."

"I know you already. Leanne Ziegler, you wished to be a researcher at New Colchis on the moon, but instead, you came to work in the department of the BASE's Inspector General as a legal liaison and investigator."

Leanne frowned. "How do you know that?"

"I read your file. Do you think they would send me up here without knowing what I was getting into, or who I was getting into it with?"

Leanne imagined Nerio trawling through her past, wondering why she had been given the chance to investigate this mysterious vessel and why the job had not been given to one of their own. More and more, Leanne realised she had been sent here not just for convenience's sake, but in case anything went wrong – as it had. Yes, she thought, she was expendable. "Why did they send you up alone?" she asked. "That can't be standard protocol, even for Nerio."

"It's not. Not for most people."

"Then why are you different?"

"I'm more capable." Ryan smiled, waving her hand around the canteen at what she had re-awakened so far. "And after what happened to your commander, Imperium wanted to minimise risk."

"'Minimise risk'? Phaethon was meant to be under Imperium's control..." Leanne couldn't have this argument again. It would not bring Cliff back.

"Lieutenant Ziegler," Ryan said, "I was there in the control room when we lost control of Phaethon. We did everything to stop him."

Leanne did not reply. She knew it was true – she had been the one to identify the signal as coming from the Chimera, no, the Arcadia. But it was easier to blame a physical thing, someone like Ryan, something like Nerio. Valkyrie's silent presence was difficult to capture and to affix condemnation to.

"What can I do to make you trust me, hey?" Ryan asked. "To make you trust Nerio?"

"It's not..." Leanne did not know what to say to that. She had put her faith in the BASE and they had sent her here. She had put her faith in Phaethon and it had killed Cliff and almost killed her. She had put her faith in Valkyrie and she had acted as if Leanne was as dispensable as the BASE obviously thought her. The wells of her trust were drying quickly. "I just—"

But Ryan suddenly interrupted her with a raised hand. She put her finger to her ear where Leanne realised she had a small bud. "There's a comms outreach," she said. "Nerio and Wells have managed to patch through."

"What? You got the comms online?"

But Ryan had already risen, heading back towards the cockpit. Leanne downed her fork, grabbed her coffee, and quickly followed her.

Word count: 1603
Overall: 15,564

The shoutout for this chapter goes to Where is Araminta Green? by lLisalondon_ . A cosy mystery with a witchy flare and a coming-of-age narrative, all combined with a stylish semi-podcast format!