Victor

Victor didn’t go to the airlock to see Alejandra leave the family forever, to marry into the Italian clan. He didn’t trust himself to say good-bye to his best friend, not without revealing how close he had come to disgracing the family by falling in love with someone in his own asteroid-mining ship.

The Italians were a four-ship operation, and their lead ship, a behemoth of a digger named Vesuvio, had been attached to El Cavador for a week, as the families traded goods and information. Victor liked the Italians. The men sang; the women laughed often; and the food was like nothing he had ever eaten, with colorful spices and creamy sauces and oddly shaped pasta noodles. Victor’s own invention, an HVAC booster that could increase the central heating temperature on the Italians’ ships by as much as eleven degrees, had been an immediate hit with the Italians. “Now we will all wear one sweater instead of three!” one of the Italian miners had said, to huge laughter and thunderous applause. The Italians had been so smitten with Victor’s booster, in fact, that it had brought in more trade goods and prestige than anything else the family had offered. So when Concepcion called Victor in to talk to him just before the Italians decoupled, he assumed she was going to commend him.

“Close the door, Victor,” said Concepcion.

Victor did so.

The captain’s office was a small space adjacent to the helm. Concepcion rarely closed herself in here, preferring instead to be out with the crew, matching or surpassing them in the amount of labor they put in each day. She was in her early seventies, but she had the energy and command of someone half her age.

“Alejandra is going with the Italians, Victor.”

Victor blinked, sure that he had misheard.