Jove followed his mother into the rather cramped, if gleaming kitchen of Termina Station. Stainless steel counters and appliances surrounded them, stocked with everything needed to sustain the isolated research crew. Kira began pulling ingredients out of the fridge.
"Potatoes, carrots, kale," Kira said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "Our new best friends."
Jove smiled. "Bonding with vegetables."
Kira hummed a noise of agreement. "They'll be the backbone of our survival here."
Jove's gaze drifted back over to his mother, noticing how her dark red hair was still messy from their rough morning. She was dressed in a tight thermal top that hugged her curves and a pair of form-fitting leggings. The outfit was practical for the Antarctic climate, but also quite tempting to the eye.
"You really think a nuclear war has broken out?" he asked her.
He watched her carefully, not trying to seem outright skeptical, but needing to see her reaction to the question.
"I know how surreal it is," she said. "Especially in this environment. The rules are different out here in Antarctica, but you get used to it after a while. I think that's why I can tell how much is wrong with the situation right now. I'm used to this place."
"Uh, okay." He took a knife and started cutting, having to pass close behind her in the narrow lane between kitchen island and counter. "That doesn't really feel like an answer."
Grabbing a cutting board, he made to move back to his previous spot and almost bumped into her.
"I don't have a good answer," said Kira. "I don't have all the answers, Jove. Sorry."
They were silent for the next minute, prepping ingredients without saying much.
"Thanks for saving Eve," she eventually said. "I was terrified as soon as she told me what'd happened. Crevasses genuinely do kill people all the time down here."
Jove nodded, cutting into a potato. "You don't have to thank me for that, Mom."
He thought, somewhat bitterly, about how he'd had a similar crevasse related accident. He thought about how his mother had reacted, more annoyed than concerned.
"She needs you to keep an eye on her, you know," said his mother.
He tossed the cut potatoes onto the plate a little harder than necessary and spun around to grab another. "Does anyone ever think about what I need?"
"Whoa!" Kira had been moving by Jove at that same moment and suddenly stumbled as his foot caught her ankle.
Jove was quick and reached out to catch her. She twisted and so did he, backing into the counter while she backed into him. For an instant, Jove felt his cock pressed against her butt, indenting into the feminine warmth and squishiness there. Yoga pants and perfection.
"You got me," said Kira. She let out a little laugh. "Oh Jove. I feel like I need a hug right now."
"You got it, Mom."
He didn't shift from where he was. Had she meant for him to? Jove wrapped his arms around her and hugged her as much as pressed forward into her. It felt delicious and wrong and all the words normally allergic to describing a reassuring hug between a dude and his mom.
"She really does need you to keep an eye on her," she whispered.
"I'm going to spit in Eve's soup if you don't stop treating her like the golden child."
He squeezed her a little tighter, only realizing he'd breathed the words against her neck as he was doing it. She let out an odd, not displeased shudder.
"I love how competitive the two of you are." Kira finally pulled away, moving with deliberate slowness. "Brings back memories."
The stew needed hours to cook. Jove left the kitchen with the mission of taking that news to Eve and Aster. He was a little hungry himself and expected some commiserate grumbling on their part, but they both seemed preoccupied.
He found Aster in the common room, wearing the same fashionable top and jeans she'd greeted him in when he'd first stepped off the plane. She was laying on one of the couches, one leg dangling at a lazy angle, staring into her phone.
"You look enthralled," he said.
"I never thought to download many apps and games to my phone for offline interludes," said Aster. "It's the first thing I plan on doing once I'm back in civilization."
"Right…" said Jove.
"I only have a single game downloaded," said Aster. "It's this silly management game where I run my own talent agency and have to decide how to train my actors, what jobs to suggest to them. I don't even remember installing it."
"Having fun?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Fun is relative. You have to make do with what you've got sometimes."
"True enough." He took a seat on the couch next to her. Aster slid her feet back and then forward again, letting them settle in his lap.
"I keep getting these lockboxes as rewards," muttered Aster. "The game's taunts are hitting a little too close to home."
"How so?"
Aster nodded across the room to a cabinet that Jove had seen but paid little mind to. It was small, standing on a stubby set of legs and rising perhaps waist high.
"It's locked," said Aster. "My imagination has me convinced that the solution to all our problems lies inside. Or at least the solution to my boredom."
"Curiosity is a cruel mistress." He patted his aunt's feet. "Let me take a look at it."
Aster let out an amused chuckle. "Unless you found a set of keys somewhere, I doubt you'll have much luck, darling."
"When you've done as much urban ex as I have, a locked cabinet isn't really that big of a deal." He took a look at the lock. It seemed stout and impregnable at a glance, but he knew a couple of tricks.
"Urban exploration," said Aster. "Right."
"Okay, so maybe it occasionally veered into liberating some long-forgotten valuables." Jove took out one of his own keys, a thin one that went to an old bike lock and tried it in the lock. "Helped me build up a skillset that I still get use out of to this day."
His method was simple but surprisingly effective. Jove jiggled the lock while pulling sideways on the handle. In under three seconds, he had the cabinet open.
"And there we are," he said.
"Whoa," muttered Aster. She rolled off the couch and came over, standing behind where he was crouching and touching his shoulders. "I respect a man who's good with his hands."
"It's a liquor cabinet," he said, finding a number of bottles of bourbon and tequila. "Wonder if my mom knew about this."
"What a shame," muttered Aster. "It's been almost five years since I've let myself drink hard liquor."
"At least your curiosity has been sated." He stood up and turned around, smiling as he met her gaze for some reason.
"One need down, half a dozen to go. Thank you, darling."
"Any time."
Jove left Aster to her mobile game and went to find Eve, who was in the command center. She had a map spread out in front of her and was studying it intently.
"…Yes?" she said, without looking up.
"What're you doing?" he asked.
"Planning," said Eve.
"Oh. That's informative."
She snapped her gaze up to glare at him. Jove found it slightly cuter than annoying.
"I'm eyeing the terrain," she said. "We're next to the Antarctic Peninsula, or Terra de San Martin, as they call it in Argentina. It's mountainous, beautiful, and most importantly, warmer than the rest of Antarctica, almost above freezing during the summer months."
"It's January."
"We're in the southern hemisphere, smooth brain."
He breathed out, patience for his sister already wearing thin. "Excuse me for misunderstanding, your highness!"
"I'm looking for a route onto the peninsula from either Termina station or Port Sirius," said Eve. "For skiing, but also… who knows. We might well need to move in a warmer direction eventually."
"Eventually." He repeated the word, feeling the depths of everything it might represent in a way that honestly made him somewhat anxious. "Are you coming around to Mom's way of thinking?"
Eve shrugged. "I honestly don't know what's going on, Jove. She's always been a little high strung and intense. It's not outside the realm of possibility for her to be having a little bit of a breakdown. Think about how hard she used to work on her research back when we were kids, and now add the past two years of being a hermit in Antarctica to the mix."
"We could see if there's a record or recording of the message she claimed to have gotten from Andromeda?" said Jove.
"What if there is? Aster had a point. Everything from the power outage to the communications being down could technically be the result of a misbehaving house AI."
"So you don't believe her?"
"No, just stating the counter case." She drummed her fingers on the map and glanced up at him. "My gut is telling me that we're super fucked."
They lapsed into silence. Jove thought about the noise again and eyed one of the command center's wall screens, currently showing Termina's exterior. Aside from windblown swirling snow, he couldn't see anything.