Zeru had conditioned himself long ago to sleep without dreaming. Early on, that end had been achieved through drug therapy. Later, through lucidity training. For someone who rarely sought solace in sleep, being able to control when and how his brain catalogued things was more boon than bane. He had enough ghosts vying for his attention in the daylight as it was.
Recovery was different than sleep, however. Try as he might over the centuries, there was no control, no choice over what his mind constructed while it slowly pieced itself back together again.
The first stage was invariably the worst, and how long it lasted largely depended on his environment and the severity of his fatality. He almost never remembered it; only recalling a nondescript sense of impending doom.
The second stage could have been called hibernation. It was a state he could vaguely remember upon waking. His brain was intact, but the rest of him was still mending, still fighting trauma. No time for dreams or nightmares, his mind played out pleasant memories instead, hoping to glean new insights or simply sit with a familiar feeling or comfort.
The final stage could have been misconstrued as REM sleep under medical observation. It was always in that stage he became aware he was dreaming, but since he hadn't primed himself before taking an impromptu trip to the other side and back, he still didn't have ownership over his mind's wayward designs.
It was always a coin flip whether his subconscious would serve up horror or delight.
He stabbed Aykhan's arm and let go. Blink. She moved with preternatural speed, so fast he was sure he'd missed key frames. Blink. She threw her lever up, muscles peaking with herculean strain. Blink. He didn't have time for complete thoughts. His last notion was a feeling of relief. The relief was for Aykhan having the presence of mind to still close the hatch, to put out the fire, and to save herself. And the other half of his relief was in response to not being spaced again. Blink.
He felt his helmet hit the bay's hangar door and crush into the back of his skull. Thankfully that blow prevented him from feeling anything else that followed. Blink.
For a second, right before he died, his real eye managed to catalogue a single frame that would stick fast in his head like an overexposed silverload: Aykhan, highlighted in blues and greens like a technicolor dream, shakily swiping at her arm, smearing blood across her PC.
Blink.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZLyXw8xnm7
Nothing. No longing. No yearning. No desire. There is only dread: inescapable, undeniable, unending, and all consuming.
There's no peace here.
No war either.
He knows the dread for what it is only when he's awake. For now, it is only The Thing That Is Killing Me Forever.
For a while, anyway.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi01yvMmjFv
Like coming up for air, he remembers. He only sees fond or formative things, as if his mind is staunching the bleeding dread. The reminders fortify him with simple rest.
His earliest recollection is living in The Green Place. So much of that memory has been lost in the intervening years, but he still knows the way the sun breached the trees and warmed his face. He remembers the silver fish in the creek. He remembers running out of the thicket, chasing someone important to the top of a grassy hill; flopping down, laughing, exhilarated. He remembers the way his arm blocked out the light as he gestured at clouds, his fingers inevitably tangling with the other as they both tried to assign importance to a shape at the same time.
He remembers he was happy, but he didn't know what happiness really was yet. It wouldn’t be until it was snatched from him that he knew it as anything at all. He’d shared that feeling freely. It was an intrinsic part of him.
But he doesn't remember what terrible thing happened that sundered him from that contentment. He only knows that one day, he eventually revisited that hill as a young man. He laid down in the grass by himself, trying to recapture that feeling from his boyhood, before realizing it wasn't the place, but the other boy who had made that spot so special.
He remembers he had never cried so hard in his life.
Someone found him and brought him back to wherever he was supposed to lay his head. He remembers the looks they gave him made him feel out of place. It was like his slot in the world had somehow shifted and popped him loose, mangled him, and now he no longer fit. He remembers feeling like that hill had more claim to him than anything the rest of the world could make to satisfy.
But he doesn't remember those other things, just The Green Place, the looks, and his friend.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoHuo3GCfMI
He knew he was dreaming. And he knew he had no control over it. He didn't wonder about what happened before or what would happen when he woke up. He existed in that liminal space between anticipation and dissociation.
The Ship coalesced around him in lines of red and gold. A huge, iron wrought platform, polished like black glass, stuck out like a mezzanine above the ovoid command deck that stretched out before him. Red screen after red screen below was populated by a pilot's viewpoint, controlled by the men and women reclined in front of them, their faces obscured by helmets that vomited wires, cords, and tubes from open faceplates. He knew the liquid lines were supposed to glow blue, feeding drugs, nutrients, and stabilizers directly into their host, turning their brains into cottage cheese over time. Some lived years, some lived days. But down there, now, the lines syphoned blood.
The Ship had always been alive. It was older than the country it served—older than the first Ringweltz. It was, in fact, the eldest of the great Henosis ships, or Unity Spheres.
The Ship had no name because it did not exist.
For a hundred years, three incarnations of himself served The Ship like a mitochondrion. In return for his energy, The Ship sheltered and fed him in all ways. No matter how depraved, no matter how dangerous, no matter the destruction left in his wake, The Ship provided.
He was a part of it like none before, and The Ship knew it.
The Ship knew him.
The Ship loved him.
The Ship's engine, normally too far and too deep to sense from the command bridge, sounded like a fevered heartbeat all around him.
In waking memory, The Ship had been the home of a thousand marines, six-thousand sailors, a hundred joint-service pilots, and two-hundred company grade officers. Each one of them would have defended The Ship with the single-minded, self-sacrificing intensity of a drone protecting their hive at any personal cost.
In the nightmares of Commander Qaris Venn, The Ship was always manned by corpses.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9vpy9yeP0K
It was a struggle to open his eye, but if Zeru lost to the Darkness again, more things would take advantage of his weakness. He suspected he knew who was waiting for him in the waking world. He could hear her shifting impatiently, murmuring to herself.
He was well versed in the protocols surrounding the dying and the dead. He felt the familiar trappings of a body bag and the telltale smells of antiseptic and bile. At least this time he hadn't woken up in his own mess. They must have stripped and washed him before any exam.
And thank the Darkness they hadn't cremated him yet. Coming back from that took decades and he had just been getting used to a post-war galaxy. With his luck, he'd have come back during another war—and chances were good, even “dead”, his legacy would have been to blame for its start in some way or another.
“I know you're faking,” Captain Aykhan said disapprovingly. “Are you still healing, or have you decided to succumb? We haven't done an autopsy yet. I'm keen to see what the inside of you looks like. The outside of you still looks like dried meat—or whatever you get when you make jerky out of jerky.”
He finally cracked open his good eye. He ran through a handful of beginnings before settling on something neutral. “We survived?” His throat felt raw, desiccated.
Aykhan's sweet smile didn't reach her eyes. She didn't offer him anything to drink. “I survived. The crew survived. Hell, even one of the Badlanders survived.” She crossed her arms. The rest of her was thrumming with tension, as if she was seconds away from throttling him or shooting him, whichever ended up being more efficient. “But you didn't.”
He tried to sit up, but he was barely held together as it was, so he closed his eye instead and winced. “Funny. Except I did. Why am I in a bag? How bad was the damage to the bay? What happened to the Badland ship?” Her smile had fallen. She was practically glowering at him. “You still haven't explained how you managed to save me.”
“Don't insult my intelligence. You can't keep anything off your face anyway. You were gone, Caleb. Deceased. Flat-lined. Donezo. Brain-dead—although I did make an excellent case to Mister Morgan that you may have been brain-dead before you were smashed to pieces.”
His voice certainly sounded like he'd broken his pipes again—and his spine, given that he still couldn't move his tingling limbs. “Do I look like I've been smashed to pieces?”
“Yes.” Why had he expected mercy from her? Aykhan added coldly, “And that was after you were chopped up by several arachnoids. Did you know one of them nicked your femoral? You should have been dead within a minute or two. Oh! And let's not forget the oxygen deprivation and the rocket fuel and the decompression sickness! You should be dead five times over.”
“Thanks for bringing me back. That scout on Lachance's crew must really know his stuff.” But then his eye popped open and he stared at her, baffled to the point of being genuinely rattled.
She was fine.
How was she fine? Why wasn’t she on a slab or hooked to fifty machines? Why wasn't he asking her invasive personal questions about her wellbeing for a change?
Feline Aykhan was fine. No eyebags, no half-melted face, no singed hair, no viscous black and blue fluids leaking from her ears.
Had he imagined it? He had to admit, the moments before he died always got mangled in his head after he came back. Maybe it was his mind's way of coping. Maybe he was misremembering. Maybe he was dreaming.
Was he freaking out? He felt himself freaking out. He didn't want to close his eye, afraid that opening it again would reveal she was just a construct of his imagination. Another nightmare. Another eternity of unending dread.
“This isn't real. I'm not awake yet. You're… I saw you. I thought you were going to die.” He was still so unused to how rapidly his life and self-image could disassemble, that it was easier to deny it was happening.
She made a sound, something like a pleased grunt. “That's a more reasonable response coming from you—better than the lying anyway. I don't know why you bother. Is that why you kept to yourself? The helmet? The loner thing? Because you give too many things away when you're distressed? You'd make a terrible actor.”
He knew he'd always been shit at keeping emotions off his face. But the truth of his immortality was not one of his greater secrets. It was a simple, almost incidental, part of himself that he expected to be exposed at least once every lifetime. It had just as much weight in his mind as his inclination towards men and women; his guilty love for parody musical numbers; his penchant for stepping in front of bullets meant for other people; his bitter addiction to cybernetics and their accompanying suppressant drugs; his horrible habit of trusting his heart instead of his head.
Zeru didn't keep to himself because he felt different. He kept to himself because if he wasn't careful, he'd try to fix humanity again, and if he did that, billions of people would die. Hard to keep that kind of blame off anyone's face, let alone his.
Aykhan's singular, judgmental attention was decidedly annoying.
He closed his eye.
When he opened it, and she was still there, he groaned.
“Yep. Still here,” she affirmed. “What was your plan?”
“Plan?”
“Yes, plan!”
“There was no plan—”
“I should've guessed.”
“—other than save you. Everything after was going to be someone else’s problem.”
“What would have happened if you'd been immolated? If you'd been spaced?”
He stared at her. “But I wasn't.”
She stared right back. “Plan. Now.”
He tried a different approach. “Y’know, usually when I save someone’s life—”
“Oh, shut up,” she sneered in derision. “How many times can you do that?”
Well, there was no getting out of it now. Like before, Aykhan had already decided something about him. And, just like before, it was apparently up to him to figure out what that was. “I’m not dying again to prove a point,” he said sardonically.
She raised an eyebrow. Her green eyes flashed dangerously. “Is that what I asked? Do you think I’m a monster?”
No, I think you’re an asshole. “No.”
“I’m asking because I need to know if taking a bullet for you would even settle the score.”
“What score? Are you keeping score? I don't like getting shot,” he said evasively. “Is anyone a fan of getting shot?”
She crossed her arms. “What are you?”
“What you see is what you get.”
“That's not an answer.”
It wasn't, and he knew he wasn't being fair. But if he wanted her to talk about her own circumstances, maybe he had to give her something. “They called me a revenant. Seems accurate so far… I don't miraculously heal while I'm alive. I have to… turn things off to turn them back on again. Statistically it hasn't failed me yet.” He sighed. “You heal quickly, though…”
“And I don't need to die to do it,” she said matter-of-factly. Her brows crashed on top of her irises, and she jabbed a finger at him. “Don't ever pull that kinda shit again. It's a waste of time. Do you know how long I've had to delay getting back on course waiting for you to come around? Forty hours!”
He closed his eye again and said laconically, “I'm so sorry for dying, Captain. Next time, I'll ensure I'm properly annihilated so you don't feel burdened with the fallout of my actions.”
“Don't fucking strain yourself,” she returned blandly, and he opened his eye in surprise as she turned to go. “Rest. I need you in top form.”
That's it? A lecture? No wonder, no fear, no follow-up questions? “Oh, you're only practically immortal? Lame. Give me an interesting excuse next time.” Is she being serious right now? He tried to raise up, but still couldn't. “Did you get the information you needed?” he called. What he really wanted to ask was, What the fuck are you, then?
She paused, hand hovering just before the door lock. “Yes.”
“Maybe it was worth it after all?”
She looked across her shoulder at him, her radioactive gaze narrow, assessing. “How old are you, Zeru? In quantum time—don't give me any of that cryo-sleep inflation bullshit.”
He pressed. “You first.”
“Nineteen-eighty-five.”
He was so startled that she'd actually answered that the number didn't register for several pregnant seconds. “Mm,” he managed to grunt.
She treated him to a reptilian smirk. “You're sharp. Finally figured it out yet?”
“But you're not like me.”
“No. Thank the Lamplighter for that. How old are you?”
“I don't have an exact date. Earliest memory I have is on a cradle world. Maybe the first.” There was no maybe about it. Earth. He’d been born on Earth. He’d died on Earth. Twice.
She didn't even seem surprised. “So just a hair older than me, huh?”
She could be lying, he told himself. People had lied before. But even the alarm bells of his paranoia were beginning to ring hollow. He said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“No, it's better,” she snapped. “I won't ever forget. Not places, not dates, not faces. I wonder... if I started soul searching, would I remember one of your old faces? Would I know you? How many times have you remade yourself?”
That properly terrified him. He put a little steel behind his voice, a little something of the old him. “For your own sanity and safety, I'd advise against it, Captain Aykhan.”
She grinned. “Oh, so someone notorious?”
Evasive maneuvers. “I have to get back to the pit. Bring me some clothes.”
“How do you usually play this? Kill the crew? Scuttle the ship? Start over?”
“What? No. We tell them you found a way to bring me back. Tell them I had an on-board rescue. There's so much data-locked ‘netics in me, it wouldn't surprise anyone that half-looked. I take it you already ripped a coroner's report?”
“Head trauma,” she supplied.
“Great. Simple. You printed a bone graph and drugged me up to my eyeball. I'll wear my helmet for a few weeks, recovering.”
This, not his nature or his age, was the thing that floored her. Her eyebrows disappeared behind a loose lock of black hair. Her agog was seated comfortably between offended and confused. “You really mean to continue on?”
He was equally bewildered by her bewilderment. “Yeah. Even if I considered nixing this life like that, wouldn't you complain about it being a waste of time?”
Aykhan blinked rapidly as she nodded, as if she was at once irritated by his response and amused that she agreed with it. “Alright. A lie. Just between us.”
He sighed. “Two lies. I take it you explained your little healing factor away?”
“The camera was destroyed. That footage doesn't exist. You're my only witness. And who would believe you, Lazarus?”
“Thorough,” he stated.
“I always am.”
“And your daughter?”
Her voice was low, careful. “She’s the one thing I would never lie about.”
“That's what this whole trip is about isn't it? Pushing vaccines is just a cover—a pass to get you into certain circles... I meant what I said, Aykhan. I want to help you. But you have to level with me on some things.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Time is fuel, Pilot.”
“What's on Norlina-4?”
“A syndicate.”
“And their ties to the Badlanders?”
“According to Mark and the arachnoid, the people who took my daughter provided Badland with their armaments… just like they supply a lot of the privateers in this sector.”
“So you weren't just picking a fight for the fun of it?”
She hesitated. Then she resigned herself and said, “Fun… is the happy second-order consequence to justice.”
“Your second-order consequence got me killed. No more needless killing.”
Instead of generating excuses or explaining her reasoning, she went on the offensive. “I wouldn't have thought you cared, given your own violence! You were all peace and let-live until you got the opportunity to sling metal—”
“Severing tendons isn't killing.”
She smiled like a snake. “We pulled those levers together.”
“That makes us both damned, so don't put it all on me,” he growled.
“Half-damned, if we're splitting hairs,” she barked back. “Follow my lead or don't, it doesn't matter to me.”
“There are some things I won't turn a blind eye on.”
She laughed. “Pun entirely intended, I'm sure!”
“Cross me and find out.”
She gave him a good once over with her own eyes, raising a single eyebrow as if to say, Like, right now? With you like this? She chuckled under her breath when he maintained eye contact. “Oh,” she huffed aloud. “I will. And I look forward to the lesson.”
With that, she kicked herself away from his slab and slapped the doorlock. She held onto the doorframe just after she passed through the portal, pulling her face back into his view. “I expect you back in the cockpit in twenty hours. That should give you enough time to drag your wasted carcass to your wardrobe and back.” She swiped at her PC. “Sigyn, get me Engineering.”
“At least close the door!” he called after her.
“Morgan here, go ahead Captain.”
“Get me point-seven planet weight. I'm running another trial.”
“Aykhan,” he gasped. “Rescind that.”
“Copy that, Cap,” Morgan said, chipper as could be. “We'll be at speed in half an hour.”
Aykhan swiped her PC and smiled at him. “You heard that. Thirty minutes. I bet you could make it to the panel in time if you started moving now. Oh wait! You can't, can you? Because you're all hollow bones and spongy sinew, aren't you? Being a spacer must be so sad.”
“When I get to the pit—”
“Threaten me with something else. Go ahead.” She shook her head, smirking. “You can't fucking touch me.”
“What do you even want, Aykhan?”
“An apology!”
“For what?! Setting personal fucking boundaries?”
“Yes!”
Zeru was now angry enough that his robotic hand could make a fist, but he was still losing the fight with centrifugal force. That ineptitude made him lose his temper. “How ‘bout you kiss the darkest part of my flat ass you sack of cosmic sh—”
“Shh… You'd really speak to your captain that way?” She tutted. “You sure you want me to close this door?” When he struggled to raise up or shift, straining enough that sweat stung his eye, she put a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Then she grimaced. “Pathetic. No, you're right, no one should have to see this.”
“Ayk—han.” He grunted as he rolled himself, bag and all, off the table. Unfortunately, because of the returning gravity, it didn't send him floating or falling. Instead he slowly, dizzyingly spun toward the lintel of the hatch.
Caught in snippets and flashes of black suit against polished metal, the door silently shut on her waggling fingers. The captain's lips formed a saccharine Byyye! before she blew him a kiss and disappeared.
“You petty piece of—Get back here!” His stomach rolled and he growled another litany of curses under his breath before taking in a lungful of air. “Aykhan!” he all but bellowed at the closed hatch, the ceiling, the wall, the floor, the hatch, the ceiling, the wall...7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK2POjxn9tJ
It was the android that found him faced down on the cold floor of the medical bay, shivering. The three-armed service bot picked him up without a word and brought him to a treatment cot rather than a slab and went about getting him comfortable. After the routine analysis of his wellbeing, lifting his limbs, shining various lights in his eye, and observing his labored breathing, the android finally said, “Preliminary vitals collected successfully. No immediate care necessary. Hello. My service designation is CLN21-I, but you may address me as Clancy. I use he-him-his pronouns. Are you aware of your—”
“I know,” he gasped.
“When was your last dose of Idocrine?”
“Forty… cycles. Ten… milligrams.”
“Understood. Given the extent of your condition, I would advise aggressive care on par with planet-side therapies. Would you like me to list the side—?”
“No. Just… give… it.” Then he tacked on a please at the end for form's sake.
“Verbal consent protocols are authorized while aboard Sigyn. Do you consent to pharmacological treatment?”
“Yes.”
“Please stand by while I prepare your script.”
While they waited for the automated lab to produce its bounty, Clancy helped him resocket his artificial eye and resync it with his ship's interface. After a handful of calibrations, things were literally looking as good as new.
Clancy left his bedside, slim knife-like legs padding and clinking pleasantly against the scattered fatigue mats and drain covers.
The robot, like most that worked hospitality or human relations, had something like a head, but faces weren't standard. Clancy’s head was adorned by a gunmetal gray mask that didn't articulate. He was forever stuck with a placid, slightly sleepy look. His voice modulator, however, was surprisingly expressive for a common model.
Clancy retrieved the lab's product and began preparing it, scraping the pink powder into a holey tablet press to start.
Over his shoulder, the android said, “It seems there was an error in the bay's diagnostic algorithm. It erroneously tagged you for biomass reclamation. Thankfully, Sigyn detected your life signs while running a routine check and dispatched me as soon as it was safe to navigate through the ring. I have already put in a work order with Electrical to address this malfunction. I apologize for any additional harm this may have caused you.”
If an android could be legally programmed to gather information, Clancy would be a spy instead of a nurse practitioner.
After the android helped him take his first dose, Zeru said, “Delete… all… personal… medical… information.”
“Personnel counter sign required. I will pass you Sun.”
“Tzu.” Gods of Night and Shadow, he really needed to get that updated.
“Directive understood. Deleting all accrued personal medical data related to Caleb Vannik Zeru. Time to completion: point‐zero-zero-two seconds. Thank you for your patience. Is there anything else I can help you with, Pilot?”
“No. Thank… you, Clancy.”
“Of course. Should you need me, press any red emergency button, located at various stations around the ship, and I will dispatch to your location. Good day, Sir.”
The robot folded up into something like a small piece of carry-on luggage and rolled himself to an equipment chute where he was sucked back up into the arteries of the ship.
As the pick-me-up started to take effect, Zeru settled back into bed and felt himself beginning to relax.
No. Not yet. His eyes found the single camera in the bay. With an augmented blink, he disabled it. A second later, he saw the usage light come back on.
He sighed. Not for the first time, he thought, If only people were as easy to deal with.
He could have gone back to his berth or disengaged the ring once the drugs kicked in in earnest, but he really didn't see the point, especially when doing either would've made him feel like he was giving in or giving up—and he'd have to explain his miraculous recovery to the crew.
Instead, he took advantage of the free rest and caught up on real, dreamless sleep.
Alonzo visited him first. After recovering from the initial shock of her hugging him, she asked if he was ready to receive visitors and he told her, “Why? Is there something wrong?”
She’d laughed. “Yes! Our pilot almost died. None of us are doing okay.”
The responses to her electronic summons came through her beeper and, moments later, they were both surrounded by half a dozen leads all vying for updates on his welfare. A text message informing everyone of his status hadn’t been enough for anyone’s sensibilities. Morgan especially, who had initially assessed the damage to his cranium, had to see this awakened miracle for himself.
In the end, it was Clancy that softened the edges of everyone’s understandable skepticism—No lie about recovery or on-board rescue protocols required. The reports of his death had simply been an electronic glitch, a malfunction. Morgan was glad to blame the chip in his head over his own judgement. And, judging by the looks everyone else gave the scout, they were all glad the captain had prevented folks from acting too hastily off the word of a medical bay evaluator.
After the initial influx of people, Morgan, Alonzo, and Lachance remained.
“How are you?” Lachance asked as he sat backwards in a pop-up chair.
Zeru wiped at his mouth as he looked down at the info tablet Alonzo had provided upon his request. “Honestly, I'm a little pissed.” He flicked a finger across the schematic and brought up their manifest. “Looking at the damage, we're not going to be able to skip repairs in the Lan System. That bay ingress hatch isn't rated for egress pressures for sustained—”
Lachance chuckled. “Only the pilot would be more worked up over the state of his ship rather than himself.”
“Did you forget you live on this ship?” Zeru asked pointedly, then sighed when that only got him another round of laughter from the gaggle.
“The captain's been in top form,” Alonzo said, her tone carefully disinterested.
Morgan didn't mince words, however. He banged a tool tray and rumbled, “Even since we got clear of the Deringer, she's been dragging officers into the conference room for an hour apiece, grilling them over their profiles.”
“Seems to me she had reason to,” Zeru said quietly. A glance at Lachance caught the warden wincing.
“It's invasive!” Morgan protested.
“It'll be over soon,” Alonzo pointed out. “To be fair, she only started digging because it turned out like this.” She patted Lachance's shoulder. “Come on, Steph. Say what you came to say.”
“I'm sorry, Pilot.”
Zeru shook his head. “Rogue dust. Leave it behind us.”
Lachance took a breath, “We’ve got a saying in these parts. Trust comes up the gangway in zero-gravity, but it leaves out the airlock.”
“Thankfully, when I extend my trust, it’s tethered.”
Alonzo’s ponytail swished. “Or there’s a lady on a lever.”
Zeru rubbed the back of his tender scalp as they all laughed good-naturedly. “Yeah… I’ll be feeling that for a few cycles yet.” To Lachance, he said, “Did you already apologize to the captain?”
“She’s not the one who nearly died.”
“Except she did. I know she doesn’t look like it—she’d never let it show—but I wouldn’t have done what I did if she hadn’t been on the ropes too. How’d she tell it?”
Morgan reluctantly supplied, “That if it hadn’t been for you, everyone on the ship would’ve been cooked.”
Zeru made a there-you-go gesture with his skinned fingers.
“So, I should be extending my apologies to everyone.”
Zeru smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt. But the captain needs to hear it directly. Show her you understand what an… inconvenience you’ve proven to be.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully and Lachance laughed.
Alonzo was saccharine as she nudged the warden’s shoulder with her hip. “Wasn’t I just saying the same thing at leisure last night? It’s her ego against ours. And unfortunately, it’s her ego that’s paying us.”
Lachance waved her off. “’Spose I had to hear it from someone else too.”
Morgan sniffed. “Fuck the money. It’s our butts. Don’t see why we gotta bend over backwards for any captain.”
Alonzo rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a real problem with authority, don’t you, Scout?”
“No, just Captain Feline Aykhan.” He said it like hers was a stage name. “She’s only a couple years older than me. She needs a few more augments and a dozen more scars before I take her seriously.”
“Says the boy who can’t grow stubble,” Lachance stated.
“She can’t even grow a chick-‘stache!” Morgan reposted.
Zeru snorted, but he didn’t say anything to that. Instead he asked, “How’s our new passenger?”
“You mean the badlander?” Morgan shared a look with Alonzo who raised a cryptic eyebrow.
It was Lachance who answered. “Mark, short for Marquess Connor. He and his brother were cloned from the same strand. On the strategic side, he sang like a songbird when Cap got him alone.”
Morgan shivered. “She made me disable the cameras. He was in one piece after, but… I’m gonna be seeing her face in my nightmares.”
Lachance cleared his throat. “We got the codes from him to access the fuel tank we’re dragging, so that’s something.”
“And on the non-strategic side?” Zeru prompted softly.
“He’s gone catatonic,” Alonzo said. “It doesn’t look like she touched him.”
“Good Light,” Zeru grunted.
Lachance said, “Cap’n wants to turn him in for a pretty bounty in the Lan System, but I wonder why we don’t just…” He let the suggestion hang in the air and rubbed at his shaved head. “Cap’n Aykhan’s supporting him out of her rations, so that’s one thing Jackie needn’t worry over.”
Zeru only nodded. He couldn’t say one way or the other whether he would have done the same in her position.
The three of them bid him farewell shortly after that.
As much as he appreciated their concerns, he was glad when they were gone.
He had brooding to catch up on.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBHfYVwaesF
When he reported to the pit, his captain was nowhere to be seen. He let it go for an hour before his anxiety got the better of him and he searched for her. He found Aykhan in the ring, running on the indoor track in sleeper clothes. She moved like a machine. After watching her for over an hour, he was convinced she’d be running until the heat death of the universe became a concern rather than a theory.
Briefly, he considered sending her a message to let her know he’d reported on-time but deleted his drafts and forced himself back to work.
If she wasn’t in the pit, she didn’t care.
If she didn’t care, he couldn’t care.
Right?
He pulled up the manifest again and started making load plans for the repairs. He tasked drones with some of the temporary fixes that he didn’t want to assign to their soul-bound. Half-way through his shift, an ultraviolet tarp was stapled to the hole in their hull and printed supports were in place to keep it from dragging them.
Bianca arrived a little after that to check in on him and his temper might have gotten the better of him as he dismissed her. Surely there were more important things to do than baby him. He was in the pit. That meant he was good.
Did Aykhan think that? Was that why she was still running in the ring? How long had she been running now? A check through the tapes told him she’d brought the ring up to 1.2 planet weight almost nine hours before.
I’ll send an anonymous comment to her private chat, he told himself and brought up the display to do so, but then he canned the idea as soon as the blank form populated its fields. What would he even say? I see you’ve been running since the beginning of your shift. Did you sleep last night? Do you even sleep? Why 20% over? Are you trying to make your heart explode, or just mine?
What did he care?
Maybe she’d forgotten.
No, he was just irritated. What was the point of ordering him back to the cockpit so soon after their incident if she wasn’t going to be around to make sure he complied? Clearly, her wanting him in the pit was a control tactic, a powerplay. But what for?
In the end, he was more annoyed at himself.
Sigyn’s pit just seemed… empty without her.
He hated that he felt that way more than anything.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLmC7t4hebx
He was enjoying his second rum gel pack at Leisure when someone clapped him on the shoulder, making him bark a curse in surprise. Then he narrowed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. “The one fucking day I wanna be alone…”
Aykhan smirked, glancing at the empty bags on the bar next to the queue of unopened ones. “You’re in here late.”
“I wanted to be alone,” he lied.
“Come on.” Her irises flickered. “Been a few cycles.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She reached over the bar and pulled a couple vodka tonic tubes from the server chute.
“Fine. You’ve been avoiding everyone.”
“Did I interrupt your routine pouting sesh? Want me to leave?” She left a cracked tube tab floating at her shoulder.
No. “Yes, actually.”
Her grin was feral. “How did you lose your eye, Pilot?”
He shook his head and squeezed the last of his rum into his mouth. He wiped his lips to hide a smile and cracked another tube. “Close encounter with a singularity.”
“Did your maker give you the artificial one?”
He frowned at her.
She waved a hand. “Don’t be shy. Who made you?”
He cocked his head to the side, assessing her. “My parents... But someone made you.” He nodded to himself. “Mm. That's the real difference. I'm the real deal and you're a carbon copy.”
“Carbon composite, thank you. A man-made evolution in every sense of the word. The Human to your Neanderthal. I can't die, I don't sleep, and I don't scar.” She bit the tip of her tongue as she smiled.
He snorted. Neanderthal. That allusion was funny. He wished there were people alive that could appreciate the joke. People other than Feline Aykhan. “But you gloat just like the least of ‘em. What're you even doing here?”
“The captain invited me for a drink. What's your excuse?”
“You don’t drink with the officers.”
“Correction. I don’t get drunk with them.”
“I’ve never seen you drink.” He knew when he said it that she’d know what he really meant: I’ve been watching you since you boarded. When did you drink that I didn’t see? “There an occasion?” he wondered.
She gave him a side-long look. “Does there need to be?”
“Maybe not for normal people.”
She sputtered a laugh. “Normal people…”
“What? You think you’re normal?”
“Better than normal,” she snapped. She tipped the mouth of her tube at him. “You, on the other hand…” Less so, she mouthed. She looked at his bare forearms. “You even broadcast your hangups. A mermaid banging an anchor? Really? And the pisces sign on your wrist? I’ve seen the Ragnarok backpiece that goes passed your arse. You could only be more cliche if you had a dick tat’, which makes me wonder if you just weren’t brave enough… or you didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that you’re not a grower.”
He rolled his eyes. Her pointed teasing was beginning to grow on him, and he definitely didn’t want her to know.
They sat in mutual silence for almost an hour. He went through another two rum packs and was beginning to feel like that was one pack too many. When he chanced a look at Aykhan, she had seven tabs floating in a neat stack beside her, but she was still rubbing the sides of her gels and contemplating the blank television screen across from them with imperious, unflappable ease.
If he wasn’t so sloshed, he may have felt content to let the silence consume their reunion, but his nerves got to him. “Can you... even get drunk?” he wondered out loud. Then he cleared his throat. “Or is that too personal a question?”
She didn’t look at him as she asked, “You know what I find so infuriating about you, Caleb?”
“Mm?”
“You even talk like them.”
“Know what I can’t stand about you?”
One of her eyebrows rose in a question.
He slapped the bar. “You never just answer my fucking questions. If you find interacting with a Neanderthal so tiresome, you could just shut me down, but you don't. You bother me!” He made a guttural, upset sound. “Dragging things out, being vague, deflecting—It makes you come across as lonely. But when I extend a stupid, bleeding hand, it either gets slapped or bitten off. Wish you’d just fucking decide if you even want a friend.”
He was sure he’d overstepped, was sort of hoping he had, but Aykhan surprised him by keeping cool, aloof. She said, “I don't know what being drunk feels like. I've seen it. I know the compounds. I don't have a liver, so I don't process it the same way.”
He thought about that. What’s the point of drinking then? He asked, “Was your creator really trying to make a new and improved version, or just a new species?”
She gave the TV a look. “That is a personal question.”
Other than her daughter and mentions of Ekhanta, she’s sensitive about her maker. “Noted,” he said aloud, taking a lazy drink.
She asked, “You know what I find captivating about you?”
“Is it… my high tolerance for non-sequiturs?”
“You've encountered another one of your kind—someone who knows what it's like—someone who's seen the same things you have... and you don't wonder how or why?”
I was just thinking that about you. But I don’t find it captivating so much as freaking bizarre. He said, “I assume even if you knew the answer, you'd lie to me.” She huffed a laugh, which emboldened him even more. “What is it that bothers you? The statistical likelihood? The fact that we're still different breeds? Or is it that you've been dowsing for others, and I'm the great disappointment at the end of your rod?”
“Destin. It's providence,” she said with a shrug.
Both of his eyebrows tried to kiss his hairline. “You mean coincidence.”
“Fate.”
Fate coming out of Feline Aykhan’s mouth was like hearing a shadow priest swear on the Light—it was so absurd, it verged on impossible. He put a hand to his ear as he scoffed, “Excuse me, are you being serious?”
She shook her head and said very somberly, “I'm never serious. I just think... The Darkness has always had a black sense of humor.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You're really a member of the faith?”
She barked a laugh. “No. You've seen who I keep council with, present company notwithstanding. I just like the mythology. You? I've heard you swear before.”
He squeezed the life out of his rum and then cracked another as he said gruffly, “Old habits die hard. Centuries ago, you could have called me zealous.”
She smiled. “I can't imagine that.”
“Why not?”
“Dunno,” she said. “Sort of the same sense I get when I see you get angry. You stop yourself from saying what you mean. When you wound, you don't kill. I said you aren't the murdering type. I didn't say you weren't a killer.”
There's a difference? he wondered to himself. He tapped a carbon finger on the bar top. “People are allowed to change. I just... have the privilege of having had more time to do it. You haven't done it? Start over? Pull one-eighties out of a sense of duty? You don't strive to be a better person?”
She snorted. “It’s hard to improve upon perfection.” When he rolled his eyes at her, she relented with, “Fine, fine, I know what you mean... I'm not saying I don't understand the benefits of playing nice. I'm cruel and kind when it helps my role get what they want. Outside of that, I don't really see the point. The greater survival of the species doesn't really apply to us, does it? We're practically guaranteed seats at the end of the world.”
Playing roles. Acting. Yeah, I can get behind that parallel. Except that means whoever she is in any given lifetime isn't sincere. So am I seeing the real Aykhan, or just the character she wants me to see? Zeru made a declarative noise and swallowed before saying, “I figured out what your occasion is.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You're not lonely. You just know people drink when they talk. You're just mimicking the social protocol. So, what do you want from me, Aykhan? Companionship? A litmus test for how shit your methods are? A living code-duck?”
She grinned. Whatever she was thinking was inscrutable.
Zeru sighed again. “You can't burden Fate with blame. But if it isn't a coincidence either, then something more is at work... This is the part where you tell me the truth.”
“I want to know what other faces you've worn.”
“Why?”
“I thought I understood you. And now I find I understand less than nothing. Amid all my perfection, the one flaw I can't shake, no matter who I'm playing, is an overwhelming desire to be involved. Call it... curiosity.”
“You're bored. Well, they have plenty of freakshows on the net. Get your kicks there.” He squished the last of his rum reserves into his mouth and left the pack floating above the pile on the bar. He pushed off his chair and toed the back of it, propelling himself toward the door. Looking down his chest at her, he said, “Or look in a mirror for once.”
She laughed at the ceiling and finally turned to look at him. Her eyes were like glittering sapphires. “Caleb, there's no need to get emotional. You know what I meant!”
“Gimme a straight answer next time, and maybe there won't be any room for misunderstanding.”7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VYyynWtnK
The captain deigned to reward him with her presence in the cockpit when they were seven cycles away from the belt.
They fell into working old routines, but Zeru would be deluding himself if he didn’t acknowledge that new tension building between them, like a pot threatening to boil over.
“Why'd you sabotage your own body?” Aykhan asked.
He didn’t look up from his data slate. In fact, he tried to pretend he hadn’t heard her.
She made a discovery sound. “Ahhh. That was just a guess. You did sabotage yourself. It would have taken years to get this bad. Years of dedication... Why?”
He wiped the plate, hung it on the wall, and opened an application to practice maneuvers in virtual. It had been a while since he’d navigated an ice ring. He wanted to make sure he was honed for the moment.
She decided aloud, “Sabotage… So, you don’t want to make planetfall. But what could be on any planet that you want to avoid? Yourself or other people? Other people, surely… So are you being hunted, or are you afraid that you’ll become the hunter?”
He focused on his breathing, readjusted his gloves. He thought to himself, If she was so set on running down her daughter herself, when she could hire people to do it, why didn’t she just buy a ship and ride the photon highway herself? Why’d she have to drag other people into her fucking problems?
Aykhan chuckled to herself. Then she asked, “How'd you lose your eye, Zeru?”
“Got hit in the back of the head by a drone. Pop.” He clicked his tongue. When she only laughed in response, he asked, “What's your real eye color?”
“I don't have one. The melanin and pigments that my body produces fluctuate from time to time. Nanobots. I can control it. Sometimes I forget to. How’d you lose your eye again?”
He grunted, “Scooped out by cannibals. So, the colors don’t have any meaning?”
“Could be the lighting, or my mood. I don’t know. Have you noticed a pattern?”
He had. He wasn’t sure he wanted to confirm whether he was right. He said, “Gold or brown… when you’re lying through your teeth. Green when you’re fucking with me. Blue when you’re being sincere… But it’s not consistent. What color are they supposed to be?”
“Brown is the genetic average in this sector.”
“Feline, you couldn’t blend in if you wore a cham’ suit.”
“And your jacket is any better camouflage? Do you even know how to sixty-nine?”
“Would Lithium even work on you?”
“No liver. No kidneys. Probably not.”
“What’s that feel like?”
“Not having a liver? How does it feel to have one?”
He made a noise of concession in the back of his throat.
When her shift ended, she asked, “See you at Leisure?”
“No.”
“I’ll increase your rum rations.”
Rations were limited. “At whose expense?” he demanded.
She winked. “Mine.”
He shook his head. “You’re already stretching yourself to take care of Mark, and I don’t wanna owe you any favors.”
She stared at him for several seconds. Then she only barked a laugh and left.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbF9w7pdN0G
He didn’t meet her at Leisure.
She’d have to order him.
He thought he’d left his pride behind centuries ago, but it was different with Aykhan. She made demands of him no one had ever had the balls or the gall to demand—not in a hundred years—not in a thousand, if he really thought about it for long. She made him remember his pride.
If she weren't immortal, it might have been different, but between her lies and her schemes and her questions, he wasn't sure what he saw. And because he didn't know if she was good or evil, he bristled and chafed at her intrusions.
How dare she?
Who does she think she is?
What possesses her to even ask?
All those questions were fueled by a sense of entitlement to privacy. Those questions were the givens he'd taken for granted over the last few years. And Aykhan reminded him.
When he'd been Venn, he'd always been watched by the Unity inquisitors; always attended by a veritable army of slaves and valets and servants. In space or on-world, privacy had been an illusion.
And, before that, as a privateer, he’d had to keep things above board with his crew, and that meant secrets didn’t live very long if he intended to keep command of his people. Privacy was something privates got. Privacy was for civilians, agents, and clients. Privacy wasn’t for pirates.
Aykhan was constantly trying to extract things from him, trying to prize the last vestiges of his inner world and claim them. And for what? Entertainment? Ownership? Curiosity?
Between her meddling questions, when he managed to parry or counter, she looked blank, almost forlorn, when she answered, as if the answer wasn’t any more important than the energy it took to voice it.
Maybe he was just bitter that he wasn’t brave enough to press her about her forbidden subjects, because then he'd be just like her.
There was something inside her beside the vacuum of time though. There, where light didn't reach, were her own foul secrets—the only imperfections in her armor. Perhaps they were all tied to her daughter, to Ekhanta, to her creator… and nothing more. But he doubted it.
Normal people were complicated enough.
Aykhan was enigma.
And maybe he was projecting.
He wasn't sure he wanted to find out for sure if there was some measure of decency and humanity inside her, because if he didn’t know, he could continue to pretend it was indeed there.
Moral spook, he thought caustically. She’s both a sinner and a saint if I don’t think too much about it.
But being devil or angel didn’t give her the right to demand things from him. He didn’t care if they were the only immortals in all the universe. Just because she’d seen the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning, didn’t make her entitled to anything that had been his alone for two millennia.
Fate, she’d said. It was providence that they’d met.
If she meant that, why was she so fixated on finding ways to piss him off?
I should go to Leisure just to tell her off, he thought to himself as he rinsed off at Sanitization. But by the time he’d hit the pressure release valve on his helmet, he’d talked himself down from the ledge. That’s exactly what she wants. Fuck that.
A message appeared on his HUD when he was on the way back to the cockpit. It was from Lachance: “Leisure, Pilot?”
He replied, “Aykhan there?”
“No, why?”
He took a deep breath to quell the rage.
She was fucking with him again.
“Just wondering. As for me, I’m good. Maybe after the belt.”
“Good copy. Stay salty, Lithium.”
Zeru flicked through a series of camera feeds before he found her on the ring, this time strapped into a rowing machine with a resistance belt around her built torso. Her expression never changed, her movements locked in and uniform.
He could ask why she wasn’t at Leisure.
Or maybe she’d known he wouldn’t show.
He wasn’t going to message her now.
He wasn’t. He didn’t care.
His lip twitched as he opened the chat and sent her what he thought was an innocent query: “What’s your resistance?”
She glanced at her forearm. Then she smirked and her eyes flicked up to the camera looking down at her. She took a break, shackling the pull-bar, and tapped away at her computer. Then, after flicking the message away, she went back to her workout with that unreadable look on her face.
Her reply appeared a second later: “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He cursed under his breath. Stupid. He was so stupid. Wouldn’t I like to know? he asked himself.
The shittiest part was, when he really considered it, he would.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI52SxEVoXl
“We’re down to the wire now,” Alonza told him over their direct line. “But we’re in place. Warden had us muster an hour early because he knew we’d have a couple newbies that would have to be woken up. Good thing he did. We’re ready when the captain says jump.”
“Appreciate you, Scotty,” Zeru said with feeling.
She laughed. “Still have no idea what that means.”
“It’s the highest of compliments, believe me.”
“I do,” she said hurriedly, “believe you, I mean.” Then, before he could reply, she said, “Morgan’s come out of The Cave. Call back over the party line.”
“Done and done. Good luck.”
“Keep it. You need it more than me. I’ll just be gripping oh-shit handles for the next twenty-four. You don’t have that luxury.”
He grinned. “All the same. Lithium out.”
Above him, strapped into her console, Aykhan commented blandly, “You and Engineering are getting chummy.”
“We are chummy, just not in the way you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything.”
“Then why the observation? What do you wanna know?”
“You don’t swing that way then?”
“If you’re wondering what color her skivvies are, you’ll just have to ask her yourself, Captain.”
“I liked it better when you were excessively professional.”
“Stop asking me excessively personal questions and we can go back to that, Captain.”
“How about we play twenty-questions then? One for one?”
“Even questions about Ekhanta?”
That shut her up.
He sniffed once as if to punctuate his point. Then he keyed his running protocol and turned off autopilot. “You wanna do the honors, or should I?” When she didn’t say anything for a few moments, he added, “I hear the communications relay sounds different from the cockpit…”
She looked up through her lashes, looking down at him from his perspective, and smiled softly. Hazel eyes today. He wondered what that color meant. If he tricked himself into believing she was normal, he could have said it meant warmth. “I’ll get this one. But you can make the end-ops announcement when we’ve made it through in one piece.”
The offer flabbergasted him into silence.
“Are you gawking behind that glass?” she asked.
“I just… figured you’d want the glory call. Every type of captain loves giving their crew good news.”
“You mean, captains love taking credit?” Aykhan mock gasped before blowing a lock of hair from her face. “They’d rather hear good news coming from you. Captain Aykhan’s good news… tends to come with caveats.” She shrugged one shoulder.
He didn’t know what to make of that confession. But then he smirked. “You don’t think we’re gonna make it through the belt in one piece, do you?”
“Let’s just say, I’ve only ever seen you fly in straight lines.”
He sniffed again. He turned off the gas and electronic assists. Then, with a couple switch flicks, he turned off their threshold warning beacons and his visual macros.
“Is there a reason you’ve turned off the outside cams?” the captain asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t need ‘em.”
“Oh, so you do have an ego under all that leather.”
He chuckled. “Heard you pulled some crazy manual moves during the decouple with Deringer. I have my reputation…”
“That was out of necessity.”
“Sigyn could’ve handled it.”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Really?” He looked up at her. “So, when you spent six cycles going over her capability stack and running virtual sims to see how she’d fly on auto, I was just hallucinating?”
She looked up and smiled at him. Hazel for sure. Then she looked back down at her console and keyed the intercom. The muster whistle peeled throughout the ship. Low, high, low. “All hands, this is Captain Aykhan speaking…”7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1fCa2Dml7d
Navigating ice belts wasn’t as difficult as people liked to think. From an asteroid or comet’s point of view, they were a death sentence, but for a ship like Sygin that could turn on her axis and pull enough Gs to flatline her entire crew, it was a money walk. If they weren’t on a timeline, they could have spent another thirty cycles going over or under the massive band of ice and rock, but needs must.
Since Zeru’s only concern was keeping the crew alive and their fuel-line tethered, the money walk was more like a money crawl. With everyone mustered, the ring was empty and so he employed its centrifugal force to counter his maneuvers.
“I had wondered why,” Aykhan said to him after he eased them into a straight after clearing a gnarly bit of scrap. Despite her level voice, one of her hands was bracing her chair and the other was glued to an overhead safety handle.
“What did you wonder?” he prompted, pushing away from one console to another and strapping in. He’d kicked off his boots at some point and they chaotically spun around the space. He knew they wouldn’t hit anything important. He was using them as a point of reference. If they got close to anything, he knew he had to move the ship again to keep the crew conscious. Whiplash killed more than G-sickness.
“I wondered, with your defect, why you owned a ship that could simulate planet weight.”
He found himself smiling as he keyed another maneuver. His HUD notified him anytime something came close to plinking off their hull. He didn’t really need it anymore, could almost sense when the space between objects felt too good to be true. He flew as much by feel as he did by instrumentation.
“You’re impressed by my forethought?”
She made a huffing sound.
“Admit it. You’re impressed.”
“I’m impressed by my own forethought. I knew there was something special about you from the start.”
That made him mentally pause. Then he tentatively said, “I thought the same thing about you when I met you.”
“Liar.” There was a smile in her voice. He knew that if he met her eyes across the pit, they would be hazel. He was beginning to love that color again. It reminded him of green, star-warmed places.
He grinned and braced himself as they burned around an ice dwarf, using its gravity well to avoid a cluster of pseudo-moons.
“What did you really think?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you,” he promised.
“We make it through this, the first rounds on me.”
“The first round was gonna be on you anyway.”
“Why don’t we sweeten the pot?”
“What’d you have in mind?”
He heard her make a controlled exhale as they rolled over a series of snow clouds that buffeted them hard enough that the instrument lights flicked briefly. Zeru was grinning from ear to ear as he heard her make an uncomfortable noise. He snorted just loud enough for their comms to pick it up.
“You really love this, don’t you?” she snapped.
“I really do,” he said, unclipping and reaching up to pull himself into another set of stirrups. “I live for it.”
“You die for it too.”
“And I keep coming back for it.”
“How about this? You get us into the system without a single scratch and I’ll buy Sygin any upgrade they have available at port.”
That was sweet. “Any upgrade?”
“I’m a woman of my word.”
“And what do you get if I scratch her?”
“I get you.”
He grimaced. “Ew.”
She laughed. “When I make planetfall, you come with me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Caleb.”
“Fuck that.”
She laughed again. “Oh, so you’ve already scratched her?!”
He gritted his teeth, but he was fighting back a smile. He locked in. “Fuck you.”
“So it’s a deal?” She slapped one of his boots and it hit him in the back of his helmet before he caught it and sent it back onto its rotation. She caught his death glare. “Well?”
Hazel.
He shook his head, smirking. “I’m getting new cameras.”
She cackled. “I can’t wait to see you crawl. Like a worm.”7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3mzEzQvEic
“All hands, Lithium speaking. We’ve just cleared the belt. Hope you had your gloves out, ‘cause that was the only way you’d come away with a souvenir. All systems are in the green. Absolutely no scratches to speak of. Only a handful of cycles left before we’re touched down around Lan’s elevator. You guys are amazing. Couldn’t have done it without you. First round at Leisure’s on the captain, so don’t be afraid to stop and say Hi… I’m gonna kick her ass at Flick—y-ow!—Fel—Stop… throwing shit!—L-Lithium out!”7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ20OQnUYgIC
Their celebration at Leisure came and went.
Zeru did, in fact, kick Aykhan’s ass, but there were no witnesses, and she kept reminding him of that fact even three cycles later despite video evidence to the contrary. Video could be faked, she stressed. Zeru decided it wasn’t worth grousing over, but he knew the truth as did she, and that was what was important.
A cycle out from their half-way point, they met at Leisure.
“Tell me a true story, Caleb,” she ordered him after he was at least four packs in.
“About?”
“A past life. Not the last one,” she qualified before he could argue. “One before.”
“Why?” he snorted.
“Entertain me.” Her eyes were hazel. Not blue or green.
“Okay,” he said, which seemed to genuinely surprise her. He hated it, but he had to admit to himself that he liked surprising Feline. Her surprise carried more weight for all the best reasons. He wondered in a vague sort of way how long he could keep it up without giving too much of himself away, but maybe he knew that was folly, deep down.
He told her about his time as a privateer, about Fenrir. There wasn’t much to tell in the end. Or, at least, she didn’t seem entirely surprised by some of his revelations.
At first her lack of interest disheartened him, but then she asked during a lull, “You must really like Norse mythology.” She gestured at their surroundings. “Sygin, Fenrir, Ragnarok… Is it because of the whole one-eye situation?”
He just smiled at her. Pulling a page from her book of non-sequiters, he said companionably, “I don't think Aykhan is concerned with poetry or symbols like that. I think if she named a ship, she'd call it The Juggernaut or something to that effect.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Oui! Very practical. That's one thing I like about Captain Aykhan. She doesn't pontificate. She's straight forward. But she has her own kind of humor.”
“She does!” he readily agreed.
“It's dry and understated, but it's there—often at the expense of other people.” She bit her tongue. Blue eyes.
“I've noticed,” he said wryly, wringing his pack.
She rested her chin in one hand to stare at him. “You're… wondering how much is Aykhan and how much is me, aren't you?” He didn’t say anything. She sighed. “You need to stop thinking I'm drawing from personal experience. My characters aren't informed by me, but by people I've seen.”
“So, there was a real Aykhan you encountered at some point and you've just assumed their mannerisms?”
“Exactly.”
“Did Aykhan have a daughter too?”
She shook her head. “No. He died childless. He had a First Mate he saw as a son—that was it.”
“Aykhan does seem old fashioned like that… to an extent.” Then he eyed her in return. “Was the older version a lady killer too?”
She wobbled a hand. “Yes and no. He tended to pick favorites, but he was far more discreet than his current female iteration. He feared consequences. Lady Aykhan does not. She likes a little challenge now and then—a little drama.”
That's one thing I think I don’t like about this Aykhan, Zeru considered internally. Fear of consequence is what maintains order in the universe. Without fear, there's no development. Aloud, he said, “I think I would've been friends with that Aykhan.”
She surprised him by nodding. “I think so too. Caleb Zeru is as tightly‐laced as pilots can come.” He huffed a self-effacing laugh. She said, “You two would've been perfectly in-sync in the cockpit. Outside of it, you might have been at odds, but only because the captain was a straight edge. And you don't seem the type to sleep around, so you might have had private words with him if you found out about any of his conjugal visits among the crew.”
“Would he have been receptive to critique?”
“Probably as receptive as Caleb about his drinking.”
He verbally balked. “I don't have a problem.”
“You don't, but Caleb appears to.”
He made a hissing sound as he cringed. “Yikes. I'll chill-out from now on. I don't want him to be seen like that.”
She laughed at his expression. “No, don’t stop! I think it gives him a little bit of a crusty edge. Otherwise, Zeru's too two-dimensional. It implies a checkered past, or some hidden trauma. He’s more fascinating with the habit.”
He hummed, “Well… you'd be the expert on fronting.”
She cackled. She bit her tongue. Hazel again. “Uh-huh!”
In character or out, Zeru was beginning to like Aykhan.
He wondered too how long that would last.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ26QJepvuC6
