Chapter 120: We Can Share

Night settled over the Wanderer-7, and the corridors sank into the soft low amber of third watch.

...Cabin Three was usually the quietest room on the ship, lined with neatly bound paper notebooks and floating star charts, and it smelled faintly of pressed dried tea leaves.

The folded paper chart Leo had given her lay on the desk under a smooth grey stone from the Vein, so it couldn’t drift away.

Tonight, Aoi had spent forty minutes getting the room ready for guests.

She’d straightened the notebooks twice and moved the cushion from the bunk to the floor and back again three times.

She’d rehearsed her opening sentence in front of the dark cartography terminal until she could say it without her voice cracking, and then she’d said it once more, and it had cracked anyway.

’It’s just a meeting,’ she told herself. ’A crew meeting... You’ve run hundreds of meetings... You can do this.’

She’d called it for exactly 21:00, because being official was the only armor she had left.

They came one at a time.

Camila came first, carrying a tray with six mismatched cups and a pot of mint tea, because Camila never arrived anywhere empty-handed.

She set it on the desk, gave Aoi’s arm a soft squeeze without a word and settled onto the end of the bunk with her knees tucked under her green linen skirt.

Jin-Ah came next, exactly on time, with her slate under her arm, and took up a position against the closed hatch like a security officer at a hearing.

Chloe drifted in behind her without anyone noticing, which was how Chloe arrived most places, and curled up on the rug by Aoi’s bare feet.

Elena arrived four minutes late, which was clearly deliberate.

She looked around the crowded little room with an expression of polite suffering, chose the single swivel chair by the desk and sat in it like a throne she’d been forced to accept from a lesser nation.

"I do hope this is brief," she said. "Some of us intend to actually sleep tonight..."

Aoi’s ears went pink immediately as Harper came last.

She’d changed out of her work clothes into grey sweatpants and a soft shirt while her face was scrubbed pink.

She stopped in the doorway and looked at Aoi, Aoi looked back at her and the whole room held its breath then Harper grinned, looking a bit crooked and a little shy.

"Hey, Professor," she said, and climbed onto the bunk to sit cross-legged against the bulkhead with her arms hooked around her shins.

’She’s smiling,’ Aoi thought, and something tight in her chest let go a little. ’She’s actually smiling at me...’

Vexa wasn’t there, of course.

She was still sealed inside the Mirage thirty meters off their starboard wing under Leo’s rule that no outsider crossed the threshold until the landing tariff was paid, and Aoi had been quietly relieved about that all evening.

...So it was the six of them, and Aoi standing in the little gap between the bunk and the desk with her back to her terminal.

She’d left her glasses folded on the desk, and her black hair fell loose over her shoulders over a loose cream tunic.

Her face was a furnace.

She took one deep breath through her nose, clasped her trembling hands behind her back and lifted her chin.

"I... I’ve asked you all here," she began, fighting very hard to steady her voice, "because the atmosphere at breakfast this morning was completely unacceptable for a working flight crew..."

Elena’s left eyebrow rose a fraction, and Harper tilted her head with a knowing smirk.

"I’m aware," Aoi went on, while her cheeks flared even hotter, "that the walls on this ship have very limited dampening... I’m also aware that my conduct during the third watch wasn’t carried out with the discretion appropriate to someone in my position."

"That’s an exceptionally conservative way of putting it," Elena murmured from the chair, dry as old wine.

Aoi shot her a sharp glare but she kept going.

She unclasped her hands and brought them to her chest, and when she spoke again, the embarrassment had gone out of her voice and left something earnest and very sincere behind.

"What I really want to say to all of you is... I don’t mind."

The room went quiet.

Harper’s smirk softened, Camila leaned forward a little on the bunk, and even Jin-Ah lowered her slate by a centimeter.

"We’ve been out here in the dark for weeks," Aoi said softly. "Since the day the tutorial started, we’ve barely met another living soul who wasn’t trying to kill us for our ship... We’re seven people alone in a galaxy that wants us dead."

She looked around at each of them.

"Leo is the only man any of us have," she said, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "He’s the captain of this ship, but more than that, he’s the only person in this whole universe I’d trust with any of you... Last night was good. It was beautifully good and if any of you feel something for him, if any of you want to reach out and hold onto him the way I did, I want you to know I’ll never stand in your way and I’ll never hold it against you."

She swallowed. "We’re family... We belong together."

Aoi finished and stood there, tall and proud and trembling like a reed in the wind and for a long moment, nobody said anything then Harper let out a soft snort of laughter and shook her head, and a rich glow spread across her freckled cheeks.

"Well, Professor," she said, leaning back against the wall with her eyes sparkling, "seeing as I tackled him in the armory six hours ago and nearly bit his bottom lip off... I’m real glad to hear you’re on board."

Aoi blinked, startled, and then a soft smile of pure relief broke across her face.

"You... you talked to him?"

"I yelled at him," Harper corrected proudly, though the goofy grin all over her face gave her away completely. "I cried like an idiot, and then he kissed me until my toes curled inside my boots... so, yeah."

She looked at Aoi, and her voice went rough.

"And I’m sorry about breakfast. I was a total jerk to you, and you didn’t deserve it... We square?"

"We were never anything else," Aoi said, and her eyes were suddenly wet.

She laughed quietly, and her shoulders came down for the first time all day, and on the end of the bunk,

Camila had to dab at her own eyes with the corner of her apron.

’Oh, thank goodness,’ Camila thought. ’Thank goodness, thank goodness...’

Then Harper’s grin turned wicked.

"Though seriously, Professor... I could hear you from the armory... Through two decks and over the lathe."

Aoi made a small strangled sound and covered her face with both hands.

"Harper!" Camila scolded, swatting her knee. "Be nice!"

"I am being nice! I’m saying she’s got great lungs!" Harper protested, laughing. "Honestly, I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t know a person who talks about stellar drift could make sounds like that..."

"Please stop," Aoi said into her palms. "I’m begging you, as your senior officer, please stop talking."

"For once in her life, Bell is correct," Elena said, examining her fingernails. "The whole ship was subjected to an involuntary audio briefing... I now know more about our cartographer than I know about my own family."

Aoi let out a muffled whimper, and Camila patted her back sympathetically while trying very hard not to giggle.

Down on the rug, Chloe slowly lifted her head from her knees.

Her calm green eyes swept the room, taking in Harper’s grin and Aoi’s burning face without the slightest change of expression.

"I liked Leo first..." she said.

It came out so flat and casual that Camila gasped and her hands flew to her mouth.

"What?" Harper’s jaw dropped. "Chloe, what do you mean you liked him first?!"

"Before the sky broke," Chloe said plainly, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "In Aoi’s flight simulation class at the university..."

She looked up at Aoi.

"You used to make us fly the canyon run on Thursdays. Leo always sat in the fourth row by the window, and when you were explaining something he already knew, he’d let his hair fall over his eyes and pretend to listen... When he flew the canyon, he never once touched the walls. I sat three rows behind him and watched his shoulders when he banked."

Aoi stared down at her with her lips slightly parted.

’She was there,’ she thought, and the floor seemed to tilt very slightly under her bare feet. ’Three rows behind him... watching him in my own classroom, the same way I was.’

"I remember," she said faintly. "The canyon run... He set the course record in the third week."

She paused. "You sat in the back... You never asked a single question all term."

"I didn’t have any questions," Chloe said. "I decided he was mine on the second Tuesday, you can take it like that."

She looked around at the circle of stunned women with perfect unblinking innocence.

"You all just took a really long time to notice him."

"Wait, wait, wait." Harper held up both hands. "The second Tuesday of term? That’s like... day eight!"

"Day nine," Chloe corrected calmly. "The first Monday was a holiday."

"She’s been keeping count," Jin-Ah murmured, and made a small note on her slate. "Fascinating..."

Harper buried her face in her hands and groaned, half amused and half horrified, and Camila let out a delighted musical laugh.

"Oh, Chloe... You really are an old soul, aren’t you?"

"A remarkably patient predator, more accurately," Elena remarked with a delicate sniff.

She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs and folded her arms, and a small irritated pout settled on her lips at having been dragged into this at all.

"This entire conference is absurd," she declared. "A collective emotional negotiation over an uncultured savage whose idea of interior decoration is welding raw armor plates to a corridor wall... Who’s interested in that man anyway...?"

She turned her face toward the small observation port and the empty black beyond it.

"He has no pedigree whatsoever, his manners are completely unrefined and his disregard for standard procedure is an ongoing source of clinical distress. I assure you all, as a daughter of the Sterling line, my interest in our captain extends to his usefulness as a pilot and his ability to keep us alive... That’s all."

Harper stared at her, Camila stared at her. Aoi stared at her, and even Chloe tilted her head and studied the heiress with a long considerate look.

Why was she openly lying to them...?

Elena stared right back at all of them, perfectly composed, and her pout only deepened.

"What? I’m being sincere though, some of us have standards."

Harper opened her mouth, ready to fire off a merciless counter-battery, and Elena’s head snapped around with her icy eyes narrowed into daggers.

"Don’t say a single syllable, Bell," she hissed. "Not one..."

Harper clamped her lips shut and bit down on her tongue so hard that her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

’Now it’ll be funny if I walk in on them having sex later...’

Then Jin-Ah stepped forward.

She shifted her slate under her arm and walked into the middle of the little cabin with the measured stride of an auditor arriving to inspect a bank vault, and though there was a faint pink flush on her cheeks, her dark eyes were round and serious and fixed entirely on Aoi.

"From a demographic perspective," She said. "bonding within closed survival units is mathematically predictable... However, physical intimacy carries biological liabilities that can’t be ignored during a high-hazard transit."

She looked Aoi straight in the eye.

"Sex is an evolutionary mechanism for people who wish to have children... I do not wish to have children at this point in our operations. The caloric cost alone would cut our domestic reserves by eighteen point four percent, and an infant needs a level of atmospheric monitoring our scrubbers aren’t built to maintain."

She took half a step closer and tapped her slate with one fingernail.

"So, Aoi... as the ship’s logistics officer, I need precise data for the medical inventory... Did the captain finish inside you? And were you using certified hormonal birth control at the time?"

The air in Cabin Three froze solid as Aoi locked up so hard that her breath stuck in her throat with an audible little click.

Her dark eyes went wide and nearly black, and the scarlet on her cheeks went straight past burning into a blinding crimson as her brain fought a desperate losing battle against the arithmetic.

’He... we... oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no...’

"I... I..." Her voice jumped two whole octaves into a strangled squeak. "He... he didn’t... he did not... pull... pull out..."

She clutched the front of her cream tunic with trembling fingers while her eyes darted wildly to the floor, and the final truth tore its way out of her.

"...and... and we haven’t... there is NO birth control on this ship!"