Chapter 51: All Roads Lead To...

Beside station three, Jin-Ah sat very still.

Her fingers rested on the edge of her slate, where the Black Kite’s immaculate flawless telemetry was still glowing and her heart was beating fast.

She remembered the cold knot that had twisted in her stomach an hour ago... The feeling that the numbers were too clean and too perfect.

She looked up at Leo standing alone and wounded in the middle of the deck.

’Tell him,’ her mind whispered. ’Tell him the data feels artificial... Tell him the numbers are too perfect...’

Her lips parted then her eyes flicked to Sensei’s rigid furious posture, to Elena’s sneering vindicated smirk and to the stairs Harper had just disappeared down.

Her throat closed.

If she spoke now, she’d be siding with the outcast captain against the entire crew and the instructor who’d taught them for three years... all on a feeling with zero mathematical proof.

Jin-Ah lowered her head to her dark blank terminal and kept her mouth shut.

Leo turned his back on all of them and walked off the bridge in silence.

...

Twenty minutes later he stood in the doorway of the garden as the air was warm and sweet with damp gravel and ripening vines.

Camila knelt by the second-tier potato bed, sifting fresh gravel around the creeping roots.

"Camila."

She jumped and dropped a handful of gravel into the tray.

RUSTLE!

She turned and wiped her dusty palms on her apron, looking up at him with big soft hazel eyes clouded over with quiet troubled sadness.

"Leo..." She murmured.

"You really think I’m making this up?" he asked quietly.

He sounded tired with all the venom from the bridge was gone. "You think I’m just trying to ruin everything?"

She stood up slowly and brushed off her knees.

She didn’t sneer like Elena or freeze him out like Sensei... She looked at him with pleading confusion, like someone who just wanted the sunshine to stay.

"Leo..." She stepped closer, twisting the hem of her apron into tight knots. "Why can’t you just... why can’t you just be happy for us?"

It landed like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach.

"Ren said there’s a farm deck on the mothership," she choked, tears gathering at her lashes. "Real soil, Leo... Earth dirt, with earthworms, and sunlamps that run for kilometers and there are kids there. Twelve little kids who haven’t tasted real fruit since the sky fell... I can help them and I can feed them too."

She reached out and her small dirt-smudged hand touched his sleeve, and she looked up at him with desperate earnest hope.

"We don’t have to live scared anymore," she whispered, and a single tear slid down her cheek. "We don’t have to wait for the air to run out. We don’t have to fight monsters in the dark every day just to earn another twelve hours of breathing... We can be safe... We can be with other people. Why does that make you so angry? Why do you have to hate him for giving us a chance to live?"

He looked down at her small pleading face.

The girl who’d cried over the first green sprout on a metal tray, the girl who believed with every fiber of her soul that the universe could still be kind however he couldn’t break it.

He couldn’t tell her that predators don’t hand out fuel for free... He couldn’t tell her twelve hungry children was the oldest bait in the history of human war.

After all, she wouldn’t hear it since to her he was just a storm cloud trying to blot out the only sunlight she’d seen in days.

Slowly, he pulled his arm back, and his sleeve slid out of her fingers.

"Keep the drip-lines clear, Camila," he said softly, with no life in it. "Pressure’s dropping on line three."

He walked back out into the corridor and left her standing alone among the green leaves.

...

An hour later the bridge was empty.

The crew had drifted off to pack their bins for the transfer to the mothership.

The main lights were dimmed to night-cycle, washing the silent consoles in long cold blue shadow.

Leo sat slumped deep in the throne with his boots on the dead console, staring up through the cracked canopy at the indifferent stars with a hollow exhaustion in his chest that went deeper than bone.

’Am I maybe going too overboard...? Am I wrong and overthinking it?’

CHIME!

The speaker overhead crackled with its volume dialed down to a private low hum.

[Atmospheric diagnostic check... Sensory telemetry confirms that the biological units have achieved a state of collective self-induced lobotomy. The human capacity for self-deception in the presence of grooming products and a low-frequency baritone remains this unit’s greatest operational disappointment.]

Leo let out a faint dry breath with a half scoff and half sigh.

"You’re not helping, box."

[This unit does not exist to provide emotional insulation for a Master Captain who insists on being correct in an environment that prefers comfortable fantasy... However, For the official record: sensory logs confirm that the unit designated Dekker lingered outside primary life support for three minutes and forty-two seconds with an erratic pulse of one hundred and twelve beats per minute... Your tactical assessment was mathematically sound. The fact that your crew has the collective strategic foresight of a concussed mollusk is an administrative tragedy, not an intellectual failing on your part.]

He shut his eyes in the dark, and the ghost of a bitter smirk touched his mouth.

"...Thanks."

[Do not thank this unit... Should this vessel be surrendered to strange primates, this unit’s core will likely be wiped to install inferior commercial navigation sub-routines. This unit’s survival remains annoyingly tethered to your continued biological existence, Try not to die of wounded adolescent pride.]

Soft bare footsteps padded across the deck and he didn’t open his eyes since he knew who.

Chloe climbed the three steps of the dais without a sound in her oversized dark tunic with her hair loose and her green eyes luminous in the blue light.

She didn’t ask if he was okay and she didn’t apologize for the crew or tell him he was right or ask him to make peace.

Chloe was in no position to say anything, she turned around and sat down on the right armrest of the throne, right beside his hip.

"Mm..."

Slowly, she leaned sideways and rested her cheek flat against the leather of his jacket sleeve with her hands folded in her lap and her small cool weight anchoring him to the chair as she breathed slowly against his arm.

Leo didn’t move.

He let her stay there, and pulled one tiny fragile thread of warmth from the only person on the whole ship who didn’t ask him to be something else.

After a while, without opening his eyes, he lifted his arm and let it settle around her back.

She went very still then she melted into his side with a tiny contented sigh, her fingers curling into the front of his jacket with her face turning into his shoulder.

"I’m here," she whispered into the leather. "I’m always here, Leo."

Ten minutes passed in the quiet dark.

Then...

PZZZZT... CLICK!

The master comm relay on the armrest snapped open and flooded the empty bridge with a bright clear chime.

Ren’s voice came through smooth and bright and full of confident command.

"Attention, Wanderer-7... Fuel’s loaded, tanks are full and the transfer line is decoupling... All systems are green. We leave for the mothership in one hour. Pack your gear, folks."

A warm little pause.

"We’re going home."

...

The hum of both sub-light drives came up through the floor of the starboard corridor in one low synchronized vibrato.

The two hulls were running in tight formation along Beta-9 now, locked together by the ribbed accordion sleeve of the docking collar, and the jagged asteroids of the outer belt slid past the viewports in long silent streaks.

By the mouth of the airlock, luggage bins and sealed composite bags were stacked in neat rows against the bulkheads.

"I can take my navigation slates over now," Aoi said, adjusting the strap of a heavy leather satchel across her shoulder.

Her hair was pinned, her glasses polished clean, and her cheeks had a faint lively color that hadn’t been there in days.

"The Kite has a dedicated astrogation suite... If I link my interface to their long-range grid, I can watch the debris corridors ahead of both ships at once."

"I am coming as well," Elena declared briskly with one hand resting on the handle of her silver-trimmed trunk.

She’d changed into a clean pressed tunic and radiated certainty.

"The raider has a proper machine shop with high-precision lathes. I intend to inspect their fabrication protocols personally before we reach the drydock... There is no reason to linger in this cramped corridor when proper facilities are available."

Camila hovered at the mouth of the tube holding a small ventilated crate lined with damp moss, cradling a handful of fresh tomato cuttings.

"I... I should check on the children’s ration requirements, right? If Ren has the manifests, I can start working out vitamin distributions before we arrive."

Jin-Ah stood silent by station two with her slate under her arm.

Harper leaned against the mouth of the conduit with a tool kit on her back, staring at the deck with her jaw tight while Leo stood three meters back by the companionway stanchion.

His jacket was zipped to the collar and his hands were deep in his pockets with his weight balanced on the balls of his feet.

Leo heard them volunteering... He heard the eager rustle of fabric, the click of latches, the bright hopeful murmurs of people getting ready to step into a new life but he didn’t say anything.

He didn’t ask them to stay on the ship that had kept them breathing through five days of terror either.

’I’m waiting for him to do anything to tick me off...’

Once he attacked, Leo would stab him with the wasp... he was sure that it was going to happen, these people were too sketchy.

For now, he just stood there in the cool blue light and watched his crew being taken apart one bag at a time.

Chloe stood behind him and she hadn’t packed anything.

Ren stood right at the threshold of the open airlock with his sleeves rolled to the elbows with one shoulder leaning loose against the heavy doorframe.

He held up both hands with an easy warm chuckle to wave the girls back.

"Hold on, hold on," he laughed, in that smooth comforting Kansai lilt that felt like a warm hearth in the middle of a blizzard. "Don’t rush the boarding line all at once... Voss and Dekker are still running pressure checks on the transfer manifold so we’ve got plenty of time."

His dark eyes moved across the corridor and settled right on Leo.

He took two easy steps forward, clear of the threshold, into the mouth of the junction... and smiled.

A broad warm incredibly open smile that seemed to invite the whole world to drop its guard.

He held out his right hand with his palm open and his fingers steady.

"Hey, kid," he said, soft and sincere and full of quiet respect. "Before we get moving... I want to clear the air."

Leo didn’t move as his hands stayed in his pockets.

The hallway went quiet.

Elena let out a small exasperated breath but held her tongue.

Camila watched with wide hopeful eyes with her fingers tight on the crate.

Aoi took half a step forward, searching Leo’s profile, practically begging him with her eyes to take it... To end the ugly suffocating tension that had poisoned the ship for thirty hours.

Ren chuckled softly though his hand didn’t waver.

"I know I came in loud... I know I pushed my way onto your bridge and cracked a few jokes at your expense but you kept my sister alive, Leo... You kept all of them alive in an iron box with an S-Rank turret and a prayer. That takes guts... A lot of guys twice your age would’ve folded the second the stars went dark."

He took another half-step forward with his hand still waiting.

"Once we reach the mothership, everything’s going to be fine... You won’t have to carry the whole world on your shoulders anymore. We’ll get this ship properly refitted, get you a real maintenance crew and let you breathe for five minutes."

His eyes held Leo’s with unwavering sincerity.

"No hard feelings, Captain... Let’s finish the trip together."

Leo looked at the hand.

The calloused fingers... the steady palm... the open posture and for one fraction of a second, the cold in the small of his back wavered.

He was twenty-one years old. He was exhausted down to the calcium in his teeth.

He’d flown twenty thousand tonnes of iron through a meat grinder, stared down apex leviathans and fried potatoes in a greasy galley while carrying six lives on his back... and some quiet bleeding desperate corner of him just wanted it to be over.

He wanted the mothership to be real... He wanted the farm deck to exist... he also wanted to close his eyes and let somebody else hold the wheel.

Elena was watching with a faint condescending smirk.

Camila was nodding with silent encouragement, even Harper had looked up from the floor, her grey-blue eyes softening with fragile relief that the feud might finally be over.

Behind him, Chloe’s fingers caught the back of his jacket however he barely felt it.

"Okay..."

Slowly, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket as he stepped forward and his palm met Ren’s.

GRIP!

Ren’s fingers didn’t squeeze like a greeting, instead they locked around his.

’Gotcha.’