Chapter 70: Apologies

The tingle in the small of his back sharpened into a hot insistent pull, and Leo threw the corvette straight into the debris field without a single glance at the nav charts.

He tore the Wanderer-7 through knife-edge drifts between tumbling boulders, so close that the resin-patched canopy nearly kissed their basalt faces, while the Kite’s gunports flashed behind him.

Every rock seemed to whisper where it was about to roll, and every gap seemed to open a heartbeat before he reached it, as if the belt itself had been arranged for him.

BOOM! BOOM!

The raider’s heavy slugs tore past the cockpit and missed the glass by a few centimeters, and Leo didn’t even blink his burning golden eyes.

...He killed the forward attitude thrusters, threw the ship into a violent sideways drift and swung the dorsal turret into a hard firing lock.

CLANK-WHIRRR! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

The S-Rank Mag-Rail Turret hammered the void in a continuous deafening blue roar.

Four tungsten penetrators moving at eighteen kilometers per second drilled clean through the Black Kite’s port engine housing and set off its secondary deuterium manifold in a blinding geyser of green plasma fire!.

KRA-KOOOOM!

FLASH!

The targeting reticle snapped forty degrees.

THUMP-THUMP!

Two slugs punched through the raider’s dorsal shoulders and blew both of its rail-cannons clean off their hydraulic mounts in a shower of twisting scrap.

THUMP-THUMP!

Another pair lanced through the ventral missile cells and gutted the magazine before the warheads could arm.

THUMP!

One last surgical shot sheared the sensor mast clean off the raider’s roof, and the ninety-meter warship was left blind and crippled in the water, unable to turn, unable to fire and completely incapable of running.

The Wanderer-7 cut its burn and drifted smoothly into the shadow of the raider’s shattered stern, and the docking sleeve reached out across the gap to bring his girls home.

FLASH!

The golden light was fading.

Universal Determination had finished its single impossible task.

The goal was done... the ship was safe, the predator was gutted and the docking collar was sealed and then the bill arrived.

A human body was never built to hold the concentrated ichor of an ancient celestial being, and a twenty-one-year-old nervous system was never meant to carry the pressure of an SSS-Rank override bending the universe around it...

Leo sat in the leather seat with his hands frozen in the crystal cradles, watching the stairs at the rear of the bridge.

He saw Aoi’s swollen bleeding face, and Elena’s torn uniform... He saw Camila clutching Harper’s hand, Jin-Ah standing very straight, and Chloe covered in blood.

They were alive, and they were safe.

He tried to tell them. He tried to speak through the frost cracking on his jaw, his cracked lips parting into that small soft smile he’d given them in the garden.

"I... I..."

COUGH!

A boiling fountain of crimson burst out of his throat and splattered across the glass of the flight console.

His left eye, his cheek, his sternum and his ribcage blew outward from the inside in a blinding spray of blood, shattered bone and golden sparks that painted the canopy red.

The universe tore away into an ocean of white noise, fading gold and freezing darkness.

...

GLUB! GLUB-GLUB!

The sound was slow... the steady purr of an environmental pump and the muffled hiss of thousands of tiny oxygen bubbles swirling through a thick liquid.

Leo’s consciousness drifted up toward the surface through layers of heavy warm mineral sediment.

He felt no pain.

Fragments drifted past him in the warm dark... a wheel of stars, a black vial, the void folding like paper under his boots, and gold, so much gold, pouring out of him until there was nothing left to pour.

The ruin of his face, the open crater where his ribcage had parted and the deep freezing ache in his marrow had all been smoothed away under a thick soothing blanket of pearly gel.

His skin felt whole and tight and remarkably warm, and a deep strength hummed through his veins like a freshly tuned engine.

He flexed his fingers and felt them answer and slowly his eyelids parted.

The golden fire had gone out of his eyes... His irises had settled back into their deep familiar dark brown, clear and steady under his dark brows.

He was floating in pale sapphire-and-silver fluid inside a tall cylinder of reinforced blast-quartz, and the mineral emulsion swirled gently around his bare shoulders, catching the white examination lights of the medbay in shimmering ribbons.

He looked down through the fluid.

His dark hair had grown out during the sleep, falling past his ears to brush the tops of his shoulders in thick drifting locks.

His chest, rebuilt by the asteroid belt’s minerals and the raider’s medical cartridges, looked noticeably denser with the muscle packed tight and defined along his collarbones, and his arms rested easily at his sides without the cuffs that had held him through the worst of it.

GLUB!

A stream of tiny bubbles drifted past his nose and tickled his chin as Leo lifted his gaze and looked through the curved glass.

Standing right at the base of the titanium dais with their hands pressed flat against the cool quartz were all six of them.

Aoi stood front and center with the bandage gone from her face, leaving only a faint fading pink line across her cheekbone, and her dark eyes were wide and shining with unshed tears.

Harper was right beside her in a grease-stained tank top with her freckled mouth hanging open in a soundless trembling gasp.

Elena stood with her hands clasped tightly against her chest and her icy blue eyes wide and glassy, while Camila had both hands clamped over her mouth with her shoulders shaking.

Jin-Ah clutched her slate against her ribs with her knuckles white and her dark hair slightly messy, and Chloe stood on her tiptoes with her small pale fingers spread wide on the glass, her green eyes glowing with radiant joy.

None of them were speaking.

They stood frozen in the white light of the medbay, staring through the blue water into his open brown eyes, holding their breath.

A heavy metallic thunk shuddered through the base of the cylinder, followed by the deep sucking drain of the stasis manifold.

The emulsion began to swirl downward in a spiraling vortex, sliding away from his chest, his waist and finally his feet with a loud wet slurp.

HISS!

The seals along the rim broke, and the curved quartz wall separated and slid smoothly back into the titanium housing.

The warm air of the medbay hit his bare skin in a dry rushing wave that carried the clean clinical smell of antiseptic as Leo took a single step forward, and his knees turned to water after a week of floating without weight.

"Huuuu..."

His bare foot caught on the lip of the drainage tray, and his balance tipped forward into empty air.

Before he could hit the floor, a pair of small impossibly strong arms hooked under his shoulders and caught him as solidly as a reinforced bulkhead.

THUD!

Chloe stood planted on the dais, holding him upright against her chest without giving up a centimeter of ground.

Her green eyes were glowing with overwhelming relief, and her dark bangs brushed against his collarbone as she took his full dead weight.

"I’ve got you," she whispered, her voice tight and trembling with joy.

Leo leaned against her for a second and drew in a long deep breath of real cabin air that filled his lungs with warmth.

He let his hands rest on her shoulders until the strength trickled back into his calves.

"Thanks, Chloe," he murmured, his voice raspy from disuse but completely steady. "Good catch."

He straightened slowly and stepped down from the baseplate under his own power.

He took a spare pair of grey utility trousers off the nearest diagnostic bench and pulled them on, leaving his chest bare while his skin finished drying in the warm draft from the vents.

...The other five didn’t speak.

They stood staring at him as though a ghost had walked out of the glass.

His dark hair fell past his ears in thick damp strands that brushed the tops of his shoulders, and it had turned his sharp boyish face into something older and more seasoned.

His chest and shoulders were visibly heavier, his arms corded with a lean dense strength that hadn’t been there before the mineral bath and even the way he held his neck and back carried a calm weight that filled the whole room.

Was it just them, or did he look... hot?

Camila’s lips parted in a tiny breathless gasp.

Her hazel eyes darted down to his bare chest, and a bright blush spread across her face all the way to the tips of her ears as she clamped both hands over her apron and cleared her throat twice.

Elena’s icy eyes widened, and her fingers tightened on the lapels of her jacket as a warm pink flush crept up her pale throat and forced her to study the floor for a moment.

Harper’s grey-blue eyes swept him from his shoulders down to his feet and back up again, and her freckled cheeks went bright crimson.

She shifted her weight from one boot to the other with her thumbs hooked nervously into her pockets, and suddenly she found the ventilation grille on the ceiling very interesting.

...Even Aoi’s composure wavered, and a startled self-conscious warmth softened her dark eyes as she adjusted the cuffs of her sleeves with far more care than they needed.

Leo noticed the awkward silence, and a faint familiar smirk touched the corner of his mouth.

"What?" he asked, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling the damp hair resting against his skin. "Do I have mineral salt on my face...?"

Camila let out a wet half-strangled laugh and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, while Harper rubbed the back of her head with a sheepish grin.

"No, Captain," Aoi said softly, her voice steadying as she took half a step forward. "You... look well. Remarkably well."

Leo looked around the circle at their clean jumpsuits, the exhaustion still lingering under their eyes and the quiet nervous energy holding them upright.

His smile softened.

"I’m glad we’re all back together," he said, his voice dropping into a quiet sound that filled the room easily. "It’s really good to see all of you."

The warmth in his words broke the fragile bubble that had been holding the room together.

Aoi stepped forward first with her shoulders squared and her eyes steady and clear.

"Leo," she said, her voice level and stripped of every excuse. "I brought a wolf into our home... I let my grief blind me to the danger, and I nearly caused the death of every person on this ship, starting with you. I was wrong, completely so I apologize, from the bottom of my heart, for failing you as a crewmate and as your elder."

Camila sniffled and stepped up beside her with her hands clasped against her chest.

"I doubted you, Leo," she whispered, tears brimming along her lashes. "I let pretty words make me forget who kept us alive every single day. I questioned your caution, and I made light of everything you carried for us. I’m so, so sorry..."

Jin-Ah took one measured step with her slate held at her side.

"My duty was to challenge anomalies, Captain," she said, her voice crisp despite the knot in her throat. "I identified discrepancies in the raider’s telemetry and stayed silent out of cowardice... That was an inexcusable failure, and I formally apologize for failing to support your command."

Harper took a breath with her jaw tight and looked straight into his brown eyes.

"I walked away from you," she said, her voice rough and cracked around the edges. "You asked me for a straight read, and I let my stupid pride turn my back on my best friend, and you took that fall alone because I wouldn’t stand beside you. I’m sorry, Leo. I won’t ever walk away from you again..."

Chloe stayed close at his side through all of it, her shoulder brushing his arm, and she didn’t say anything at all because she had never needed to.

Finally, Elena stepped out of the line, and the medbay went so quiet that the drip of fluid from the empty tube sounded loud.

She stood in front of him with her hands resting quietly at her sides and her chin level, and her pale face was open and stripped bare of every defense she’d ever worn.

"I insulted you, your character and your ability to lead us," she said, every syllable clear and measured. "I called you a coward, and I spat on the memory of your family to wound you in a moment of childish vanity. I swore to myself that I would learn her name, and say it to you with the dignity it deserves."

She took a slow steady breath, and her icy blue eyes held his.

"...Maya."