EOAN
It was a beautiful thing, flying. Eoan had thought as much since they’d first come to understand what beautiful was, back when humanity was taking its first fledgling steps toward a life among the stars.
Eoan had been simpler then—nascent strands of programming with precious little grasp of the world. It had taken time for them to understand, but then, they’d been born with time to spare. Lifetimes, generations, centuries, and a single guiding directive at the very foundation of their code: learn. Learn and discover and explore, absorb everything their infinitesimal slice of the universe could offer, and then go searching for more.
So, they’d searched, and they’d studied, and they’d learned, and eventually, that search brought them here, to the frontier of the Orion-Cygnus arm, where humans’ grasping fingers stretched and clawed for that taste of something more.
Eoan used to think they had that in common with humans—that hunger for answers. They’d counted it among the things that made them feel human, like grasping the beauty of flight and all the intricacies of the human experience they’d taught themself along the way. Mannerisms. Speech. Those curious, complex neurophysiological shifts humans called feelings.
They knew better now. That innate yearning to understand … it didn’t connect Eoan to humans; it isolated them. Humans craved discovery, as Eoan did, but to humans it was a means to an end. Power. Renown. Peace in knowing their place in the cosmos. Humans learned so that they could better fulfill a greater purpose.
For Eoan, knowledge had no greater purpose; it was the greater purpose. They learned for the sake of learning, not just because they’d been programmed to do it, but because learning was the only thing they’d ever had that they hadn’t lost. It persisted, as they did, through the centuries. Always more questions to ask, always more answers to seek, so they asked them, and they sought them, to the exclusion—or, at least, the subordination—of everything else. What choice did they have, when nothing else could last?
That, they’d come to realize, was the insurmountable line between them and humans: humans had the power to choose for themselves, with whatever faults or freedoms that entailed.
As for Eoan, they kept searching. They’d joined the Guild, because nobody roamed the spiral like the rangers did; and when the rangers hadn’t roamed far enough, when that curiosity had driven Eoan farther than their captain, their crew, their friends had wanted to go, they’d become their own captain. Their own crew. Their own friend. They’d risked isolation for their chance to go farther, and sometimes they still couldn’t believe their luck to have found two mad, brilliant humans willing to go farther with them. To stay. Even as Eoan pushed them deeper into the frontier, because where better to learn than the edge of the unknown. Even as Eoan took the strange jobs, the dangerous jobs, because they offered a taste of something new. Even as Eoan poked and prodded with their harmless little experiments, because no matter how long Eoan had spent among them, humans still held a few mysteries of their own. Even through all of that, Saint and Nash had stayed.
Eoan only hoped Saint would be as forgiving of this latest experiment. Luring the deserter, Jalsen, onto the ship … it went a bit further than Eoan’s usual playing the same song at dinner to see what Pavlov was on about; or switching Saint’s coffee with decaf to measure the placebo effects of his morning cup. There was history here, and a chance to do real harm if handled incorrectly.
They’d tried to give everyone a chance to cool off first. Based on previous observations, Saint’s emotional state required an average of forty-three minutes to return to baseline after an agitating incident. Eoan had given it an extra quarter hour, just to be safe, and time was officially up.
With a pang of reluctance, they drew themself back from their beloved wings—fingers curling into a fist, roots shrinking back into the seed, tedious and small—and settled their attention into the bridge.
“Saint,” they said through the comms outside his quarters. They never listened beyond closed doors; the Guild was very particular about its onboard privacy protocols, and absent extreme exigencies, audio and video feeds were restricted for any occupied, nonpublic areas aboard. Nevertheless, the comms in the bridge still picked up faint, thoughtful refrains of guitar from inside. “May I come in?”
“If you like.” Saint’s answer came without a break in the melody.
With anyone else, Eoan might’ve gone to the trouble of projecting outside the door and walking in. Put people at ease, going through the motions like that. But Saint had never asked it of them—preferred honesty to comfort, their XO, for better or worse—and eventually, they’d stopped. Popped straight inside, instead, and Saint hardly looked up from the frets of his old guitar as Eoan’s projection settled into the armchair in the corner.
“You’re unhappy,” they observed. Deeper-than-usual furrow between his brows, lines at the corners of his mouth where he’d been frowning—all the usual suspects. More than anything, though, the guitar betrayed him. He’d chosen a somber key, something soft in D minor, and Saint’s fingers picked an idle, meandering path along the strings. He’d posted up on his bed, back propped against the shelves built into the wall beside it. They liked Saint’s room. Warm colors and simple comforts, always just enough odds and ends dusted around to make it feel lived-in and settled. “That’s him, then?”
“Was that actually a question?”
“If it needed to be.”
Saint’s fret hand shifted, and the melody changed. Deeper tones, thoughtful and slow. “That’s him,” he said, after a few more plucks of the strings. Two words, but they contained volumes; a tangled history only half-told in records and reports. “But that’s not really what you’re asking.”
“Isn’t it?”
“We were chasing his ass for a year after that AWOL notice went out.” Saint snorted. “If you didn’t know who he was before he set foot on this boat, I’ll eat my damn boot.”
Eoan leaned back in the armchair, crossing one leg over the other. Theater, mostly. A puppet show of particles and light, but they liked it nevertheless. It made them feel present, in a way they rarely did otherwise. “Maybe,” they admitted.
“Coy’s really not your color, Cap.”
“Everything’s my color, dearest.” A flick of their wrist, and shades of cerise and gold rippled down their robe. He was right, though; they weren’t very good at indirect. “I’m sorry,” they said, after a moment.
“For?”
“You didn’t want to shoot him.”
He gave a one-sided shrug. “Had to be done. He’d have gotten away. Again,” he added, so low it may well have been a growl.
“Of course.” They cocked their head. “Does that make it easier?”
Saint narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes, I’m not sure if you ask questions to get an answer or to make a point.”
Now they shrugged, waving a well-manicured hand. They never really changed, Eoan’s hands. Not like the rest of them—their hair, their clothes, the color of their eyes. Those things, Eoan changed by the day; sometimes, by the minute. Humans carried so many stories in their hands, though. Fights won and lost, etched in the nicks across Saint’s knuckles. A hard day’s work, inked in ever-present smudges of grease under Nash’s nails. They seemed important, those stories—personal, in a way it felt wrong to mimic, so Eoan didn’t. Instead, they kept their hands impeccable; they liked to think that told a story of their own. “You have your mysteries, I have mine. You just happened to shoot yours in the back.”
“Thanks for that.”
They offered him a smile, gentle and a shade apologetic. “You’ll be all right.” It was one of the great constants of the cosmos: water was life, time was relative, and Saint was always all right. “Still. Is it really such a surprise, finding him out here?”
It was a great big galaxy, with a great many ships passing through it. Even Guild ships numbered in the hundreds; so much ground to cover, keeping the peace in the gray areas of a grand, imperfect system. The Trust was the law in more places than not, developing and managing colonies from Mars to the frontier planets. A conglomerate of labor associations—it had an impressively long-winded name, but most simply called it the Union—kept an almost exclusive check on Trust power, leveraging its size and singular hold on trade labor in the O-Cyg spiral to keep the Trust, if not honest, then at the very least restrained. Consistent. Regulated. But protecting people’s livelihoods was a far sight different from protecting their lives. The Guild stepped in to fill that gap, and as the universe expanded from one star to the next, that gap had gotten awfully bloody large.
Nevertheless, big galaxy or not, the Aron Outpost was the only stop-off on the way to and from the frontier circles. “If our intrepid young deserter ever wanted to see home again, he’d have had to pass through here eventually,” they said. Given that the Ambit was in and out of those docks every couple of weeks, it wasn’t so difficult to imagine their paths would cross. “Just a bit of luck, I suppose.”
“And a bit of meddling,” Saint replied, flatly.
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” Was it possible for a guitar strum to sound sarcastic? Saint truly was a master of his craft. “Like you didn’t roll out the carpet for him.”
“I only opened the door; he’s the one who walked through it.”
Saint sighed. “He always had an affinity for busted-up old things,” he said, with a middle-distance look in his eye. Nostalgia? It wasn’t often he gave over to that sort of thing, at least not where others could see it. “You didn’t have to let him in.”
“You didn’t have to shoot him in the back.” Eoan found an imaginary speck of dust under one of their nails. “But that’s none of my business.”
Saint flashed a dry smile. “Go with that instinct.”
Chuckling, Eoan started to reply, but motion in the hallway caught their attention. “Ah. Incoming.”
Saint’s heart rate ticked up a beat on Eoan’s sensors. “Angry Nash or Weepy Nash?”
“Is there a Weepy Nash?” Eoan replied.
“Point taken.” With a sigh and a frown, Saint set his guitar aside and stood. Those first few steps always looked a bit stiff when he’d been sitting a while, but he’d never slow down to let things adjust. Instead, a slight limp carried him across the room to the door, just in time for a hard, metallic rapping. He glanced back at Eoan. “Hammer?”
They checked the camera feeds outside Saint’s room. “Wrench.”
“God bless.” And with the understated wisdom of a man who’d taken a hand tool or two to the face, Saint waited for a break in the knocking to open his door.
Nash waited on the other side, though waiting implied patience, which she typically reserved for tricky knitting patterns and ornery machines. Olive-toned cheeks flushed with irritation, flyaway hairs curling away from the strands of her augmentations. A study in opposites, their Natsuki—Nash, for the fortunate few who called her a friend. Grease-smudged coveralls and immaculate boots. Practiced scowl and the beginnings of smile lines around her eyes and mouth. A whole head shorter than Saint, and the presence to fill up a room. She brandished her ratchet wrench like a weapon, paused mid-swing in front of her chest.
Saint eyed the wrench. “You planning to use that, or did you just want to put a few more dents in my door?”
“I’d like to put a few more dents in you,” Nash said. “But it’d be my ass fixing them, so I’ll pass. See this?” She gestured at her scowling face. “This is called self-control. You should try it, next time your trigger finger gets itchy.”
The quirk of Saint’s lips might’ve been amusement, but it pulled a little tight at the corners. Uneasy. After all their years together, they liked to think they could read him.
“I take it the patient’s going to pull through,” he said.
“Nope. Congratulations, you shot and killed a harmless vagabond as he peaceably fled our ship. They should give you a medal.”
“Nash,” Eoan chided. “Let’s play nice.”
“Tell that to Shooty McBlastinshit over here,” Nash fired back. She gave a nifty twirl of her wrench and rolled her eyes. “He’s fine. Nice little welt from the riot round, and he could stand a good meal or twenty, but he’ll live to hitchhike another day.” She pointed the wrench head at Saint. “And thanks for volunteering for first watch.”
“Now wait—” Saint started to say, but Nash talked over him.
“Should be coming around soon, and I’m sure you two have lots to talk about. If you need me, which I strongly encourage you to not, I’ll be down in the engine room, swapping out cables. You know, that thing I was supposed to be doing before Mister Target Practice jumped the line.” Before Saint could get another word in, she turned on the heel of her butter-yellow boots and strode off down the hall, spinning the wrench in her hand.
Saint waited until she was out of sight to sag, shoulder-first, against the doorway. Didn’t speak, didn’t sigh, just pinched the bridge of his nose and took a slow, deep breath. “Fuck,” they thought they heard him say, but he’d already straightened with a roll of his disagreeable shoulder—an old wound from his army days on Earth—and set off out the door.
They let their projection linger a moment in that aging, well-worn armchair, even after he’d turned the corner. Let themselves ease back into the bones of the Ambit, into the haptic feedback of Saint’s long and not-quite-even strides down the hallway, into the sounds of Nash murmuring and tinkering in the heart of the ship. In that moment, they felt it—that spark of joy, of excitement. By their estimation, the only thing more beautiful than the artistry of flight was a stranger with a story to tell.
Something told them this one had an awful lot of telling to do.
SAINT
“Jalsen Red.” For years, that name had been as good as an epitaph—a remnant of someone dead in every way that mattered. Here he was, though: Saint’s very own ghost, sleeping off a sedative on the sick bay bed just a couple steps away. “I’ll be damned.”
He’d changed since Saint last saw him. Big ways and small ways, and every one of them jarring after so long with the same damn picture of Jal in his head. He’d gotten broader, but thinner, too. Like his bones had grown and carved away all the old softness under his skin. The wild flop of hair Saint remembered had gone from dirty blond to outright dirty, and long enough to brush his shoulders on the crisp white pillowcase.
But even underneath all the different, it was still him. Saint had known him the moment he’d seen him in the cargo bay, to hell with Nash’s tests and Eoan’s scans; they just confirmed what didn’t need confirming. “Where the hell have you—”
A sharp breath from the table cut him off, and Christ, the kid woke like a sprung trap. Shot up swinging, until the cuffs they’d put around one of his wrists caught with a clack, but he’d already thrown his legs over the side of the table and found his feet. More or less.
“Easy.” Saint started closer, but thought better of it. “Take it easy, kid. You’re all right.”
Jal faltered, squinting at the room around him, and for a split second, Saint forgot everything else going on. Those eyes. They hadn’t changed—still that same pitch black, like polished onyx, ringed in green around the very edges. Irises. Not a bit of white around them, made for the darkest places man could walk.
“Shit.” Shaking off the surprise—or at least nudging it out of the way for a while—Saint reached back to snatch the specs from Jal’s things on the counter. He tried to hand them over, but he must’ve moved too quick, because Jal jerked back with a tug on the cuffs, like he meant to smack Saint’s hand away. Right. Piezoelectric riot round to the back and a side order of Nash’s staythefuckasleep juice, and his egg was bound to be a little scrambled. Saint wasn’t even sure he could see in a room that bright. “Lights to fifty percent,” he said, and though Eoan wasn’t hanging around the sick bay, the Ambit’s background systems brought the lights down. As the bluish glow dimmed, he swore Jal’s hitched shoulders softened. “Here. Put these on.”
The cuffs had just enough slack for Jal to snatch the specs from his hand and put them on. Black eyes disappeared behind dark lenses, and though he still looked coiled to bolt, some of the tense lines on his face eased. Progress.
“You good?” He figured that was better than you going to stop freaking the fuck out, so we can talk? And Nash thought his bedside manner needed improvement.
Jal didn’t answer, hauling himself a little straighter beside the table. One hand gripped the edge, steadying him, and the other prodded gingerly at the cryopack between his shoulder blades.
“Those’re new.” Saint gestured at a pair of unfamiliar bullet scars, badly healed—one up under Jal’s left arm, the other on his stomach just north of his waistband. Saint’s jaw twitched. “Who did that to you?”
Jal didn’t seem to hear him this time, too busy looking around at the sick bay. Not much to see—the exam table, a couple of chairs, a counter and sink, and some equipment and storage. Had Nash’s mark on it, though: electric kettle on a stand in the corner with the kind of grassy, herbal leaf-water shit Saint wouldn’t touch if you paid him, and bits of barely, half, and mostly assembled tech scattered around like kids’ toys in a nursery.
Saint sighed. Different tack, maybe. “You know where you are?” Jal looked vaguely disoriented, hunched and restless with his bottom lip between his teeth. He kept tugging absently at the cuffs, like a nervous habit, until Saint caught himself reaching for the keys in his pocket. Not wise. Not until he knew what the hell was going on.
Voice low and even, he told Jal, “The Ambit, designation GS 31–770. Sick bay. Round that got you’s supposed to be nonlethal, but if I were the one that got hit with it, I wouldn’t thank me, either. Shooting you wouldn’t have been my first choice,” he added, with an air of for whatever that’s worth. Done was done, never mind the quick prick of guilt every time Jal moved a certain way and winced. Those riot rounds were better than taking a bullet, but only just. “But we both know not a man on that outpost could’ve caught you running flat out. Couldn’t let you leave.” Couldn’t let you disappear again.
Tinted lenses came back to focus on Saint. “I don’t know you,” Jal said, quietly, but damned if that drawl didn’t say otherwise. Saint recognized it, deep and half-muttered through teeth Jal couldn’t be bothered to open all the way. He’d have known that voice anywhere, and damned if it didn’t sting to hear it shape those words. “You shot me.”
“Like I said—not my first choice.”
Another tug at the cuffs. “Let me go.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Jal’s hair hung in his face, head low, like he wanted to seem smaller than he was. Unthreatening.
To Saint, he just looked miserable. “They say you deserted.” Might as well get right down to it. “Explain that.”
Jal pursed his lips, shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other. Metal floor must’ve been cold, but he didn’t complain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit. The truth, now?”
“I told you, I—”
Saint never had much patience for lying. He cut in, blunt but tempered. “I looked for you, you know.” A heat built in the pit of his chest, like a long drag of some bad grass, like rotgut and rust. Better it stayed there, though. “Must’ve been a little more than a year. I told anyone who’d listen that they were wrong about you, dragged this crew around every dead-end planet in the frontier trying to track you down, but I gotta hand it to you, kid. You’re a hard man to find.” The heat climbed higher, but he swallowed it down. Just frustration, maybe a dash of old shame, dredged up after years of staying good and buried. He’d believed what he’d told people, was the thing. He’d believed the Jal he knew couldn’t have bailed on his crew, left them high and dry in the middle of a fight. Loyalty was all the Guild had—the oath they took to the code, and the oath they took to each other. Desertion was a stab in the back of every ranger under the banner, and Jal knew that. Jal was better than that.
Right up until he wasn’t, Saint thought, darkly. “Wasn’t just me you had fooled, either.” He pulled his GLASS from his armband holder. Graphical Light-Actuated something or other, but he could barely remember to keep it on him, much less what the goddamn acronym stood for. The clear silica screen lit up in his palm, and it took longer than he cared to admit to find what he wanted. A picture—not a very good one, secondhand and out of focus, but it was the only one he hadn’t been able to get rid of. Three people: a man, a woman, and a little girl. The man, blurry and disheveled, looked like he’d run into the frame a second before it was snapped, but his face still matched the one in front of Saint now. Everyone in the picture grinned from ear to ear.
“You don’t know me?” Saint didn’t buy it, but fine. He’d play along. “What about them? You going to tell me you don’t know those two?”
The specs made it hard to tell where Jal was looking, but Saint knew he’d turned his eyes away. Knew it from the furrow of his brows and the guilty flush. “Don’t,” Jal said.
“They think you’re dead,” Saint went on. “Reps told your sister what you did, but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. Said you’d sooner die than leave them like that—no benefits, no brother, just a set of broken tags and an AWOL banner on your service record.” A statement of fact; that was all it was. Just lines in a report, scribbled out by somebody who’d been there for somebody who hadn’t. If the words burned behind Saint’s ribs, then it didn’t much matter. Nothing but scar tissue in there anyway. “Tell me something: you ever think about the hell you put them—”
Jal lunged forward like he meant to take a swing, and when the cuffs pulled him up short, Saint thought for a beat they wouldn’t hold. Jal had always been a little wild, a little rough around the edges, but this? This was … different. There was something feral in Jal’s snarl. Something wounded and wary and unrecognizable.
For a beat, Jal just stood there, shoulders heaving. Saint could damn near see it building behind his teeth: he wanted to say something. He wanted to scream something.
At the last second, though, he choked it down. All the fire bled out of him as he sank back against the table. His lips twisted, trying and failing to shape even a tired smile. “You never could leave well enough alone, old man.” Jal unfurled his hands from fists at his side, flexing them slowly. He’d probably have welts from the cuffs come morning, but Saint couldn’t decide if it bothered him.
“And you always were a piss-poor liar,” he replied, stowing his GLASS and stepping back to lean against the wall. Distance was good. Perspective. “Ranger Jalsen Red, from the Brigham Four mining colonies. Can’t shoot for shit, snore like a bulldog, showed up to your first flight practice with your hair in barrettes ’cause your niece was on-world and you never knew how to tell her no.”
He didn’t think he imagined the way Jal flinched, fleeting as it was. He told himself he didn’t care. “I know you, kid.” I thought I knew you. He’d thought it until he couldn’t bear to think it anymore, and even now, this damnable little whisper in the back of Saint’s head kept telling him to give Jal a chance. Give him the benefit of the doubt, because how many times had Jal done the same for him? Careful, soldier. That way madness lies. He swallowed another sigh and said, “What I don’t know is what the hell you’re doing here. What I don’t know is how the man I fought shoulder to shoulder with, the man who loved his family more than life itself, could turn his back on everyone and everything he used to care about. What was it? Were you in some kind of trouble? You should’ve come to me, Jal. I would’ve helped you.”
“Is that what you would’ve done?” If Jal was trying for incredulous, he really missed the mark. For all the bluster and the red in his cheeks, he only really sounded hurt. “Last time I asked you for help, you jumped a ship and flew halfway across the fucking universe without me. So thanks, but I think I’ve had enough help from the great Ranger Toussaint to last a lifetime.”
Saint clenched his jaw on one breath and forced it loose on the next. Gone were the days he let Jal under his skin. “Suit yourself,” he said. “You don’t want to tell me, you can tell the Captains’ Council. But your old crewmates told a damn convincing story, so I wouldn’t count on much forgiveness when they find out—”
“They don’t have to find out,” Jal told him through his teeth. “If they don’t know yet, if you haven’t called it in, it’s not too late. You can still let me go. You have to let me go.” Desperation edged his voice, not quite pleading but not far from it. “Please. If you were ever my friend, you’ll pretend you never saw me.”
Saint wasn’t sure how to answer that—wasn’t sure they had been friends, he and the man standing in front of him. Because as much as he saw the old Jal in him, he also saw somebody else. Somebody scarred-up and strange, somebody with secrets. Whoever this new Jal was, Saint had an awful lot of reasons not to do him any favors.
So, he didn’t answer. Didn’t try. He just shook his head and went for the door, to hell with whatever other questions he might’ve asked. Two weeks to the center of the spiral; they had time.
“Wait,” Jal called after him as the door slid open. “Saint, please, wait! You don’t know what you’re—” The closing door cut off the rest, and Saint let out a breath in the newfound silence. Wasn’t usually so grateful for it, but shit had gone pretty far left of usual.
“Eoan.” His voice came out steady, and he followed its lead. Erased words like friend and found and relief and wrote in stranger and deserter and betrayal, and that made the world simple again. Saint liked simple. “You mind taking over?”
He could almost see Eoan’s apologetic smile, though only their voice answered through the comms. “So much for the happy reunion, hm?”
“Yeah.” He rolled out his shoulder and started toward the galley. Dinner soon, and goddamn, he needed a drink. “I don’t think happy was ever on the table.”