SAINT
Nothing happened.
A fuck-ton was happening—Yarden still sprawled in the safe room doorway, out cold, and Drestyn was well on his way to proving he was just as deadly without a gun—but nothing happened. The countdown went three, two, one, and no amount of faith in Nash’s ability to unfuck a situation could stop Saint’s gut from clenching in anticipation of … something. Anything.
Nothing.
Even Drestyn looked sort of gobsmacked, like he’d been keeping track of the countdown and knew it’d passed. Probably so. Sharp little bastard. Breathing hard in the thin air of the safe room, blood on his mouth and a slant to his side that said yeah, that rib’s broken. He was still standing, though, floating back a step or two with that knife of his glinting at his side. Tactical, full tang fixed with a skull-cracker pommel, but slim and simple; the kind of blade meant to be felt before it was seen. Could’ve fit inside Saint’s tac knife with room to spare, but Drestyn moved quick enough to cover the difference in reach. Saint had the bleeding arm to prove it.
“We’re not dead,” he said, voice low. “Nash, you dead?”
After a long, speculative silence that didn’t do a damn thing to loosen the knot his insides had tangled themselves into, he heard Nash’s voice. “Unless hell is a big blue birthday candle,” she said, “I’m gonna go with not dead. RIP Torchie, though. She will be missed.”
And that was that. Nash and Eoan were safe, up in that penthouse office. The people of Lewaro were safe. Somewhere in a hospital operating theater, Jal was safe.
It didn’t ease the furious, swirling redness in his head, but it focused it. One mission done. One mission to go.
He flipped his knife. Reverse grip, edge out, meant for close and nasty as he prowled at the edge of Drestyn’s reach. Man was smart, kept clear of the corners where Saint could jam him up. Light on his feet, always dodging out to the middle of the room, trying to get close enough to Yarden to pick up where that riot round left off. He tracked Saint’s movements with shrewd, dark eyes.
“All this, for him,” Drestyn spat, winded. Seemed he felt it, too, the effects of all that exertion in bad atmo. Knife fights were a sprint, not a marathon, anyway; but a minute or two trading blows in that box, even with the door open, felt like an hour. Blood, his and Drestyn’s, dripped red and stark onto the light gray carpet. “Yarden’s not a man you die for.”
No, he wasn’t.
Saint didn’t care.
He took a swing, backhanded with his empty fist, but Drestyn knocked it away easily. Didn’t manage the same with the knife that followed it through, though, blade angled to swipe across Drestyn’s stomach. Fabric tore, flesh parted, but it wasn’t a solid hit. Too shallow, and Drestyn twisted out of the way and cracked an elbow into Saint’s cheek.
For a slight man, he packed a hell of a punch. Saint’s head jerked sideways, and the taste of metal coated his tongue as he stumbled a step or two. Better to stumble and keep his feet under him than hold his ground and fall. All Drestyn needed was a second or two. A clear line of sight and a good throw, and his knife would kill Yarden as surely as any bullet.
He didn’t waste any openings, either. By the time Saint had his bearings, Drestyn had already moved two paces closer to the door and lined up a throw. Just before he loosed the knife, though, Saint managed to get a fistful of his shirttail and yanked. No fair play in a fight like that; a second too slow, too late, too cautious, and somebody died.
Not this time. Drestyn lost the shot, but he kept hold of his knife, pivoting on his heel to take a stab at Saint’s arm. Fucking fast little scarecrow—up there with some of the fastest Saint had seen, and he’d crossed knives with mutants and augmenteds on the regular. The blade barely missed the hinge of Saint’s wrist as he pulled his arm back, throwing out a boot to catch Drestyn while his balance was off.
“Saint, dear, your heart rate is abnormally high. It’s not safe to be in that room.”
No shit, Cap. White damp, knives, pissed-off agitators with an axe to grind—it was a party in there. Even if he could get himself and Yarden out in one piece, though, that’d still leave Drestyn with an impenetrable door and a manual lock. Maybe he’d die, maybe he’d find a way to break the pod loose and slip away; anybody with scars like that was a survivor. Saint wasn’t leaving it to chance.
His boot caught Drestyn’s instep, his arm caught Drestyn around the middle, and Saint had lifted produce crates heavier than that man. A lift and a twist, and he flung Drestyn back toward the middle of the room into the cluster of expensive, anonymous furniture that turned out not to be that sturdy. He heard the crack of the sofa frame buckling under the impact as Drestyn pitched ass over kettle over the top of it. The coffee table didn’t stand a chance against the landing, legs buckling outward and shiny mock-wood top shattering to bits.
“Get out now,” ordered Eoan. A command smoothed over the brittle edges of concern, crisply authoritative, stern, impossible to ignore. Felt like their voice arced straight across his jawbone. Vibrating through cartilage and the blood pooling beneath the skin of his split cheek. “It’s been too long. Blood loss, hypoxia, elevated heart rate—if you pass out, Nash may not be able to get to you in time.”
All very good points, and all probably true. Saint’s mission hadn’t changed, though, and Drestyn was relentless. Before the pieces of the table had finished scattering, he’d gotten back to his feet. One smooth roll to get his head up and his soles down, and he sprang forward like a startled hare. Cleared the back of the couch in a leap, and Saint braced to meet all that momentum with a hard slug in the face, but Drestyn went low at the last second. His knife swept an arc toward Saint’s side, a kidney shot, and the angle it took for Saint to grab his wrist left him wide open for the one, two, three quick jabs from Drestyn’s empty fist to the soft part of his gut.
Saint choked on spit, blood, stomach acid. Sputtered on noxious air. He took a swing with his knife hand, but it was too wild. Too imprecise. Drestyn knocked it aside—deflected the blade and drove his knuckles into Saint’s wrist, into that damn bundle of nerves that made his hand flash numb and his grip go loose, and the clatter of Saint’s knife hitting the floor was bad, but the knee that snapped into the gunshot wound on Saint’s thigh was worse.
Pain seared blinding white across Saint’s nerves, and in the wake of it, his mind went blank. Not a single clear thought; just instinct. Simple, brutal instinct, and the kind of strength that only came from being so goddamn angry. He hooked his forearm under Drestyn’s knee, and with an animal howl, flipped the bastard clear over his shoulder. Oh, he’d pay for it later—every bit of scar tissue and badly healed bone hissed with the promise of it—but Saint didn’t care.
Drestyn hit the ground back first, wrist still pinned in the vise of Saint’s grip, knife still clutched in his white-knuckled grasp. A Saint-sized fall straight onto his spine and even a hard-ass like Drestyn saw stars. For a stunned second, he didn’t move, and that stunned second gave Saint all he needed to turn around, trapping Drestyn’s arm between his knees and twisting that bird-boned wrist until something popped.
Drestyn didn’t cry out. Wouldn’t have mattered, wouldn’t have changed anything if he had. What mattered was that he dropped the knife, and more, that Saint caught it.
Saint saw the moment Drestyn realized his … not a mistake, really. Wasn’t a whole hell of a lot a man could do to keep his grip when his bones were in more pieces than they were meant to be. When he realized what’d happened, more like, and when he realized what was about to happen—stunned or not, uncaring of the shattered wrist still seized in Saint’s grip, he surged up with a snarl.
And sagged right back down when Saint slammed that skull-cracker pommel against his temple. In an instant, everything about the man changed. Taut limbs went loose. Keen eyes went glassy and rolled back. Blood beaded against a pale, pock-marked cheek, and that sharpshooting, quick-thinking renegade politico was just like any other sack of meat Saint had ever seen when all the lights went out.
It was just luck, Saint decided as he drew the knife away, that he’d caught it blade side back. Good luck or bad, he couldn’t say. Supposed it depended who you asked, and though Drestyn was still breathing, Saint didn’t think he’d be answering questions anytime soon.
“Saint?” Eoan was quiet this time. Deliberately so; everything they did was deliberate. Didn’t have a brawl to talk over, or maybe they sensed the silence, the stillness, that had settled into the panic room like a dense, stewing fog. “Saint, are you all right?”
“I’m—” Fine was what he meant to say, but as he stood, the world skewed sideways and darkened at the corners. He staggered. Kept his feet only by virtue of knowing where they were in relation to the rest of him, if not in relation to the floor. Not fine, he observed for himself. Dizzy. Nauseous. His head pounded like a beaten drum, and a chill had settled in his fingers and toes that seemed to be spreading inward. “On my way out,” he finished aloud, and that was true. His legs had trouble grasping forward as a concept, though how much was the slow-burn suffocation and how much was the bullet wound was anybody’s guess. The swoop to pick up his knife felt dangerous; the swoop to pick up Yarden felt damn near impossible, but with a sweat-slicked grip on both of Yarden’s wrists, he managed to drag his dead weight out of the doorway and down the aisle of filing cabinets.
“Get him to the elevator,” Eoan instructed. “The air is clearer.”
He complied, because compliance was easier than thinking. Easier than dragging a full-grown man across a room full of secrets, the likes of which he was probably better off not knowing. Bit of light reading, and Saint might start wishing he’d let Drestyn have Yarden. Or he might start thinking about taking a turn himself.
As it was, he didn’t take any great pains with him. Dropped Yarden on the floor of the elevator like heavy luggage and steadied himself on the pried-open doors for a beat. The metal felt cool against his flushed brow; solid, where the rest of the world felt soft and ill-defined.
“Feeling better?” Nash, this time. “Slow, deep breaths. Won’t help the headache, but you might manage not to pass the fuck out.”
Passing the fuck out sounded great, actually. Yarden was in the clear. Drestyn was the kind of unconscious that probably needed a brain scan, shallow-breathing in poisoned atmo; he wasn’t gonna make much trouble for anybody. All Saint had to do was get that damned safe room door closed, stop the bad air flooding the basement.
He took one of those slow, deep breaths Nash suggested and raised his head from the cool metal of the elevator door. One foot in front of the other, soldier. Wouldn’t do him any good to get this far if the whole basement went toxic before Eoan could get the elevator working again.
“What about Drestyn?” Chalk it up to oxygen deprivation, but Saint’s jaw didn’t even clench at the sound of Anke’s voice.
“What about him?” His mouth was dry and metallic, a little sour. What about Jal? That was what they should’ve been asking, but he was too chickenshit to say so. Wasn’t sure he’d believe a good answer; wasn’t sure he could take a bad one.
Anke seemed to have her heart set on the agitator anyway. “You can’t just leave him in there. Please. I know what he did to Jal, and I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, but he’s saved so many people. From the Deadworld Code, from the Trust, from smugglers and scavs and starving to death because this system just takes and takes and doesn’t give anything back. I don’t know where that all lands on the karmic scales of justice or whatever, but.” Her voice broke, wet and desperate. “But the good things he’s done have helped a lot of people, and the bad things he’s done, he did for good reasons. How is any of that any different from what the rest of you have done?”
I didn’t shoot Jal. Grimacing, Saint made his way along the filing cabinets with heavy, limping steps, blood sticking his pants to his leg and drying, itchy, in his beard. “I was gonna kill him before.” Would’ve shot him dead in the antechamber if he’d had the angle; would’ve put a knife someplace permanent if he’d dropped his guard when they were fighting. Anke knew that. Had to know that. He hadn’t heard a peep out of her about it, then.
“It’s not the same thing,” she said. “He’s helpless.” Which was a hard word to pair with the man who’d put a bullet in his leg and a knife in his arm, but as Saint turned the corner to the antechamber and caught sight of him lying there, he couldn’t deny it. “You can save him.”
Of course he could. Yarden outweighed Drestyn by a good ten, fifteen kilos. A few steps farther into the room, but even in the shape he was in, Saint could probably drag him out before he shut the door. But that wasn’t what she was saying.
She was saying, You should save him.
“Think about what you’re asking,” Nash said, biting off each word like she didn’t trust them not to build into something sharper. Sounded like she was on the move again, but sitreps were Eoan’s problem; Saint had to focus on keeping himself upright. Shoulders over hips over knees over ankles, soldier. “Good reason or not, Drestyn’s killed a fuck-ton of people. Your buddy’s best-case is a labor colony in the frontier ’til he’s old or dead, and I don’t know him from Adam, but you do. You think that’s what he’d want?”
Man like Drestyn, probably not. Like this, he could just slip away. Wouldn’t even wake up, wouldn’t even feel it. There were worse ways to go.
Gasping and bleeding in the mud half a universe from home, Saint thought, but it just made his chest ache. He was usually better at this. Had a locked door in his head where the bad things went when he didn’t have time to fuck with them, but the lock had broken, and the door had gotten stuck, and it was just bad, bad, bad slithering out of the dark. A fucking snake pit in his skull, as Anke and Nash debated the moral nuances of saving Drestyn’s life or not.
“Isn’t that a point in favor of saving him?” Anke argued. “Penance, or whatever.”
Or whatever, he thought, wryly. Fuck, Drestyn was farther inside than Saint thought, and Saint’s legs were heavier than they had any right to be. The lights of the panic room crystallized in their pretty prismatic halos, shifting, drifting, swirling. He could feel himself slipping with every breath, but he needed—
“It’s not about penance.” That. He needed direction, clarity, and Eoan had always had a knack for giving it to him. Christ, he appreciated Nash—he loved her like a sister, would’ve died for her—but she saw everything as a system full of broken pieces. Machines. People. Politics. To her, it was all the same, and she did her best to fix what she could and do the least harm along the way.
Saint had lost that game a long time ago. Too many broken things, too many ways to do harm, and it’d stopped being about fixing things and started being about finishing them. Completing the mission.
Nash was a good person.
Saint was a good soldier.
And Eoan … Eoan was a good captain. They understood Nash, and they understood him. Understood the choice on offer: leave Drestyn to die and give the bastard the kind of easy, go in his sleep death a jarhead like Saint could only dream about; or drag Drestyn out to face the consequences of what he’d done, knowing it meant saving the man responsible for one of the worst fucking moments of Saint’s life.
He’d known there was no peace waiting at the end of this. No satisfaction. But he realized now that there wasn’t any balance, either. Whether Drestyn lived or died, it wouldn’t square the loss of that easy-grinned kid and his cheap deck of cards who’d found the angriest, most beaten-down soldier on the shuttle and said, Still, I think he’s worth a damn.
As he stared into the panic room through the gray creeping in at the corners of his eyes, it was Eoan’s voice he heard. “It’s not about consequences,” they said. “Or being angry, or being hurt. It’s not about deciding what he should do, because he knows. Don’t you, Saint?” And he did. For better or for worse, indecisiveness was not his cross to bear. He just had a door, and a lock, and a pit full of vipers, and every day the same question: How much more can you take? And of course Eoan knew that, too. “He just has to figure out if he can stand to do it.”
Could he?
“You can,” Eoan said, and they knew, because it was their job to know, even when he didn’t. Especially when he didn’t. When he thought the door was stronger than it was. When he thought he knew what it would take, what he could take, but he was wrong. “You can, so you will, because you’re you.”
Because he was a good soldier, and in the end, he did what good soldiers did.
He did what he had to do.
EOAN
After everything, it seemed only right they’d found their way back here. To the galley of the Ambit, counters littered with remnants from breakfast, from dinner the night before. Eoan had never had much use for hyperbole, but it felt like a lifetime since they’d gathered around that table. Since they’d watched Anke coding furiously on her tablet while Saint, without a word, kept her coffee mug full and her water glass fuller. Since they’d watched Jal sneak spoonful after spoonful from the pan simmering on the burner while Bodie wove around his feet and Nash played lookout in the hallway. Since there had been music and laughter and dancing in that reckless, beautiful way humans had when their smiles were true and their hearts were light.
There were no light hearts in the galley now.
Saint sat at the table, an untouched mug of coffee losing steam by his elbow and a medkit balanced on his lap. Blood puddled a drop at a time on the floor beneath him; stained the fresh bandage tied neatly around his leg; painted the deft fingers mending the knife wound on his arm.
Nash said nothing of it, or anything else for that matter. She’d been the first one in, only a few minutes ago. Fixed herself a cup of tea and, unlike Saint, stubbornly drank it down like it was just another day—or like it would be, might be, if she only forced it back into the routine.
The dregs sat abandoned on the table with Saint’s coffee. She’d set it down when he stumbled in and hadn’t picked it up since, and Eoan couldn’t help wondering if this wasn’t part of the routine, too. Patching Saint’s wounds while he passed her tools … it wasn’t every mission, but it was enough of them to feel familiar.
The silence, though—that was alien to them.
Saint finally broke it, scrubbing a hand down his face and sighing like a gale from his tortured lungs. “I’m sorry about your plasma torch.”
Nash, who’d settled herself cross-legged on the table with Saint’s arm pulled across her lap, finished sealing the wound with dermapoxy and hummed. “I’m sorry about your face.” And Eoan was sorry about it, too. The cut along his cheekbone was shallow, but the skin around it had already started to swell and color. He’d be a riot of bruises and bandages in the morning. Nevertheless, knowing him, he’d be up making breakfast by 0600 sharp. “I’d say you’ve still got your personality, but.” She shrugged.
“Nice.”
“Feel free to fill out a comment card,” she replied. “But I meant what I said about the cryopack.” She’d managed to balance one on his shoulder, but it had already fallen once when he tried to pet the cat. Next time I’ll staple it on, she’d threatened. Since it was hard to know when Nash was joking, Saint had kept very still since.
A square of gauze, a roll of bandages around his forearm, and though there remained—clearly—some work to be done to get their XO back in fighting form, Nash seemed satisfied he’d live for now.
As she wiped her hands on a wet towel, her eyes drifted forlornly to her teacup. Too empty. To her cabinet. Too far. To her own two legs. Too tired. And last, to Saint’s mug, as he slid it closer to her with a split-knuckled hand.
They weren’t really thank you people, but Eoan saw one hiding in the way Nash hugged the mug between her hands.
“What about you, Cap?” Saint asked, dropping his head back with a flat, skyward stare—a signal that their quiet observation was at an end. They never could go unnoticed very long with Nash and Saint around; always just a matter of time before one of them reached out, before one of them drew Eoan into whatever argument or banter or idle conversation they’d drummed up.
Suddenly, it seemed strange to think they’d ever felt excluded. Strange to think they’d held themself apart, so caught up in a difference they’d thought insurmountable, when Nash and Saint had only ever treated them as equal. You’re my goddamn family. It was like a shroud had been lifted from the world—a new brush of color, more vibrant and more beautiful than any new star, new world, new mystery. They’d chosen these people, and these people had chosen them, and for the very first time in their impossibly long life, they knew what it meant to be fulfilled.
“Cap?” Nash prompted, gently. “You hanging in there?”
Ah. Eoan realized they hadn’t answered Saint’s question. “Frankly, dear,” they said as they settled their projection into the chair opposite Saint’s, edges fuzzy and colors plain. They didn’t adjust for the light or give much thought to the way their clothing fell. They didn’t try to feed any more energy or life into the projection than they absolutely had to, because they didn’t have it to spare. “I’m exhausted.”
It had been hours since the countdown—hours spreading themself thin across multiple systems; hours of juggling dozens of tasks and comm lines and questions, from Trust and Guild and Union alike; hours of worrying about the people they cared so dearly for, who had been through so much and still had to carry on a while longer. Their limits were exceptional, and they had reached them anyway.
A pair of weary smiles said they weren’t the only one.
Yes, they thought, we’re really not so different at all, are we? “I’m sorry I couldn’t join you sooner,” they offered, and perhaps they meant the last hour or so they’d been distracted, or perhaps they meant the past few years. Either way, Eoan was with them now. That’s what matters. “And I’m sorry for your plasma torch,” to Nash. “And for your face,” to Saint, and their own smile seemed worth the effort. “As you might expect, the Guild had … inquiries.” And the Union had demands, and the Trust had excuses. And Eoan had work for themself and for their crew that was more important than any of it. “But at least they should be able to take things from here.”
“Things.” Nash weighed the word and wrinkled her nose. Could’ve been the coffee, too; every time she took a sip, she cringed a little. She kept going back, though, because as far as Eoan could tell, she needed the warmth more than she hated the taste. “Does that mean we know where wonder girl’s going?”
Nash hadn’t stayed with her, after she got back upstairs from the life support bay. Someone had to, as much to protect Anke as to watch her, and given that the Trust wasn’t known for their fondness of whistle-blowers, they could hardly hand her off to the security officers. Since Nash hadn’t seemed especially interested in her company, and Saint hadn’t seemed especially interested in spending more time in Yarden’s archive, they’d made a trade. Saint upstairs, watching Anke and—Nash had stressed this bit—staying the candy-coated fuck off his leg; and Nash downstairs, quick-scanning all the files in the cabinets for Eoan’s personal archives. They were, as ever, a curious being.
“It does,” they said. “Despite what happened, she is still under the Guild’s jurisdiction. Citizen to a sovereign state, for all intents and purposes. So, in the short term, she’ll be taken back to the center spiral for martialing before the Captains’ Council.”
“And long term?” Nash pressed.
“Pretty sure that’d be up to the Captains’ Council,” Saint muttered, and got an audible flick to the ear for his trouble. “Ah, fuck, Nash. Ow.”
“Big baby.”
“I’m injured.”
“Not there,” she replied, utterly unrepentant. “Not yet.” With just a touch of menace that struck an odd contrast to the careful way she leaned over to adjust his ice pack, but then, Nash always marched to the beat of her own drum. “Just wish we could call dibs on that fucker Yarden, too. Give me ten minutes, a locked door, and a vegetable peeler, and I’d get him singing for those Union regulators like a tuned-up engine.”
Vegetable peeler? Saint mouthed, then shook his head as if to say, Never mind, I don’t want to know.
That made one of them, but Eoan regrettably didn’t ask. “Yes, well. While I’m sure they could benefit from your expertise, I don’t think they’re having much trouble getting Mister Yarden to talk. Now that the regulators have his little private library downstairs—”
“Not that little,” Nash muttered, prodding bitterly at a paper cut on the side of her thumb. With the help of her Chiclet and a half dozen of its siblings, she’d managed to scan nearly every page in nearly every filing cabinet before the first Union ships touched down, but Eoan suspected it would be a while before she didn’t cringe at the sight of paper products.
“—of his not-that-little private library,” Eoan amended, and smoothly carried on, “he’s got to know the Trust won’t back him. They won’t be very happy with his recordkeeping.”
Saint snorted. “No honor among assholes.”
“Would’ve made a hell of an insurance policy,” Nash said. “Or a bargaining chip. The kinds of dirt he had in those filing cabinets … I’m betting the Trust had no idea he was stashing those records.” Probably a sound bet. Eoan had taken a few peeks at the scans, in between the other dozens of tasks they had to juggle, and if Yarden’s superiors had an inkling of what he’d been doing, Eoan suspected there wouldn’t have been anything left of the library—or Yarden, for that matter—for them to find. “Kind of makes you wish you could be there, huh? See the C-suiters’ faces when they realize what Yarden did. All that dirty laundry, and a boardroom full of Union regulators just itching to dive in, and there’s fuck-all they can do about it.”
Saint didn’t seem quite so enthusiastic. “You think a scrap of that’s gonna see the light of day? Union’ll use it, sure, make the Trust pay out the nose for all the shit they’ve been sweeping under the rug. But if it’s as nasty as y’all make it sound, the Trust won’t pay one damn cap ’til the Union agrees to burn after reading; and the Union’ll do it, because they can’t risk the Trust walking away from the table. That’s the goddamn problem—got the left hand swatting the right. They need each other too much to do any real damage.”
“I see Drestyn made an impression.” To be fair, Eoan probably deserved the acidic look Saint leveled their way. “Right. I’m sorry, but you’re quite correct. Odds are the Trust will demand the records be sealed, the Union will concede to get their way and keep the peace, and those papers will never make it to the public eye. But there’s something you’re missing, dear.” Their projection leaned forward, head tilting with a dark smile. “It isn’t up to them.”
There was something to be said for the instant dawning on Saint’s face. As if he knew them so well, he didn’t even have to think about it. “The scans,” he said.
“The scans,” they agreed. “It may take me a day or two to parse through them all, but after that, I see no reason why they shouldn’t find their way to a much, much wider audience.” Because Saint was right—they couldn’t rely on the system to fix the system. The Union needed the Trust, and the Trust needed the Union, and if they were being honest with themselves, perhaps the Guild needed them both.
The people, though, didn’t need any of them. They could tear it all down and rebuild, as they had before and as they would again. What they needed was a chance to choose their own fate, as Eoan had, and to know what they were choosing. Choices changed everything; if Eoan had learned anything since the start of all this, that was it. Choices changed lives. They changed people. They could change the entire universe, for better or for worse, and Eoan had chosen better.
They only hoped it would empower others to do the same.
“It’s settled, then,” said Nash in that decisive way of hers. The deed was good as done. “Gotta say, Cap, rebel’s a good look on you. And on the subject of rebels”—which they supposed was as good a segue as any for the inevitable question that followed—“what about Drestyn?”
“He’s alive,” they said, hating all the while the fresh wince that crossed Saint’s face. That discomfort had nothing to do with the bullet wounds or bruises, but he’d made a choice of his own. Not an easy one, but the right one, and Eoan loved him all the more for it. “He’s being treated here in hospital, for the moment. Head trauma, various lacerations and contusions—I expect you don’t need the laundry list.”
Nash set the mug aside, half-full and still steaming. She’d evidently reached the limit of what she was willing to endure for the caffeine. A pity. Eoan would’ve liked to know how she’d handle the whole mug. An experiment for another day, perhaps.
“You never did say,” Nash began, leaning back on her hands and looking over at Saint. “Which one was it? The one you weren’t sure you could stand—was it leaving him, or helping him?”
Saint’s throat bobbed, and when he spoke his voice was a scrape against the quiet of the galley. “Does it matter?”
It would’ve been easy for Nash to bristle, but she huffed a laugh and shook her head instead. “Guess not. Don’t worry, McBlastinshit,” she added, earnestly, “you’re a hard-core motherfucker either way.”
Which was, in Eoan’s estimation, one of the highest compliments Nash knew how to pay.
They cleared their throat. “Yes, well, you can imagine he’s a very popular man. Probably a small army of Trust and Union reps fighting for first crack at him as we speak, but they’ll have to wait their turn.”
“Guild’s got dibs?” Nash asked.
“More like Guild’s got guardianship,” Eoan replied. “Trust might not be, well, trusted with his care and safekeeping, but they don’t want the Union to speak to him first. So until they sort it all out, it looks like he’ll be staying in Guild custody. For the best, I’d say. The Guild isn’t terribly eager to get involved in a full-scale Union investigation, but there are plenty of questions we could ask a man like that while the children are busy squabbling for the first turn. Not the least of which being where his accomplices ran off to.”
“The lady from the stairwell.”
“Correct. And the man in the rockhopper,” they added. “Seems they made their getaway while we were otherwise occupied. Anneka believes Drestyn warned them somehow.”
Saint scoffed. “You sure it wasn’t her?”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.” Eoan wouldn’t opine, not because they lacked an opinion, but because Saint clearly lacked an interest in hearing it. Humans were, as a species, beautifully irrational. Angry humans even more so. “It’s beside the point. The point is, they’re out there, and we’re not sure where.”
“You think they’ll try to break Drestyn and his guy out?” That seemed to perk Nash up more than the coffee had. Her feet hung over the edge of the table, swinging idly in the electric-blue and magenta socks she’d knitted herself—a creature comfort, like the tea and the galley. She didn’t wear her wounds so close to the skin, but she’d taken just as many hits as Saint, in her own way. “Kind of hope they do. Is that weird? Hate to leave a set unfinished.”
“We ought to keep a close eye on them,” Saint said. “Just in case.”
Eoan’s projection tipped its head, no. “I’ve already coordinated their transport back to the center spiral with one of the relief crews en route. I know you’d prefer to handle it personally, but it seemed … prudent, to make other arrangements. Given the word on Ranger Jalsen.”
It was like a bolt of lightning. Now that’s hyperbole. At the very least, though, a firm tap from Nash’s shock baton. Saint flinched upright, head jerking toward Eoan’s projection. “You got word on Jal?”
“Of course,” they said. “I’ve been checking periodically.”
“And when the fuck were you gonna share with the class, Cap?” Incredulity. That was better than some of the alternatives. Saint did have exquisite range.
They offered what they hoped was a suitably apologetic smile. “I didn’t want to distract you,” they said. “And yes, before you say it, I know you would’ve done your jobs. Of that I have no doubt. But this has been hard enough on the both of you.” Hard for Eoan, too, to see them suffer. To know that they had to keep asking more of their crew, when they’d both already lost and given and taken so much. It had seemed crueler to tell them when they couldn’t do anything about it. “That’s why I didn’t tell you earlier. If I may, though.” And perhaps it was the wrong time for the question, but they couldn’t help asking. They still had their programming, after all. “Why didn’t you ask?” They’d wanted to know about Anke, about Yarden, about Drestyn—but they hadn’t asked about Jal.
Saint opened his mouth, but Nash beat him to it. “’Cause he’s a chicken,” she said matter-of-factly. Affection and admonition in equal parts.
He shot her a glacial look. “Didn’t hear you askin’ after him, either, Doc.”
“Yeah, well.” She seemed to run out of steam after that. “Whatever. You want to keep jawing at me, or you want to know how miner boy’s doing?”
He did, and Eoan knew it, but they wouldn’t have guessed it from looking at him. He paled a shade, and a stillness spread through him. “Tell us what you know,” he said. “Don’t pull your punches.”
An idiom, but he and Nash both looked braced for a physical blow. Poor dears. They didn’t regret waiting, but they certainly wouldn’t do it any longer. “He’s out of surgery,” they said, which … didn’t seem to compute. Nash’s shoulders might have relaxed, incrementally, but the lines between Saint’s brows sank even deeper than before. “It’s good news. Good. He’s not stable, but as of the last check-in, his vitals are trending in the right direction.”
Silence, again. It really didn’t belong in the galley.
Again, Saint broke it. “He’s gonna make it?” His voice sounded rougher than usual, and they’d never heard it so small and uncertain.
“All signs point to it.” It was the best they could offer, and it was better than they’d dared hope for when Saint and Nash first carried him back aboard.
Quieter, Saint repeated, “He’s gonna make it.”
“You said that, dear.”
Before they could offer to repeat themselves, Saint sprang to his feet. “He’s gonna make it!” With his broadest, brightest grin, he swept Nash off the table in a hug. His wounds seemed a distant memory; his ice pack, a casualty forgotten on the floor. He hugged Nash so fiercely, her feet never touched the ground, and all the while he smiled so wide his eyes disappeared above the dimple of his cheeks. He had dimples. They weren’t even sure they knew that about him. Dimples. And laugh lines, and a smile that flashed teeth despite the smacks Nash struck against his back.
“Shoulder!” she yelped. “Your shoulder, you stupid caveman!” But she smiled, too, and that I’m not tense, you’re tense tension eased out of her frame as her socks finally found the ground again. “Yeah, now look what you did.”
He’d braced his hands on the edge of the table, bent forward like he thought he might pass out, and Eoan wasn’t sure if it was the sudden rush of relief or the sudden rush of blood—of which he had a couple pints less than he should—leaving his brain. Either way, they’d never seen a man happier to ride the wave of a vasovagal syncope, and Nash had never looked happier to scold him.
They’d been waiting for this, Eoan realized. The silence in the galley hadn’t been exhaustion, but a bated breath. The one unanswered question they couldn’t bring themselves to ask, and now they knew. Now they were done.
Eoan couldn’t cry, but for a single overwhelming moment they wished they could. They wanted to. Good tears, happy tears, tears like the ones shining in Saint’s and Nash’s eyes as Nash clapped Saint on the side, surreptitiously swiping her sleeve across her face.
Unworried, unburdened, Saint dropped into his chair with that crinkling grin, and Eoan grinned along with him. “All right, then,” he said, nodding to himself. Relaxing, for the first time in a long time. “What do we do now, Cap?”
Saint seemed entirely different now. Nash too. Maybe their hearts still weighed a little heavy, still a little broken, but Eoan knew their crew. Saint could shoulder the weight. Nash could mend the breaks. Although Eoan could take no credit for their strengths alone, they were so very proud of what they’d built together—their beautiful crew of impossible souls, and the promise of an uncharted future together.
“Now, my dears,” they said, “we all get to go home.”