Kieran is able to temporarily reactivate the command center, which allows June to lower the dome shielding. It grinds and folds almost perfectly back into place within those slots in the floor, and while we expect the Remnant below to stir at the noise, June assures us that it doesn’t.
Her dinghy is parked outside the main dome, not too far from ours. She remotely cancels its cloaking device, and we all stand in the wide space between our ships, thinking through how to say goodbye.
June crosses her arms. “So,” she says.
I nod. “So.”
“What, now that I’ve given you a cache, you finally don’t have something to say?” I know she’s teasing by the slight crook of her mouth, even if her voice is just as stern as usual.
“Thank you,” I say. “It means more than you know that you’re letting us take this.” I wave back at Kieran, who’s got the cache strapped to him. He smiles in agreement.
“Some of the information on there might be on the caches we still have, you know.”
“What would that mean?”
She shrugs, tired and a little uncaring. “I don’t know. Usually when Verity Co. scours a system, they get the whole payload.”
“They, huh? Not we?” I smile, but she just shrugs again.
“Are you going to be okay?” Kieran asks.
“Probably,” she says, and then, with less conviction, “Maybe. I’ll argue that without Gunner, you two just got the better of me down here.”
“Will that work?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I have no idea what happens when we get home. Hopefully, they’ll be placated by the fact I’m bringing them anything at all.”
Kieran looks at me, worried.
“But that’s not your concern, is it?” June says. “You have what you wanted, and we’ll probably never see each other again.”
That hurts, and I’m surprised. I’m not crazy about her. We’re not friends or anything close, but, well. When it’s just you, your brother, your cat, and a mercenary lady out in the dark of space, you can’t help but cling to what little life around you there is. I think I hide the sentiment well enough.
“I guess you’re right,” I tell her. I approach, grasp her under the elbow as she does the same to me. “Thank you, June.”
“Don’t die out there, Scout.”
We let go. She says goodbye to Kieran and—to my continued surprise—gives Pumpkin an enthusiastic scratch.
“And seriously,” she calls, walking backward to her dinghy. “Space is no place for a cat!”
We wave goodbye, board our own way home. June takes off first, and I follow the sleek black vessel with my eyes until it disappears against the stars.
Back aboard the Waning Crescent, Kieran and I celebrate with a pizza. Actually, two pizzas. We’ve set our course for home and are playing Smash ’Em Dead, blasting too-happy music, and knocking back beers without any fear for the next day’s hangover.
We’re hungover, and we should have been afraid.
There’s these little pills you can take for that. They’re packed with electrolytes and other stuff, I don’t know. “Just give me the damn pill,” I say, interrupting Kieran’s reading of the package. My head feels like a nuclear reactor mid-meltdown.
“Damn. Yikes. Fine.” He hands me the pill. “You’re just mad that I beat you with Kahoot.”
“Because he’s cheap as shit. You’re cheap as shit.”
“Cheap as shit but with a better killstreak than you!”
I throw my ration at him. He dodges it like a stupid bunny-hat-wearing pink ninja and squeaks, “Kahoot!”
We’re eating Archivist-standard food for dinner. We’ve got a few pizzas left and a long journey home, so we’re saving them. Pumpkin is eating beside us, a rare occasion. Kieran baited him with an even rarer can of tuna. We all eat in comfortable silence, the blurred lines of jump space gliding out the window.
In the morning, I leave my cabin and follow the peppy, poppy music to the cockpit. I worked all night, categorizing the data sets from the new cache, so I’m grateful to see a carafe of the good stuff there, even if it is a spill risk for the dashboard. Kieran knowingly pours me a space-safe mug and hands it to me as I take my seat in the copilot’s chair.
We’re quiet for a little while, then we talk for a little while, about nothing, really. Then we’re quiet again. Pumpkin appears out of nowhere, as cats are wont to do, and hops into my lap. He burrows deep and falls fast asleep.
“Kieran,” I say.
He looks at me casually, but seeing my face, turns serious. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry I got mad at you when you told me you wanted to stay home after all this. It wasn’t fair.”
“Oh.” He releases some visible tension, sits back in his chair. “Thank you.”
“I just didn’t want to lose you. And so soon after Mom”—I sigh—“after Mom died. It felt like losing another family member when you told me. But,” I say, before he can interrupt, “I know that’s not what it is. I know you just have a different direction you want to go in, and that’s okay. I’m okay. I support it. And you.”
Pumpkin rolls onto his back and purrs. I give him pets.
“Thank you,” my brother says again. “I wish I could say I’ve changed my mind, but it’s really what I want to do.”
I nod. I’ve always known he doesn’t enjoy this life as much as Mom and I, but I hoped maybe he’d come to love it over time, that our first outing with just the two of us would finally help him see everything that I love about being out here. “I know. It’s, uh, it’s hard to imagine being out here without you. No one has my back quite the same.”
“You’ll be okay. And you won’t be alone.” He smiles. “Headquarters barely approved just two of us being out here, remember? You’ll probably have a whole team of people.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. It’s not a comforting thought now, but I trust that one day it will be.
“And you’ll always have a place to come back to,” he says. “I might even relocate us near our favorite pizza place.”
I laugh. “Or you can finally start your own shop.”
“Nah. I think the Archivists will have plenty of work for an engineer home-side.”
“Probably. Just, no Verity Co.”
“I solemnly swear.”
Pumpkin rolls back over, drooping like a giant, heavy blanket over my legs. I pet him relentlessly, letting his warm fur and happy trills bring some comfort to all this sadness. I watch the stars blurring past the cockpit window, the swirling, rainbow path home. I tell myself, Everything will be okay.
“Hey,” Kieran says. “Movie sounds kind of fun, doesn’t it?”
I wipe my eyes. “Yeah, it does.”
“So... Robot Invasion 3 or... Robotsylvania?”
“Duh,” I laugh. “It’s a classic.”
“I’ll go make some popcorn.”
“Meet you there,” I say.
I don’t know what the future will bring, whether the new team I’ll have at my back will be able to replace the companionship I feel with my brother, whether Pumpkin will go with me or him, whether anything that we’ve found in this cluster will actually help save us from the Endri, or whether that entity will even come for us at all. It’s scary, looking ahead. It’s sad, looking back, remembering the time I had with my mom, the times I could have had with her; remembering that there was a time I was sure Kieran and I would be out here among the stars for life; remembering that once upon a time, in the stars behind us, there was someone named Blyreena and someone named Ovlan who loved each other very much.
I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know that right now, Pumpkin is with me, my brother is with me, and that we’re about to go watch an amazing, terrible, impossible movie with robot vampires. I get up with Pumpkin, who trots eagerly beside me toward the den, and I tell myself, This one is.