Like a good little echelon, I return our unit to Hayomo in the Nest for a full report.
"So we wait," she says, resting her hip against one of the SCOPE terminals. "In the meantime, tell me about this time system again."
I mirror her body language, leaning against a nearby terminal, arms crossed, eyes downcast as I stare at my boots, waiting for her to explain where she's been. I clench my fist, concentrating my frustration on the brief strain of its compression.
"I'm not entirely sure I could break it down for you. Not in a way that would make sense. McCroy could."
Hayomo nods. She swivels around to peer out the enormous windows at the marketplace below. I face the opposite direction and observe SCOPE TOP operators in their natural habitat. Coodi occupies a vacant station in the corner of the Nest. She peeks furtively at us from time to time, watching us under her dark, lowered lashes. Her hands rest in her lap, gentle and patient. I get a distinct impression that seeing me and Hayomo together doesn't seem to please her.
Regardless of how she feels, she calls McCroy to the Nest.
When he arrives, I wave him over. "Come share some of those brains you got with us. What was all that time stuff about?"
He steps up to Hayomo and salutes us with a sharp hand at his brow. We return the salute as he dives head-first into the explanation of time in space.
When he's done, Hayomo nods, turns and walks away. She exits the Nest without a single word of praise or gratitude. She leaves this kid here for me to clean up.
"Thanks, McCroy. So I'm guessing numbers are your thing?"
He shrugs.
***
For once, Knuckles is motionless, soaking in all the information I possess on my trip to Xeno A-320.
"And there's these pulses that emit from the Core of the universe. It's like a giant master-clock that regulates the beats that pulsate through all the galaxies. For every one beat of the universe, there's—".
I double over, clutching my distended belly. A sudden fluttering cuts my words from my mouth. Panic flitters as the internal pops of movement stun me to stillness.
"Are you to leave me in anticipation or are you going to finish your explanation?" He picks up a prosthetic hand from the table.
It happens again. I clutch my belly. "What the fuck is happening?"
With agonizing carelessness, Knuckles lumbers over toward me and pushes my hand away to pull up my shirt and expose my skin.
He makes contact. I shriek when the strange internal rush returns under his fingers.
"It's nothing to worry about." He takes my hand and lays in on the expanse of my belly.
We wait.
Then, my world collapses.
A little push. A little push so tiny, if I hadn't been compressing that exact spot, I would have missed it.
"Knuckles!" I grab his arm and squeeze. "Is that him? What's he doing?"
"Beating the shit out of you from the inside from the looks of it."
"Why is he doing that?" I can't hide my smile. This is the first time, after having many long-winded, one-sided conversations, he finally responds.
"That's what fetuses do. You never read the HHP introduction pamphlets, did you?"
"No one said it was required."
"There was a two-hour presentation on it. I wrote it."
"He's doing it again!" I can't stop the tears. The sting as they pool under my eyes and I try like hell to hold them back. But it's useless. I blink once and they cascade down my cheeks, my relief and horror from the past few weeks with them.
We sit in silence as my son accomplishes some impressive high-kicks to my abdomen.
"You're not going to be able to hide this much longer." Knuckles hasn't tried to pull his arm from my grasp.
"I'm going to try and keep up the ruse until it's absolutely necessary. We're here for forty-five days. The port is relatively safe. Once we return to flight, I'll let everyone know. Until then, I can keep this up. Forty-five days is nothing. I've been hiding him for—"
"Thirty. You've only been hiding this for thirty days, Lorn. If you think you're capable of doubling that number and hiding behind your armor, you're delusional."
He levels with me, his dark brown stare cutting me to pieces. I know. But if I at least believe I can make it that long, it's a target to acquire.
"When do the VIPERs return to port?" Knuckles opens my hand and taps on my PAHLM. Small blue numbers and letters appear over my skin, scrolling through all the analytics that speak to him, telling him exactly what he needs to know.
"I wanted to go back down with them tomorrow?"
"You wanted?" he practically shouts, startling me from the joyful calm I've floated into. "Are you thick?"
I raise a brow at the booming voice.
"There is no need for you to waddle down to the unknown planet and subject yourself to thousands of dangers yet known to man when you could be sitting back, resting, letting your team do the work that they're supposed to be doing for you anyway? You're going to thrust your enormous rump into a perilous situation because you wanted to?"
Enormous?
I falter for words. Molten guilt drips over my skin. But as the guilt cools and solidifies, a new thought emerges.
"The only enormous ass in here is you, Knuckles. This is my job. I don't have to go, but I choose to be there for my unit. We work together. I wouldn't send them out into anything I wouldn't be willing to run into first. There is no way they're going without me."
For the first time since meeting him, I watch as he carefully takes his glasses from off their ledge on the tip of his wide nose. He folds them and places them between us. Without the thick glass dividing his glare from mine, his brown eyes shine bright and deep. He knits his brows together and shuts his eyes tight.
This is the first time I've ever seen him lose his temper at me for something that I've directly said or done. Normally his sharp words are aimed at the HHP, the ship, the URE, his rotten luck, or any other inconveniences he's experienced. This was the first time he's bitten me. I don't know how to react.
The night with Simon and Tahn flashes to the forefront of my mind. I remember how I had Tahn's windpipe between my fingers. I remember my father's strong hand on my arm and I remember him using enough force to get me to drop my arm and regret the whole experience as his finger-marks tingled on my skin for days afterward.
There are no handprints this time, but each phrase is a little cut that makes me stumble back and out of Knuckle's room in the Clinic.
"Janika," he says as I back far enough away to step into the open passageway. He states my name as if it's one of the statistics he read earlier in my hand.
I don't respond, but I pause, for just a second.
"You chose to save your child. You need to make that choice again. Every day you wake up, the option is presented to you again and again. If you decide to leave the ship and head into the perilous unknown, you're back on that table with a muddy head."
I'm standing in between Clinic and walkway. The sliding doors hum with anticipation, waiting for me to get out of their way so they can shut me out.
"What you're doing is reckless," he says. He lifts his head and stares directly at me. "Foolhardy, idiotic, and unnecessary."
"It's never been just my life I think about every morning when I wake up on this floating dump and you know it." I'm ready to back away, but I'm desperate for a little bit of his approval and all of his regret. I want him to simmer in this feeling — that he doubts me and that I've been the only one so far who has had no opportunity to doubt myself. Dean doubted. Hayomo doubted. Simon doubted. Hell, I bet this kid has even doubted me if his little brain is capable of wondering what the fuck is going on out here. If he hasn't yet, he will. We still have a long ride ahead of us.
I step back one more time and the doors close in front of me. With Knuckles out of my sight, I already feel slightly better. I don't need anyone telling me what to do right now. He's never been commander of an ARC and pregnant. What does he know?
My back hits the bulkhead of the opposite passage and I realize I've been walking backward for a long time. My mind has gone blank and my body kept going. Fine.
The hours inch forward as I replay Knuckles' words in my mind. I think about his doubt, and Dean's. Dean didn't believe I was capable of juggling both roles either. But so far so good.
The passageways are blissfully empty at this hour. The night is my favorite time to wander ARC10. Although, it's hard to distinguish night from every other time of day. Our arbitrary time keeps ticking on our PAHLMs, but what does it really matter? It's bright as noon on the other side of the tiny portholes that randomly speckle ARC10.
I head to the brig to check out one of my little windows.
The cramped room is teeming with insanity. The Crust are rattling their bars, drooling on each other, wide-eyed and yellow-faced with flakes falling from the crux of their lips.
"Kiss it off," they shout to me. "Come and bite it off." One older woman turns to another in her cell and, with a wide mouth and wet, reaching tongue, she sucks the face of the younger woman next to her, licking the flakes off.
I turn to my porthole.
There's nothing around us. Only the same cloud and sun from this dead layer of the planet.
"You're in my spot."
I'm startled out of my meditation over the thick rolling clouds when a gruff voice from my past breaks through my barriers. Warren's shadow reaches the tip of my boots in my seat next to the porthole. I gaze up at him and then back at the window. "Since when was this dubbed your spot, oh mighty King Freyer of the Empty Bottle?"
He sighs behind me. His mechanical leg whizzes when he rests his sizable weight on that leg.
Something in me feels charitable. Standing, I vacate the seat and pull up a bucket from the other side of the room. When I return, I take up my spot on the chair and pat the upturned bucket and smile at him.
Warren stares at the bucket and then at me. He steps closer and kicks the bucket out from under my hand, sending it crashing into the bars where the Crust scream and applaud at the noise. They hoot and howl, their yellow eyes and flaking lips widen as they cling to the cell and thrash around like maniacal apes trapped in a shoebox.
Warren and I turn to the window again, continuing to watch the white clouds flow around us.
"The happiest day of my life will be the one when I look out this window and see you on the other side, alone and deserted by everyone." He spits on the bucket as it rolls between us. The Crust quiet their clamoring and listen.
"Lucky for us, Freyer, I don't think that's ever going to happen. I'm Commander of this ship. The only way this ship leaves me anywhere is if I command it to."
"Then what in the damned hell do you think's going to happen when everyone realizes what you're hiding?" He stares pointedly at my abdomen.
I haven't thought that far ahead, but like hell I'd ever tell him that. "Sorry to ruin all your wet dreams, but it would never be anything as extreme as that. Just like your son, I'm a commander—"
"Don't you talk about my boy to me. Ever." He snarls back in that same drawl from our days at the Sink. "You don't deserve one more second in my son's life, you traitorous slut."
McCroy appears in the brig and startles when he sees Warren looming over me while I'm sitting straight up and glaring into his rheumy, wavering eyes. He strides over and holds his hand over his baton.
"Stand down, McCroy. Mister Freyer is an old friend. We were just catching up." I stand, forcing Warren to step back. "It was so good to see you, sir."
I put my hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off.
McCroy's eyes are glazed over. He must be thinking about why Warren looks familiar. I watch him searching for a fraction of a second more before it dawns on him. Before take-off, this was the man who trekked up to the un-warded ladder and came face-to-gel with the Xani. McCroy's features form the same scowl from the past week.
"Have a good evening, and if there's anything else we can do to—" Before I can finish, Warren storms off, his mechanical leg screeching with each step. Someone needs a little oil.
As Warren exists, McCroy hesitates. He looks like he wants to come closer, to ask questions, or to do something comforting, but he's rooted in place. I know how he feels. Basic human reaction is usually trumped by our rigid sense of duty.
Instead of letting him try to comfort me, I walk past him, place a single hand on his bicep, and squeeze. It's fine. Don't worry. Nothing can hurt me.
He shudders under my touch.
"Get some rest, McCroy. Big day, tomorrow."
The doors to the brig slide shut behind me and I'm left in the passageway with long, dark shadows. The halls with their cold, metal walls and thin floors that echo the steps from people across the ship are haunting. Usually, I can hear the march of everyone who wanders this hall, but tonight, it's a heavy quiet.
I check left and right. It's too quiet.
As long as I don't hear the ticking noise of my nightmares, I am safe. There's nothing but the stomp of my own boots, the heaving of my own breath, and the loud thrum of my own heart.
My heart accelerates. My son kicks me in the ribs.
"Holy Heaping hell, calm down," I say into the emptiness.
I wait and wonder what direction to go when one loud, menacing grumble emits from my stomach.
Smiling, I relax.
Eat. I can do that.
It's not my scheduled mess time, but as Commander, I can sneak in and grab what I need whenever I need it.
My journey to the mess hall is quick and undisturbed. I don't pass a single person as I move through the ship on a mission: Find something to eat and go to bed. The options fly through my mind. Each object is declined by the rumbling cravings that lurk somewhere in my gut. None of what's on the ship sounds appealing. Nothing that we hold in our stores would even chip away at this sudden desire I have bubbling inside me. I need something different. Something our current pantry can't offer.
My heart lurches when I think of Simon in the Sink's kitchen. I remember his head popping out from behind the saloon doors and wiping his hands on his grease-spattered apron. I imagine him knowing exactly what to make to quell this sudden urge for something unnamed. My dad would know what to make. He always does.
I can't wait to rebuild. I imagine our new establishment like a flashing neon sign in a starless night. I see him emerging from behind similar doors and placing a large, hot, steaming plate of fries in front of me.
Oh, Holy Heap. That's what I want. Steaming, long-cut, greasy, wonderful fries.
My stomach's grumble echoes through the halls.
No. I'm not going to get what I need here on the ship.
I should do some research for Simon. If he's planning on opening one of these greasy spoons on NOHA, he'll need to know what the universe expects of us. And maybe they'll have what I'm looking for. I should check out the competition. I need to see what we're up against.
I'll go. For research.
And Dean never believed there was an academic bone in my body. Knuckles thinks I'm incapable of keeping myself out of danger.
They're both so wrong.