I stand in the hangar, staring at my ship. My ship. I inhale the sense of freedom lingering in the air. The HMS Valediction's recycled filtration seems lighter—like it's as fresh as an ocean breeze. Freedom is imminent. I tug on the ends of my powder-blue officer's jacket that Nuna insisted I wear when returning. I wipe the silver buttons with my thumb and pull the collar up so it sticks straight up around my chin. Smoothing my slicked-back hair and wiping off the residual moisture on my matching suit pants, I feel presentable enough to return with dignity.
I touch the hand-pad at the aft, lowering the hatch so I can board my ship.
The ramp lowers, and I close my eyes and exhale. It's time to break the news.
To save them the anguish I experienced, I wish I could take this information away from them, to take care of the matter myself so they'll never have to know what their government had planned for them. But instead, I'm headed back into what is bound to be more pain.
I'll be back. At least I'll be able to look among my VIPERs and hold my sister or embrace my friends. I can lean against John or wander the cold corridors with him again.
Ledi steps up to my side. It's getting easier to remind myself that it's not Dean. I fixate on his clean shave. That's definitely very un-Dean-ish. One of my favorite parts of Dean was a few days after being Topside, he'd have the softest scruff on his cheeks and chin. The fresh stuff was prickly and awful, but give it a few days...
"You ready?" He peers at me and nods toward the lowered hatch.
"As ready as I can be for something as fucking awful as this." I step onto the ramp and board my ship.
We take our seats, mine on the left and his co-pilot position on the right. I run through the pre-flight checklists, his responses curt and professional—very much a Dean gesture. I relax into the sound of his voice, the sensation that this is finally going the way it's supposed to.
Ledi places Dean's large hand on the ignition switch between us. "All systems-go."
"VAL-Tower-One, this is Junker-One. Requesting release at Port Bravo-three-three-Juliet." My old callsign from the Topside rolls off my tongue, but it's odd to hear it said in space.
"Junker-One, your request has been approved," Ledi says, turning the switch.
I hold my breath.
The ship doesn't start.
I point at the ignition. "Start it again."
He flips the switch.
Nothing.
"The hell." I drop my hands from their tight grip around the controls.
"Commander," Ledi faces me. "There's no power in the ship."
"No shit."
I stare at the console for a few seconds, thinking about the engine I installed and the electric system I spent what felt like eternity putting together with Ledi's help.
Ledi stares straight ahead. "What should we do now?"
Before I respond, I catch a black blur in my peripherals just outside the enormous window at my forward.
"Captain Moon is boarding," Ledi says.
"Yeah. What a surprise." I spin around in my seat to watch my hatch lower and Moon stomp aboard.
"Having any troubles?" He stands in the middle of the cabin, his black coat and black shirt back in their original places. Now that I know what he's hiding below them, I can't see anything but his marred skin.
"What made it obvious?"
"The fact that you're attempting to resurrect a sentient creature's limb to use as your personal shuttle."
My mouth opens and closes, but I have no retort.
"If you and Teeno insist on using an appendage as your vessel, you're going to need to bring it back from the dead. No fingers will wiggle if the body is deceased."
I gulp down my questions. He's right. This is a part of a living Xani. Who would know better than him at what it needs. "What do you think I should do?"
"Burn this pathetic pile of scraps."
"If you're not going to help, get off my ship."
He scowls.
I turn back around. "Ledi, let's go back over the checklist. Maybe we missed something..."
Moon clangs around the cabin, opening my cabinets and pulling tools out. They scatter on the floor, clanking and making a ruckus.
"Seriously? What the hell are you doing?" I unbuckle myself and rush to stop him from trashing everything.
As I approach, he pulls a screwdriver from my toolbox. He whips off his coat, rolls up his sleeve to expose the orange and green-spotted skin underneath, and stabs himself, drilling the flathead deep into his flesh.
"Holy fucking hell on a handcrank what the fuck are you doing?" I rush to pull the screwdriver from his arm.
He wedges it in farther, twisting it until he creates an enormous hole in his arm. Ripping his arm from my clutches, he heads toward a wall covered in empty, blackened, dried pustules.
Moon holds his arm above the crater as the goo cascades from the gash in his arm into my ship.
Fascinated, I follow the neon river as it fills the crevices, flowing through the cracks like blood through veins. Moon drops a few globs in, but somehow, the ship has thinned it, stretched it, copied it so more stretches across the interior, flooding the channels with orange life.
I spin around to the cockpit. "Ledi! Try the ignition again."
"Hitting ignition," he repeats.
This time, the ship roars to life, purring, humming in the erratic way that I've missed while being away from ARC10. It's the tumultuous growl of bolts tumbling through a cement mixer.
I'm home.
Before rejoicing, I extend a hand to Moon. "Thank you."
He massages his skin back into place and rubs it until the gouged flesh is perfectly intact again. Instead of responding, he brushes past me, exits out the aft, and closes the port behind him.
No time to waste. I rush to my seat, strap in, grab the controls and grin at the runway of stars ahead.
The ship rises from the deck of my personal hangar. It wobbles in the air, poised to sprint out and rejoin the cosmos.
"Kick it, Ledi."
"Aye-aye, Commander." He grins with Dean's mocking levity and lazily salutes me.
We blast out. The rush knocks me back into my seat as we take to the stars. Once out, the HMS Valediction floats peacefully at our side as a silent behemoth watching the insignificant flitting of gnats around its feet. Its size is impressive. I've seen so little of it, I wonder what I've missed.
Doesn't matter. I rub my hands together and take hold of the controls. Turning my ship to skirt the perimeter of the HMS Valediction, we follow until we round the aft and find ARC10 drifting not too far away.
Moon was right, they've been trailing us all along while keeping out of reach of our enemies. Far enough away where I couldn't get to them, but close enough to know that they'd be out of harm's way.
"When we dock, give me a few sondits. I've got to set up the connection so you can exit and enter ARC10." Ledi unbuckles himself to prepare for his installation.
I give him a silent thumbs up as I carefully drive us closer, ARC10 growing larger and larger on our approach.
I've never seen ARC10 from this view. I can properly memorize its angles, know its face and see it as the creature it is. Debris floats around it, pieces of the brig that were ripped from it when shot by Juno's army. The entire ship is a mix of incongruent angles protruding from what appears to be a metal peach pit.
When ARC10 was above the marketplace and its legs extended from its center, I realized it was alive. It's spindle-legs were the same as John's.
Ledi, without suit or helmet, lands on the windows in front of me. I lean back farther, taking in his familiar form.
For one second, I allow myself to daydream. What if that was Dean. What if he was just outside, fixing my ship, preparing us to save my son—our son—and bolt the hell out of here?
I lean my cheek on my hand as I watch him work.
He smiles and winks at me. I wave back.
An enormous plop of orange goo drops from somewhere above, soaking Ledi from head to foot. He drops to the nose of my ship under its weight. Drenched in slime, he opens his mouth open as his wide eyes search for an answer.
Can't help it. I smile.
ARC10 knows I'm home. The old brig's hatch begins to change. Metal shifts as if invisible hands pull it from its resting spots and tinker with the structure. Bars and wires twist out, stretch, and fold around the hatch as if to make a panel.
My own ship responds. I hear the scream of metal changing its shape above me.
Ledi rises and attempts to wipe the goo from his face, but it's no use.
"You're not tracking that in here," I say into our comms. "You better stay out there until you've cleaned it all off."
He plops down on the nose of my ship, his broad, wide back facing me. With enormous swipes from his hand, he wipes orange slime from his face. "Since when did you start caring about tracking filth into places?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a blur of orange and metal.
I leap from my seat. "John!"
He drops to my ship, clanks around, the lights on his underbelly blinking in rhythm with his scuttle.
The deck vibrates. The pulse rushes up my boots, through my bones, and to my fingers, causing me to shiver. Joy engulfs me.
My ship. It's alive. It's responding to John and ARC10.
I flop back into my seat, holding my sides as I smile wide, the happy reunion tickling me through the pulses in my ship.
John drops from the ceiling and lands on my deck as if sliding through a jello port. He rises, his stumpy neck level with my eyes as I leap up to meet him in my cabin.
I touch his torso, stroking his flaky neck. "I've missed you."
He leans forward, dropping his stump on my shoulder. The hum under my feet matches the deep purr from the spot on my shoulder where he's resting. I feel it. Peace.
"There's no time to sit here and get all sentimental," I say, shoving him off. "We've got to finish what we started."
The ship jolts as we latch onto ARC10. A hatch I had never installed opens from the ceiling. Two thin strands of black coil drop, braiding until they form a ladder from deck to hatch.
I stare into the bright lights above, squinting into the cabin of ARC10.
A dark silhouette emerges from the light. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to Coodi's frame. She salutes as clean and straight as the day we first met. Beyond her poise, I notice her smile is as bright as a thousand suns.
"Welcome, back, Commander Lorn." She kneels at the edge of the hatch and offers me her hand. "We've been anxiously waiting for your return."
Stepping onto the ladder, I clasp her hand in mine. I want to respond with smiles and glee too, but my news douses me in cold remorse again.