Chapter 58: Aftermath

The gravity along the transit tube surged back up to a steady comfortable one G, and every floating droplet of Ren’s blood dropped out of the air at once.

PATTER-PATTER-PATTER!

It hit the deck in one soft collective shower, like the first drops of rain on a tin roof.

Harper set the pistol down on the shattered console and went down the row with shaking hands, untying the last of the ropes from Elena, Camila, Jin-Ah and Sensei.

Nobody spoke at all.

Aoi pulled herself up by the pipe with her legs trembling so violently she had to lean her whole weight on Harper’s shoulder.

Elena got up after her with both hands clutching her torn collar and her eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at what was floating near the dais, while Camila wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. Jin-Ah stood very straight and very still, the way she always did when she was holding herself together by force.

Chloe was already at the airlock, and nobody had seen her move.

She stood in the mouth of the docking sleeve with her back to them, dripping with her bare feet leaving dark red prints on the iron as she tilted her head a little, listening to something down the tube that none of them could hear.

...Then she walked into it.

The five of them followed her bloody footprints across the flexible sleeve, and the air inside it was warm.

After the cold rattling stink of the Kite, it hit them like stepping into a hot bath.

The Wanderer-7’s pressure was holding a steady one hundred and one kilopascals, and the familiar purr of its fusion core came up through the runners into the soles of their feet... welcoming them back into the home they’d been so ready to abandon.

Camila started crying again the second she felt it, so quietly she didn’t even seem to notice she was doing it.

They crossed the threshold onto the mid-deck corridor.

Their luggage was still there in neat little rows against the bulkhead, exactly where they’d stacked it an hour ago when they were all so excited to leave...

Elena’s silver trunk, Aoi’s leather satchel and Camila’s spilled crate of tomato cuttings with its dirt still scattered across the floor in a dark fan.

Nobody touched any of it or looked at it for long.

The spot in the wall where Ren had jammed the chip was empty now.

The red module had been torn clean out of the data port, leaving nothing behind but a scorched black socket, and around that socket, pressed into the grey composite in dark smeared red, were four fingerprints.

...A thin glittering crust of frost covered every one of them.

Jin-Ah stopped and stared, her hand coming up to hover a centimeter from the wall.

’Frost,’ her mind whispered. ’Frozen blood... Ice crystals on a surface at room temperature. That is not possible. Those prints would have to have been made by something colder than...’

She didn’t want to finish the thought.

The blue runners along the baseboards were glowing bright and steady and calm, and everything was humming and clean.

It looked exactly like the ship they’d lived on for five days... and somehow it felt like walking through a stranger’s house.

Every speaker in the ceiling was silent.

There was no dry voice, no roast and no [This unit notes with extreme displeasure...] drifting down from the vents.

Harper looked up at the grille as they passed under it, and her throat closed so tight it hurt.

They passed the garden next.

The hatch was open with the rose-gold lamps still glowing over the racks, and Camila looked in without meaning to as her breath caught in her chest.

The tomatoes were alive.

Every vine was standing up green and tall and heavy with fruit, the potato leaves spilling over the trays and the drip-lines going trickle-trickle-trickle the way they always did.

The pressure on line three had been fixed... somebody had fixed it, and there was frost on the valve.

They passed the galley.

Leo’s mug sat alone on the steel counter by the coffee dispenser, half full, right where he’d slammed it down yesterday when the klaxon went off and he’d bolted for the bridge, the coffee long since gone cold and skinned over.

Harper looked at it for a long moment before she made herself keep walking.

Down the corridor toward the companionway there were footprints on the floor, bigger than Chloe’s and made by heavy boots, and every one of them had left a thin white ghost of frost on the runner that was slowly melting at the edges into tiny beads of water.

They led toward the bridge.

The six of them climbed the companionway stairs slowly and heavily, their boots dragging on every step like none of them wanted to reach the top... like whatever was waiting up there might be worse than the room they’d just left.

’What do I say to him?’ Harper thought, her hand white on the rail. ’What do I even... I left him alone up there. I told him to handle it himself. What do I SAY...?’

’I’ll tell him I’m sorry,’ Camila thought, the tears still running down her cheeks. ’I’ll tell him I’m sorry for calling him kid and sorry I asked him to be happy... I’ll make him potatoes. I’ll make him anything he wants...’

’I’ll tell him the data was too perfect,’ Jin-Ah thought. ’I’ll tell him I knew and I was a coward... He deserves to know that.’

Elena’s lips were pressed together so hard they’d gone white.

’Your commoner little sister.’

She’d said that out loud to his face, with his blood still drying under his nose from saving her harpoon.

’I’ll get on my knees,’ she thought. ’I don’t care who sees it. I’ll get on my knees in front of all of them and say it... I’ll ask him his sister’s name, and I’ll say it right.’

Aoi climbed last, leaning on the rail with her swollen face throbbing and her one good eye fixed on the top of the stairs, and there was only one word left in her.

It filled her up so completely there was no room for anything else.

’...Please.’

They reached the bridge, and it was cold.

The air was cold enough that their breath came out in thin white puffs and the hair on Camila’s arms stood straight up, and the chill was coming from the dais, rolling down the three steps toward them like fog off a winter lake.

The canopy was clear, looking out over the silent glittering expanse of the asteroid belt, and the consoles were humming smoothly through their navigation grids, painting the deck in soft blue.

The crack in the glass was still sealed under its two ribbons of resin and in the middle of the raised dais, sitting in the command throne...

...was Leo.

Aoi’s hand flew to her mouth as a choked breathless sob caught in her throat.

"Leo..."

He looked horrifyingly and impossibly wrong, nothing like the boy who had fried potatoes for them in the galley.

His skin had gone past pale into a translucent frozen ivory without a single drop of color in it, like a statue carved out of mountain ice.

A fine glittering crust of white frost clung to his dark flight jacket, to the collar of his shirt and to every tangled strand of his hair, and it sat there unmelting, sparkling in the blue light.

His hands rested limp in the crystal cradles with his knuckles rigid and blue, and his chest was still.

Then, slowly and agonizingly, he turned his head toward the stairs.

TINK!

The frost on his collar cracked with a tiny brittle sound.

Aoi gasped as Elena staggered backward and her shoulder slammed against the doorframe.

Leo’s eyes had changed.

Both of them were burning a brilliant blinding celestial gold, two blazing miniature suns that threw long golden rays across the blue deck plates, so bright that Camila had to squint into them.

He looked at the six of them standing at the top of the stairs.

He saw Aoi’s swollen bleeding face and Elena’s torn uniform.

He saw Camila clinging to Harper’s hand, Jin-Ah standing very straight and Chloe covered head to foot in blood.

The terrible frozen stillness on his face melted, and his cracked frostbitten lips parted slowly and gently... curling up into that small familiar smile.

It was the quiet soft one, the same protective smile he’d given them when the first green sprout broke up through the volcanic gravel, like he was just glad they were home.

For one heartbeat, standing at the top of those stairs, every one of them felt it land.

’He’s smiling at me,’ Harper thought as her knees almost gave out. ’After everything I did... he’s smiling at me like we’re nine years old on Henderson’s roof.’

’He came back,’ Elena thought. ’He came back for the girl who spat on his sister... Why? WHY?’

’He fixed line three,’ Camila thought, stupidly, through the tears. ’He came back and he fixed my drip-line...’

’No suit,’ Jin-Ah thought. ’No air... Hard vacuum. That is not survivable, that is not... It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He’s sitting right there.’

Chloe just breathed him in, deep and slow, the smell of frost and copper and the faint sweet ghost of his blood under all of it.

’He caught me,’ she thought. ’He always catches me.’

And Aoi looked into those two blazing golden suns and felt something that had been shattered on the floor of the Black Kite slowly start to put itself back together inside her chest.

’You’re here,’ she thought. ’You’re here... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re here.’

"I..."

His voice was a dry frozen rasp under the hum of the vents, and his chest hitched.

His right hand came up off the cradle, slow and shaking, and the frost on his sleeve cracked and fell away in a glittering shower as he reached toward them... toward her... palm up with his fingers half open, the same way he’d held out a tray of warm bread at her door that first night.

"I... I..."

COUGH!

A violent concussive spasm racked his entire body, and a thick boiling fountain of dark blood erupted out of his mouth and sprayed across the clear glass of the flight console.

SPLATTER!

His blazing golden eyes went wide with sudden shock.

Aoi screamed.

She tore herself away from Harper’s shoulder and lunged forward with both arms out, her boots slamming the metal steps of the dais one, two, three...

"LEO!"

Chloe was moving too, a red blur at the edge of her vision, faster than anything and faster than Aoi... but they were both too late.

BANG... SPLAT!

Before Aoi’s fingers could touch the armrest of the throne, Leo’s left eye and the entire left half of his face detonated outward in a blinding concussive spray of blood, shattered bone and celestial golden sparks.

KRA-CRACK!

One millisecond later his chest blew outward from the inside, and his flight jacket ripped to shreds as his ribs burst open, splattering a massive boiling torrent of dark blood and torn tissue across the command throne, across the consoles and across the whole panoramic canopy, painting the stars red.

The bridge went dead.

A thick fine mist of dark blood hung motionless in the air, catching the cold starlight through the glass, while the golden sparks drifted down through it one by one and went out.

Nobody moved or breathed.

The fusion core went on purring under their feet as if the ship hadn’t noticed its Captain was gone.

Chloe had stopped one step below the dais with her hand still reaching out and the red mist settling on her outstretched fingers.

She looked at her hand, at the red beading on her pale skin, and then up at the throne.

Her head tilted slowly in confusion, like a child who didn’t understand the rules of a game she’d just lost.

"Leo...?" she whispered. "Leo, your heart."

She listened, and her face crumpled.

"...I can’t hear your heart."

Somewhere behind her, Camila made a sound that had no words in it.

Harper’s legs went out from under her and she sat down hard on the top step, staring with her mouth hanging open.

Elena slid slowly down the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor with both hands clamped over her mouth, shaking her head back and forth like if she shook it hard enough it would all undo.

Jin-Ah stood exactly where she was, perfectly straight and perfectly still, with her eyes fixed on the throne and tears running down her face as if she had no idea they were there.

The blood began to slide slowly down the inside of the canopy, drawing long red lines across the stars and Aoi stood frozen at the top of the steps with her hands reaching out into the falling red rain and her mouth open in a soundless paralyzed scream as the universe went black.