by R. M. Olson
Lev gave her a wry look. “I thought you said—”
“Nope, changed my mind. This sounds exactly like my kind of plan.”
Lev and Masha exchanged looks.
“I suppose that may be our next step,” said Masha at last. “And I suppose there is something I should tell you.”
Lev glanced up at her, his eyes sharp, and for a moment she wondered if he’d already guessed what she was going to say next.
She’d always planned to tell them at some point, of course, but she hadn’t expected it to be like this. Their ship broken, their company swelled by three. Jez only a few days past her declaration that she would leave the company.
Telling them, not because she knew she had them where she wanted them. Because they deserved to know.
“I did, in fact, have a reason to bring you together that went beyond our heist on Vitali. And I suppose it’s time I told you what that reason was.” She took a deep breath. “The Svodrani system government is corrupt. It’s in the pocket of the mafia, as I’m sure many of you know. However, I doubt you realize the full extent of its corruption.” Her hands were shaking, and she wondered absently if any of the others had noticed.
“And, between the eight of us, I believe we may be able to change how the government functions going forward.”
There was a moment of silence as they looked at her. The realization dawned on Lev’s face faster than on any of the others, as she’s suspected it would.
“You never wanted Vitali’s tech at all,” he said softly. “That was just firing an opening salvo. You want to take down the whole damn government.”
She smiled at him fondly. He’d always been a smart one, that boy. “Perhaps not the entire government,” she said, her tone depreciating. “Only, perhaps, taking down one faction, and the organized crime backing that allows them to stay in power.”
Lev raised his eyebrows. He looked up at Masha. “I see,” he said at last. “Well.” He paused a moment. “I believe I understand why you didn’t want to tell us this right off.”
“Tell us what right off?” asked Jez, turning reluctantly from the control panel. Lev gave a long-suffering sigh and shook his head.
“Tell us,” Ysbel grumbled, “that the reason we really are here is because we are single-handedly supposed to take down the entire Svodrani system government. And the mafia. And who knows what else.”
Jez stared at her for a moment, then turned to stare at Masha.
A slow grin was spreading across her face.
“Masha,” she drawled at last. “And here I figured you were a cautious bastard. That almost sounds like one of my ideas.”
Masha thinned her lips.
The thought was not entirely comforting.
For a few moments, no one spoke. At last, though, Tae said quietly, “I didn’t have much to do with the mafia. They ran in higher circles than the street gangs. But I had enough to do with the government.” He turned to her, and she was mildly surprised at the grim expression on his face. “Masha,” he said, “I’m not going to lie and say you don’t scare the hell out of me. But if you plan on taking this government down—that’s the one thing I’ve wanted to do my whole life.”
She raised her eyebrows. That, at least, was something she hadn’t expected.
Ysbel was smiling. “I agree with Tae. I’ve had enough dealing with the Svodrani system government.” She turned to Masha. “I have my family back. But the system that put them there—” Masha noticed that she glanced over at Lev, and that Lev did not meet her eyes. “If you want to take them down,” she said quietly, “I will come with you.”
“And I do not intend to leave my wife ever again,” said Tanya, from within Ysbel’s arms. “So I suppose you get all of us.”
“By the way,” said Tae, “Tanya, how the hell did you learn to—to—” he broke off, shaking his head. Tanya glanced at Ysbel with a faint smile.
“I thought you’d told them, Ysi.”
Ysbel looked faintly smug. “I did. I told them you went to university in Prasvishoni.”
Tanya shook her head and turned to the others. “What my wife apparently neglected to tell you was which university I went to. They recruited me to train as an agent for the internal security committee.”
Masha turned to stare. Lev whistled slightly.
“No wonder they wanted to transfer you to the Vault when they thought Ysbel had died,” Tae murmured. There was a look in his face, a sort of mortal terror, that he usually reserved for Masha. “Ysbel, it would have been nice to know we were sleeping next door to someone who could kill us all in her sleep without breaking a sweat.”
Ysbel shrugged. “In fairness, most of us could kill us all in our sleep without breaking a sweat.”
There was a long, long pause. At last, Lev leaned back in his chair.
“I suppose that settles it,” he said. “First we break into my university. Then, we take down the government.”
Masha watched them for a moment.
They were so confident they could do this.
She wasn’t.
Because she’d realized, for the first time, that their lives were no longer expendable in her calculation of risks and rewards.
That was dangerous. That was terrifying.
And somehow, she’d have to find a way for them to pull it off anyways.
Masha waited until the others had finally, yawning and stretching, headed back towards their cabins. Lev had seemed somewhat reluctant to leave, but she’d given him a meaningful stare and finally, reluctantly, he’d left as well.
At last, it was only her and Jez.
Jez studiously avoided her gaze.
“Jez,” said Masha at last. Jez looked up, face instantly defensive.
“What?”
Masha sighed. “Jez. Do you still intend to leave?”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t know,” said Jez at last, not looking at her. “I guess you want me to.”
Masha shook her head. “No, Jez,” she said quietly. “I don’t.”
Jez frowned at her. “Have kind of a strange way of showing it, you bastard.”
Masha gave a slight smile. “I’m sorry. I—was wrong.”
Jez froze. “What—do you mean?” she asked cautiously.
“I mean,” Masha took a deep breath. “I mean, I’ve come to realize that this crew would not be what it is if you were not part of it. Over and beyond how you fly, which, I must admit, is more than impressive, the others need you.” She paused. “I—suppose we all do.”
Jez was staring at her, a frown creasing between her eyebrows, as if trying to parse out the sting in the words.
At last she shook her head. “I guess—I don’t know, I’ve gotten pretty used to this crew. Guess maybe I might stay for a little while longer.” Her mouth was twitching slightly, and Masha couldn’t tell for certain if it was with a grin or with tears.
“I’m glad.” For some reason, Masha found her own words choking a little. “Because you were right, in the end. I have been cautious, but I may have lost sight of the thing that makes this crew unique.”
“What, you mean besides the fact that Ysbel could basically blow us all up in our sleep?”
“Besides that,” Masha murmured, a slight smile on her face.
“Yeah.” Jez tried to grin, but there was something glistening in the corners of her eyes. “Well, guess we’ll have to stop trying to kill each other then, you dirty scum-sucker.”
“I suppose we must,” said Masha.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Lev sat back on the main deck and watched as the others left back to their bunks or their calculations. Jez, of course, still hadn’t left the cockpit. He wasn’t sure if she’d ever leave it again. Like always, the thought of her made his heart stutter slightly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
There would be time for that in a moment.
He’d just learned that they were planning to take down both the Sovdrani system govern
ment and the mafia. That should certainly absorb more of his attention than the thought of a woman who liked to run her ship through asteroid belts for fun.
But his eyes lingered on the cockpit door, and he couldn’t seem to shake the slightly-inebriated buzz the memory of her smile seemed to illicit in his brain.
“Lev.”
He turned, startled out of his reverie.
Ysbel had taken a seat across from him.
The old guilt shoved itself back into his throat, mingled with a familiar fear. Because, all things considered, he was still a coward.
He managed, somehow, to keep his voice steady.
“Yes, Ysbel?”
Would she kill him right now? At this point, he wasn’t certain whether that could possibly be a worse fate than letting him wait and wonder when the moment would come.
“I didn’t puncture your oxygen tank, you know,” she said at last. He looked up at her, raising an eyebrow.
She looked—sincere.
“I—didn’t think you had,” he demurred.
She gave a slightly grim smile. “You aren’t a very good liar.”
He sighed. “I hoped you hadn’t, then.”
“I could have,” she said quietly. “I might have, at one point. But I didn’t.”
He studied her face. There were lines there, of concern and pain and worry. He’d put most of them there himself, as an arrogant, self-confident young man, too self-important or self-absorbed to consider the potential consequences of his actions.
“Why?” he asked finally. “Don’t tell me I didn’t deserve it.”
For a few moments, she didn’t answer. Finally she said, “Maybe you did deserve it. I don’t know. I thought I knew, once. But—I suppose life isn’t as clean as all that. I didn’t puncture your tank, for the same reason I didn’t leave you behind on Lena’s ship. Because at the end of the day, whatever happened, whatever you did in the past—I can’t change it, and neither can you. But—” she paused again. “But I did not wish to lose another person I care about because of what you did five years ago.”
He frowned abruptly as he realized what she’d said.
“Ysbel,” he said at last, speaking around the sudden lump in his throat. “I—I deserve whatever it is you wanted to do to me. I spent the last few weeks trying to pretend I didn’t, that there was a way out. But I—”
Ysbel held up a hand. “Then listen. You’re right. What you did hurt me more than you will ever know, and it hurt people I care for more than I care for my own life. But in prison, and here on the ship—what you did saved them, too. Saved me. It doesn’t make what you did to us go away. But—” she shrugged. “As I said. I am tired of losing people I care for to things that happened in the past.”
He stared at her, speechless. She gave him a brief smile, and pushed herself to her feet.
“I will see you in the morning, then,” she said, and disappeared out the door.
He stared after her for a long time.
There was a sort of emptiness inside him, nestled in beside the guilt and the fear.
He’d considered the whole thing logically, over and over, trying to find an escape for himself, some excuse, and there hadn’t been any. And so, like he’d done to the student who’d turned in his mentor, he’d expected her to take her due.
And then she hadn’t.
She’d saved his life, back on Lena’s ship. And Tae had worked himself ragged for them, even when he thought they were all going to take off and leave him when it was done. And Lev had somehow managed to go completely off his head for the pilot who had put him in prison, and who he’d spent the better part of seven years planning his revenge on.
Maybe, after all, Ysbel was right. Maybe life wasn’t quite as simple as he’d assumed, back in university. Maybe life was a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
And maybe—maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Ysbel walked slowly back to her cabin. When she entered, Tanya was waiting for her.
“The children are already asleep,” she whispered, standing and leaning in for a kiss. “I think they were sleeping before they’d finished lying down.”
Ysbel smiled slightly, and ran a hand down Tanya’s smooth hair. She’d missed the feel of Tanya’s hair. It was a stupid thing to miss, after everything that had been taken away from her, but there it was.
“Are you alright, my heart?” Tanya whispered, twining her arms around Ysbel. “You’ve seemed so sad.”
Ysbel smiled, despite the wetness in her eyes. “Yes, my Tanya,” she whispered. “I’m alright.”
Tanya pulled back to look at her, then reached up to brush the tears from Ysbel’s eyes, the gesture at once so familiar and so tender that Ysbel had to swallow hard.
“Tanya,” she whispered. “I’ve missed so much. You, the children.”
“I know,” said Tanya quietly. “There is so much we’ve all missed. I thought—at first, I thought maybe going back to our home. I thought maybe that would be the thing that could heal us. But—” she gestured around her at the small, comfortable cabin. “But, my heart, I don’t believe we are the same people we were when we left that home. You are part of this crazy crew now, aren’t you? And I believe we are becoming part of it as well, whether we want to or not.”
Ysbel pulled Tanya close and buried her face in her wife’s hair.
It was short now, not long like she’d always remembered.
But still, somehow, beautiful.
“When I left Prasvishoni,” Ysbel said at last, “back when I was a child, I thought my life was going to be over. Everything I loved, and everything I cared about, and everything I knew, I left behind. I didn’t think I’d ever get over it.” She pulled back slightly, looking at Tanya’s face, so much like home.
“But what I found there—I found my life there. I found you.”
Tanya’s eyes were sparkling now too, and she blinked back tears.
“Maybe it’s like my mother told me, when I was crying that first night. She came into my room, and she said, Ysi, you can’t get back what you lost. But if you are always looking back, you’ll miss what’s ahead of you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t spend your life looking back,” said Tanya. “I would have missed you very much.”
“Yes. I believe I’ve missed enough already,” said Ysbel. She leaned in and kissed her wife, and Tanya kissed her back, a lingering kiss that for a moment brought her back to a small cottage on a small farm on a planet where the sun glowed warm and brilliant over freshly-plowed fields. And then she pulled away, and they weren’t back there anymore. They were in a small cabin, on a ship full of lunatics who she couldn’t help but love, Olya and Misko sleeping in the adjoining room.
“Come,” said Tanya smiling. “I thought you were tired.”
“Maybe not all that tired,” said Ysbel with a faint grin, letting her hands slip farther down Tanya’s waist. Tanya grinned in return, and Ysbel felt herself relax for the first time in a very long time.
Tae was exhausted. He was always exhausted. He wasn’t entirely certain that he remembered a time he hadn’t been exhausted.
But somehow, when he left, he didn’t turn down the corridor that led to his cabin.
“What?” asked Jez, without looking up from her controls, when he tapped at the cockpit door.
“Can I come in?”
She glanced up and shrugged. “Thought you’d be sleeping by now.”
He smiled slightly. “I probably should be.” He paused. “Listen, Jez. I’m—sorry about what I said about you. Before.”
She turned to face him, and the look on her face was serious. “No. I—I’m sorry. You were right. I do run away. I’ve always run away.” She paused a moment. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I did. I guess maybe that’s what I was trying to run away from. But Tae—” she paused. “I—would have come back. Helped you get your friends, whatever. I—wouldn’t really have left you to do that on your own.”
“Jez.” He
shook his head. “I—I didn’t even think about who Lena was to you. But you were going to go back there. That’s not someone who runs away.”
She was still looking at him.
“And—” he paused. “And listen. I’ve been thinking about the thrusters.”
For a moment, there was a pang of anguish on her face. “Yeah. I know. They’re never going to be what they were.”
“No. But—well, I had some ideas. I think—I might just be able to switch them up a little, modify the design.”
There was a cautious glimmer of hope in her face now. “Which means?” she said at last.
“Which means—well, I don’t know. I’m no Sasa Illiovich. But I might just be able to improve on their design just a little.”
The hope in her eyes was growing bright. “Which means?”
“Which means, you probably won’t ever have to look for a speed capacitor again.”
Her whole face was transfused with joy. “Are you serious?” she whispered. He nodded.
“She won’t be what she was. But I’m thinking, between you and me and Lev and Ysbel, we might be able to make her something better.”
She blinked a few times, staring at him with an expression of such rapture that he couldn’t stop his own smile.
“Anyways,” he said at last, pushing himself to his feet, “I’m going to bed. I just wanted to tell you that first.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
He smiled to himself as he made his way down the corridor to his cabin.
Funny. He’d been so sure she’d just leave, that they all would. She’d said she would, after all. Hell, he’d been almost ready to leave himself. But … well, then everything had gone wrong, and when she could have taken a pod and run—should have, probably—she’d stayed. They all had.
And … well, he knew, deep down, they always would have. Somehow, these past few weeks, they’d built something that wasn’t going to crumble at the first hint of pressure.
Despite the bone-deep exhaustion, there was a faint smile on his face as he fell onto his bed and closed his eyes and at long, long last, drifted off to sleep.