by Zen DiPietro
“No,” Brak protested. “That’s not it. My people are very open about our cybernetics. They’re a rite of passage into adulthood and we’re quite proud of them. It’s just…I don’t want to lie to you.”
She ducked her head and lifted a shoulder, just as Fallon smelled a hint of ammonia. She felt bad for provoking such discomfort and contrition, but had no idea what had prompted it.
Brak straightened and went to the door of the rec center, locking it. Then she returned to stand in front of Fallon. “I consider you a very good friend. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to lie to a friend, particularly in light of the highly sensitive information you’ve entrusted me with.”
“You don’t have to—” Fallon shut her mouth, because Brak had already reached her left arm to her right and removed the limb.
Fallon tried not to stare at the tiny, scaly arm Brak had revealed. Brak gently placed the false arm she’d removed on the ground, then reached her biological arm to her left and removed that one too. She lifted her arms and gave them a little wave.
“This is why I’m here on the Onari,” she said. “My parents think my disgrace is that I ran away and became a scientist. The truth is, I ran away before my surgery. I like my biological arms. I didn’t want to lose them.”
Fallon floundered for something to say that wouldn’t sound idiotic. “I’m honored you’d trust me with this information. Actually, I’m kind of overwhelmed by it.”
For the first time since Fallon had met her, Brak looked unsure of herself. “Do they look awful?” She gazed down at her arms.
“No. Not at all. They look like you.”
Brak’s eyes turned shiny, as if flooding with tears.
Shit. She’d said the wrong thing.
But Brak murmured, “Thank you.”
They remained silent a few long moments, simply being together in this communion of exposure and truth.
Brak took a breath. “Only Jerin knows. No one else on this ship, besides you.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve such an honor, but I’m humbled by it.” Fallon couldn’t have meant her words more. She felt like Brak had entrusted her with a gift, and it bonded her closer to her friend. She felt indebted, in a way, by the endowment of such trust.
“And you’re sure they aren’t ugly?” Brak’s voice had lightened, sounding almost amused, even. She lifted the small arms again, flexing the three clawed fingers on each.
“Not in the least. They’re pretty, really, the way dainty, fragile things are.” Fallon offered her hand.
Brak’s head tilted in surprise, but she reached out and grasped it. The shine came back to her eyes. “No one’s touched my real hands since I ran away from Briv.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I immediately started hiding them. My earliest prosthetics were very rough. Barely functional, and they didn’t look right, either. Not like real cybernetics, anyway. I kept refining them, and eventually came up with these.” She nodded at the arms on the ground. “They’re fully functional, and visually indistinguishable from cybernetics.”
“Couldn’t you create cybernetic ones that use your real arms, rather than hide them? Surely that would be more comfortable.” Fallon couldn’t imagine wearing those prosthetics all the time.
“I could. And they would definitely feel better. But then people would know about my real arms, and word would get back to my parents eventually. My mother would be humiliated beyond measure. I’ve done enough to disgrace her already.”
“Wow. That’s a big burden to live with. I’m so sorry.” Fallon’s heart broke for this beautiful, brilliant woman. At least Fallon had her team, who knew her better than she knew herself.
Brak gave Fallon’s hands a squeeze and gently withdrew. “Don’t be. I love what I do, and where I am.”
“You are one amazing woman,” Fallon declared. Brak had given up a lot to become a scientist and live her life on her own terms.
Brak snorted. “From you, I’ll accept the compliment. Since I don’t know anyone else who’d take on the PAC, much less a covert intelligence division of it.”
“I guess we all do what we have to.” Fallon hadn’t intended to declare war on Blackout. They’d forced her into it when they tried to kill her and her team.
“Yeah.” Brak picked up an arm and reattached it, then did the same with the other. “Well, I need to get to work. Let me know if you have any more strange dreams, or potential memories.”
“I will. And let me know if you need anything, too.”
Brak folded her prosthetic fingers into the shape of a stinger or a gun or something, and waggled them at Fallon.
“What’s that?”
Brak laughed. “Trin’s finger-gun thing. Thought I’d try it out. Apparently, I can’t pull it off, at all.”
“Oh. Right. I haven’t gotten a chance to get to know him very well, but I remember seeing him do that once.”
“We’ll have to arrange an evening together once we leave Levana. You’ll love him.”
“Give me a day and time, and I’ll be there,” Fallon promised.
Brak tried the finger gesture again, then walked out of the rec as they both laughed.
Fallon had expected Raptor and Peregrine back that evening, but they sent a message instead and didn’t return until the following morning.
“No offense, but four months of the same faces is going to be boring, so we figured we’d take our time,” Peregrine explained.
The pair had procured more circumspect, casual clothing for them all, as well as some of the tools and electronics from the shopping list they’d compiled. They gathered in Peregrine’s quarters to check out the new gear.
“These are nice.” Fallon ran her hand over the cargo pants and soft stretch-knit shirt. They didn’t suggest any particular affiliation or geography. Wearing those, she could be anything from a mechanic on a cargo freighter to a tourist from Earth.
“Thought they’d suit you.” Raptor tossed her a pair of rugged black boots. “Those too.”
He certainly knew her style. But the others’ clothes weren’t so very different from hers, so perhaps they all shared a certain esthetic.
“Speaking of the close-quarters thing,” Peregrine said with an arched eyebrow. “Now that the rec center is done, I hope you all won’t take it amiss if I don’t join you in the evenings very often.”
Raptor shrugged, while Hawk grinned. “Didn’t expect you to.”
Peregrine frowned at him. On her, it wasn’t a negative expression, simply a thoughtful one. “Just giving a fair heads-up.”
“It’s a good idea,” Fallon agreed. “Finding separate groups to socialize with, at least part of the time, will keep us from getting sick of one another.”
“Of course it’s a good idea,” Peregrine answered. “Remember Darvon Four?”
Hawk and Raptor chortled, while Fallon raised an eyebrow, affecting a very sarcastic expression.
Peregrine grimaced, realizing her faux pas. “Sorry. Sometimes, for a second, I forget that anything’s different.” She tossed her ponytail back with an impatient twitch of her head. “On Darvon, we were stuck in an underground one-room bunker together for three weeks, with no other people to talk to. We were getting snippy by the time we finally got out of there. That was fairly early in our career with Blackout, and we learned our lesson about big personalities and small spaces.”
“Makes sense.” Fallon stuffed her new boots and clothes into one of the sacks Raptor and Peregrine had used to bring them aboard. “We’ll be working together during the daytime, but we can deem evenings personal time, to do with as we like.”
Nods indicated unanimous agreement.
“Unless we actually want to hang out,” Hawk drawled. “It’s been known to happen.”
“On occasion,” Raptor agreed, lips twitching.
Peregrine’s expression remained cool, as if she didn’t anticipate such a turn of events. The better Fallon got to know her, the more she liked her. A people p
leaser, Peregrine most definitely was not.
Fallon didn’t begrudge the Onari its very important work, but she was glad when the crew finally returned from Levana’s surface so they could resume course to Earth. She felt better knowing that the space between her team and their objective grew progressively smaller.
They only had two more dockings scheduled. One was official hospi-ship business, but the other would be at a small moon base where Hawk had a friend who could provide some of the less mainstream items that Avian Unit needed.
Fallon had learned not to ask how Hawk knew these people, or what they actually did.
“Some things are better left unknown. But Hawk’s sources deliver,” Raptor had assured her. Or at least tried to assure her. She’d found the entire idea less than inspiring.
But back-end connections were a specialty that Hawk brought to the team, so Fallon would just have to get on board. As she apparently had in the past.
In the meantime, she developed a pattern. She liked the cyclical tidiness of a good routine.
She also decided to begin a concerted effort to get to know the Onari’s crew. She got herself invited to join Brak, Kellis, and Trin for dinner. As she joined them, she welcomed the chance to talk with the Kanaran physical therapist. She’d heard a lot about his good nature and sense of humor.
“I remember that finger thing you do,” Fallon told him as they settled around a large, round table in the back of the bar. She tried to imitate the gesture, but the others laughed, so it seemed she had not done an accurate rendition.
“No, no, no, it’s like this.” Trin held his index and middle fingers straight out toward her while curling his other two fingers under. His thumb lay over the index finger, but he wiggled it to indicate some sort of firing action.
“I see.” Fallon copied it correctly, but the others still laughed. “What?”
“It’s just funny to see you doing Trin’s thing,” Kellis explained with a smile.
Kellis was too genuine to make fun of her, but Fallon wouldn’t have minded. She had no problem with being the butt of a joke, so long as she could laugh along.
Trin smiled at Kellis in a way that caught Fallon’s attention. Hm. Either Kanarans expressed friendly affection differently than she knew, or Trin had a thing for Kellis. A big thing. His muddy green eyes warmed like a pair of supernovas when he looked at her. She wondered if Kellis realized.
As conversation continued around her, Fallon idly speculated whether a relationship would work between Trin and Kellis. Were Kanarans biologically compatible with other species? Kanaran people only had a single gender, neither male nor female. But Trin lived as a male. Fallon hadn’t had to spend much time thinking about what had brought him into Jerin’s employ. Life on Kanar must have been difficult for him.
Well, his affection for Kellis was hardly any of her business. Fallon just hoped for his sake that he didn’t end up spending years pining after her, only to find his feelings unreciprocated.
Love. She sighed inwardly. What stupid shenanigans. They’d all be better off without it.
“How’s your new patient?” Kellis asked Trin. The Onari had brought along a client from Levana.
“Doing great,” he answered. “Have you met her?” He tossed a look around the table, but they all shook their heads.
“Mara. Great kid. Gave me permission to talk about her case with the crew. Anyway, she’s fifteen years old. An unusual allergy has diminished her lung capacity. She’d become bedridden. Jorrid repaired her lungs and immune system, but Mara has so much muscle waste that she needs some intensive therapy to get strong enough to work the fields again.”
“Aw, poor thing. And she’s here all alone? How long will you need to work with her?” Kellis furrowed her brow in concern.
“A month or so, I’m guessing. Her parents couldn’t afford to leave the farm for such a long period of time.”
“She’ll get so bored. Maybe I could ask her to lunch or something?” Kellis picked at her Bennite stew without eating much.
Trin smiled. “I was hoping you would.” He included the rest of them in his gaze. “All of you. Which is why I wanted permission to tell you about her.” He seemed quite pleased with himself.
Fallon took a big bite of buttered bread while the others all nodded eager agreement to help the kid. Which made Fallon the only one not offering to help out. Oh, Prelin’s ass. She didn’t want to babysit a teenager. But she didn’t want to be the only one refusing to befriend the farm girl. “Sure,” she agreed, trying to sound upbeat. Sometimes a soldier made sacrifices for the good of the team.
“That’s worth a finger gun!” Trin made the gesture at her, his eyes sparkling with humor. He was a good-looking guy, Fallon supposed, with his easy smile and close-cropped brown hair.
Fallon returned the finger gun, making everyone chuckle again. She wasn’t above a little silliness to get a laugh.
Conversation took off again, covering a wide variety of topics and colleagues. The Onari’s crew was a tight-knit bunch. Chatty almost to the point of gossipy, but not quite crossing that line. Keeping up on all of the latest news without trampling on the personal boundaries that made tight living situations tolerable. Fallon respected that.
One by one, the others excused themselves. They all worked the day shift and had reason to want to be bright-eyed the next morning. Fallon had no such motivator. With the rec center built and the next stopping point weeks away, she had nothing but time and her self-imposed routine.
Left alone in the bar, she was faced with what to do next. She didn’t want to return to her quarters. Exercising this late didn’t appeal either. Getting her body all revved up would make it impossible to sleep. The rec center did have some spaces for playing games, reading, and socializing, though. She could go see who might be interested in a game of Go. Or chess, or cards. Something.
But she had no reason to hurry. She left the table and slid onto a stool at the bar. Her Zerellian ale arrived in short order, and she sipped it, wondering how she’d fill the next three months.
She needed something to occupy her hours. She rolled a spiral drinking straw between her fingers as she thought about it. It would be great if she had some medical skills to offer, but she didn’t. She could improve security, but Jerin wouldn’t want her crew to feel buttoned down with security protocols. Hospi-ships didn’t get attacked or hijacked, anyway. Even pirates gave them the respect they deserved. Perhaps partly because the heavy penalties for being caught with hospi-ship supplies made them too risky to bother with.
So what else did Fallon have to offer? She thought about her primary skill sets. Shooting things. Throwing knives. Fighting. Piloting. None of those seemed like viable trades aboard this ship.
She was also good at investigating. How about that? She rubbed her thumb over her lips as she thought about how she could apply that skill to her current situation and objectives.
She could grill each of her teammates for details about their shared past. She could then research relevant details like locations. Maybe a memory would jiggle loose, but at the least she’d gain a better understanding of the life she’d forgotten. It would definitely be nice to have a personal history that went back more than several weeks.
But she hoped for memories. Hypnotherapy still hadn’t given her any results, in spite of regular sessions. Maybe it just wouldn’t work. She might have to simply accept the fact that her memory began the day she’d woken up in Dr. Brannin Brash’s infirmary on Dragonfire after that shuttle accident.
She made a sound of irritation in the back of her throat.
“You okay?”
She looked up. The man two stools down regarded her with a friendly, curious expression. She recognized him and her brain immediately supplied his details. Ben Brooks. Age thirty-three. Human nurse. She’d seen him around but they hadn’t talked.
“Yeah. Just trying to figure out what I’m going to do with myself for the next three months.”
He made a sympathet
ic hmm sound. She eyed him as she sipped her ale. Handsome guy, for someone who liked broad chests and deep, dark skin with eyes and hair to match. Which she did.
“What would you like to do?” he asked.
“Good question. I don’t seem to be good at downtime.”
“I guess you could start with figuring out what you’d enjoy.” He shrugged and smiled, as if apologizing for not having a better answer.
“Yeah. I’ll have to work on that.” She tilted her glass so that the amber liquid slanted. Then she gently rotated it, making the angle of the ale shift around. She looked back up at him. “Are you on day shift tomorrow?”
“Are you asking if I’m up past my bedtime?” His teasing expression made her smile.
“I suppose so.”
“Well then, you’re right. I should finish my drink and return to my quarters.”
His expression didn’t change, but she had the impression that he was calculating the odds of taking her with him. Which were, in actuality, nil.
“I should do the same.” She tilted her glass up and drained it, then wiped her lips with a napkin as she stood. “It was nice talking to you.”
“Name’s Ben.” He didn’t rush to stand or finish his drink. He just nodded in a friendly way. She liked his cool composure.
“I know. Fallon.”
“I know. Take care, Fallon. Good luck figuring it out.”
“Thanks.”
She decided to start on her research. She’d begin grilling Peregrine the next day about what she knew of Fallon, but tonight she could investigate how many planets with two moons there were in the galaxy.
On the way back to her quarters, she dropped by Peregrine’s. Surprisingly, she was both present and alone.
“What’s up?” Peregrine asked after letting Fallon in.
“Aren’t you getting bored?” Fallon kicked her feet up on the table in front of Peregrine’s couch.
“No. I’m fine.” Peregrine sat next to Fallon. “You seem to have itchy feet, though.”
“Yeah. I just feel so purposeless, you know? How are you dealing with all this time on your hands?”