by Tal Valante
“Aye, Sir,” the navigation officer answered.
“Move us away, quickly.”
As if to underline his words, the Tomahawk shuddered to its core. Mark surveyed his console. “No hits,” he reported.
“They’re attacking the docks. Move!”
“Moving away,” Navigation said.
A large blip appeared on Mark’s screen, and he cursed. “She’s huge!”
“Put us on an attack vector,” Shane said. “Weapons hot.”
Mark watched as the behemoth enemy ship turned to intercept them. Out of habit, his hands traced attack points on his touch screen—here, here, and there—but no fighters stood by to carry out his orders. He felt as helpless as if his hands had been cut off at the wrists.
“Gunnery, engage!” Shane called.
The Tomahawk released a volley of shots at the enemy. Mark saw the enemy’s return shots flying their way, and braced himself for impact. The Tomahawk juddered.
“They’re trying to cordon off the docks,” he said to Shane. “If no other ships can get out and help us, we’re screwed.”
Shane didn’t answer.
“Sir?” Mark said more pointedly.
Shane was staring ahead, wild-eyed, but didn’t seem to see anything. A muscle in his cheek was twitching, and every now and then he licked his lips.
“Shane!”
Mark lunged from his post, never mind the regulations, and caught himself against Shane’s chair just as another shot shook the Tomahawk.
“Sir?” the navigation officer called. “What’s wrong?”
Mark laid his hands on Shane’s shoulders and shook him. Nothing. “Shane? Can you hear me?” This close he could see the terror in Shane’s eyes, hear the catch in his breath. Shane was having some sort of episode. Mark banged his fist on the armrest of the chair.
Navigation again: “Sir?”
Right. Ship first, or there would be no Shane to tend.
“Move us away from the docks,” Mark ordered, floating back to his own post.
“But Lieutenant Commander Cawley—”
“—Is incapacitated,” Mark said. “I’m taking command. Now move!”
The navigation officer moved.
The Tomahawk shuddered again as she took another heavy blow, but they were trudging through space now, then jogging, then galloping. The enemy ship left them and turned back toward the docks.
They could accelerate to critical speed and Punch away, Mark realized. He would be able to see to Shane, then.
“Navigation . . .” he said.
“Sir?”
“Turn us around and close in again. Gunnery, hit their aft engines. Go!”
It took one lucky shot, and the gunnery officer nailed it. The enemy ship’s engines exploded in a truncated ball of flames, and it used its auxiliary thrusters to turn once more toward the Tomahawk.
“Brace!” Mark called, just as a deadly volley raced their way.
The Tomahawk shuddered again; twisted metal screamed. “Hull intact,” Mark said, glancing over at his console. “But another hit like that . . .”
“We can pull away,” Navigation said. “They can’t chase us with their engines down.”
“Negative,” Mark said. “They’ll only turn back on the docks. Evasive maneuvers. Keep drawing their fire.” He looked at the launch bay of the docks outside the main view window, and saw another Earth heavy cruiser waking to life. “Just a few more moments . . .”
The comm system crackled with noise. “Tomahawk, this is the Seraphim. Thanks for keeping the cat away from the hole. We’re ready to engage. I repeat, we’re ready to engage.”
“Thank God.”
A joint burst of fire from the Tomahawk and Seraphim accomplished what the Tomahawk couldn’t do on her own, and the enemy ship broke in three, scattering debris and crew members from her disemboweled body.
“Yes!” Mark punched his fist in the air, and Navigation and Gunnery whooped.
“Good job, Tomahawk,” the Seraphim captain said on the comm.
Mark swiveled in his chair, still grinning—
And met Shane’s confused, hurt look.
“So how does this work?” Alex asks later, in the cafeteria, messing around with a pineapple My Dew can. His cheeks are bright with color. “I mean, can you read my mind? Can you feel what I’m feeling?”
“Not unless you share it,” Shane says. “It’s like . . . putting the thought on the forefront of your mind and sort of pushing it forward, toward me. Same with emotions.” He sighs and corrals some of his confusion and reluctance, serving them to Alex with the grace and practice of a longtime tennis player.
“Huh!” Alex’s head perks up. “I felt that.”
Shane rolls his eyes.
“So how do I . . .”
Alex’s eyes almost cross as he tries it, and Shane stifles a smile. Then he feels a wave of caring and soft sorrow. It’s crude and overloud, but it’s Resonance, clear as space. Shane turns his head away.
“Look,” he says. “No offense, but I’m Mark’s Resonance partner. It’s a personal thing, you know? This feels like . . . having sex with someone else.”
Alex nods—Shane can feel it—and says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how this happened.”
“It doesn’t happen. You either have it with a person or you don’t.”
Alex nods, and Shane remembers that he knows more than enough about Resonance. To find the one person you can Resonate with and then lose him . . . Shane shudders. But to find a second Resonance link? With someone who’s already in Resonance with someone else? Unheard of. Literally.
“I know,” Alex says. “What are the chances?”
“Stay out of my mind!” The words come out more angrily than he’d meant. Shane huffs and pushes a wordless apology at him.
“Huh!” Alex says again. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so . . . wrong. “You don’t have to apologize. I understand.”
Shane bets he does.
“Say, if I can Resonate with you, and you can Resonate with Mark . . .”
Shane freezes as the question unfurls in his mind in all its possibilities. No. No, he doesn’t want Alex anywhere near Mark’s mind. It’s bad enough that Shane invades it in its current state; he doesn’t want any strangers traipsing around in Mark’s vulnerable thoughts.
But what if . . .
“What if we both try to break the cage, together?” Alex says.
And Shane meets his flaming gaze with hopeful curiosity of his own.
“You can’t just quit,” Mark said for the thousandth time.
Shane picked at a loose thread on the sofa. “I can and I am.”
They were sitting knee-to-knee in their living room, and Mark had to concede that Shane looked bad. As if he’d just now been fished out of the wreckage of the Cyclopes. He was no longer using the crutches, but he moved with heavy weariness, and his face had aged. They were mortals, Mark realized yet again. Their time together was measured. It made his heart contract with equal parts love and sadness.
“Maybe if you give it some time . . .”
Shane looked up with tortured eyes. “You saw what happened to me. It’s a miracle no one reported me already.”
Mark hummed and flicked some lint off his pants.
“Wait, wait. That was your doing?”
Mark looked back up at the man he loved. “I talked to them. We don’t know that it’s PTSD, Shane. You, you just panicked for a moment. So soon after the Cyclopes, it’s only normal.”
“Normal? An officer can’t black out in the middle of a battle! If I go out there again, if I get another . . . whatever . . . and someone dies because of it . . .” He shook his head. “I have to report this. I can’t be an officer like this.”
“But it’s all you’ve ever wanted,” Mark said.
Shane looked away.
Mark clenched and unclenched his hands. “Well, what am I supposed to do in the Spavy without you?”
“You could quit,
too,” Shane said in a small voice.
“In the middle of a war? They need everyone they can get.”
“Since when do you give a crap about that?”
They breathed harshly in the wounded silence. The hairsbreadth space between them yawned like a chasm. Finally Shane said, “Sorry,” just as Mark said, “Since I’ve met you.”
“Don’t you want to get married?” Shane asked.
“More than anything.” Mark reached over and took Shane’s hand. “Except duty.”
In Mark’s room, Shane and Alex sit on either side of Mark. Shane feels—uncomfortably—like they’re trapping him between them. He pushes the thought away and slips into Mark’s mind.
“Hey, buddy,” he says. “I’m bringing in a visitor, okay?”
Mental silence answers him, just like Mark’s silence in the physical world.
“Okay,” Shane says. And with his mouth, “Step in, Alex. Carefully.”
There’s a moment’s confusion, then, “How do I step in?”
Shane huffs. Entering someone’s mind is like pushing yourself forward and sideways at the same time, softly, so as not to impose your mind over his. He thinks up the answer, and pushes it toward Alex’s mind.
“Huh!” Alex says, and this time Shane does smile. “Like this?”
And suddenly he’s there, standing next to Shane in Mark’s scorched mind.
“Oh man,” he says. He gulps and gulps again. His stare roves over the ravished mindscape that Shane has worked so hard to ignore. “Oh man.”
“Concentrate,” Shane scolds. “The black cage in the middle.”
They circle the metal monstrosity that crouches at the center of Mark’s mind, and circle it again.
“What can the two of us do that I couldn’t do alone?” Shane muses out loud.
“We can shout louder?”
They exchange a glance, and Shane shrugs, then does a go-ahead motion with his hand.
“Mark!” they call together.
“Can you hear me?”
“Are you there?”
Silence.
Well.
The minutes tick by as they stand there and think.
“How about confusing it?” Shane says. “Stay here and just touch the bars. Gently.”
He goes around to the opposite side of the cage. “Okay, try distracting it,” he calls out.
“How?” Alex calls back.
“I don’t know, somehow! Rub the bars or something. Gently. Talk to it.”
There’s a beat’s silence in which Shane can all but hear Alex blinking rapidly. Then, “All right!”
“Okay,” Shane murmurs on his end of the business. “Concentrate on Alex, you monster . . .”
Slowly, softly, he tries to slip his mental hand between two of the bars. No reaction. He lets his consciousness drift halfway back to his physical body and looks over at Mark, who’s sitting placidly on his bed, staring down. Then he returns to Mark’s mindscape and reaches in deeper, until the thicker heel of his hand is arrested by the bars. He wiggles his fingers but feels only void. Still, it’s further than he’s ever gotten on his own. A tingle of excitement rushes down his back.
“Can I stop rubbing?” Alex calls over.
Shane snorts. “Just a little longer!”
Maybe he can use just a little force, now that Alex is distracting the cage. He bites his lip and pushes in a little harder, but Mark shudders and calls out.
Shane slams back into his own body with a burst of frustration and curses—every curse he’s learned in the Spavy. And some that he’s improvised on his own.
The Tomahawk felt cold and empty without Shane on board. Mark dragged himself over to the bridge, straightened up, and saluted. “Lieutenant Sayre reporting for duty, Sir.”
The new C.O. returned his salute. “I’ve heard good things about you, Sayre. I’m Commander Elliot J. Morrison. It’s a pleasure to have you under my command.”
Mark wanted to say “likewise,” but he wasn’t fond of lying. Instead he trudged to his post at the tactical console and slumped in his seat.
“You’re fresh from a vacation, right?” Morrison asked.
Some vacation, Mark thought. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good. ’Cause we’re heading right into battle. Give me critical speed!”
“Aye, Sir!” Navigation answered.
“Here’s to a good long run,” the C.O. said.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t a prophet.
“I think you need some time off,” Alex tells him. And before Shane can protest, “I think we both need some time off. To think. To relax. To breathe.”
They’re sitting in the cafeteria, just after their attempt to enter Mark’s mind together. Shane crushes his not-quite-empty paper cup, and lukewarm coffee spills onto his fingers.
“Take the time off, if you want,” he says. “I can’t. I have to be here for him.”
“You’re not really here for him if you’re exhausted and frustrated.” Alex clasps Shane’s hands, coffee and all. “You need the rest, Shane.”
Shane looks up, and he knows his misery is Resonating with Alex, but he can’t help it. “I need Mark,” he says.
“I know.” Alex smiles tightly. “Trust me, I know. But it’s just for a few days. Clear your mind so you can brainstorm new ideas for the cage.”
Shane knows coaxing when he hears it, but the idea of rest is suddenly too much to refuse. “Two days,” he says.
Alex’s relief is palpable even before he sighs. “Two days.”
The space around IO frothed with fired shots and debris. Mark whistled at the number of blips on his radar, even as he began sketching attack patterns for his pilots.
“Red Wing and Blue Wing, drop!” he gave the order, and his fighters dribbled out to space and fanned out in an offensive formation.
“That’s their flagship,” Morrison said, tapping his screen. A particular blip on Mark’s display lit up. “Let’s try to take her, hey?”
“Weapons still down,” the gunnery officer supplied.
“Oh, come on,” Morrison said. “Before someone else takes all the glory.”
Mark wanted to say it wasn’t about glory, but he knew better and kept his mouth shut, and missed Shane a little more.
“Weapons online,” the gunnery officer finally said.
“Move us to firing range,” Morrison ordered.
Mark bent down over his console and concentrated on tracking his fighters in the churning space. They were broken up into groups of twos and threes, except for Red Six, who was alone and hounded by two enemy fighters.
“Blue Two, Blue Seven,” Mark called. “Give Red Six a wing, will you?”
“Aye, Sir,” Blue Two confirmed.
A rolling thunder of explosions shook the Tomahawk then and rattled Mark in his seat. “The hell was that?” he said.
“Enemy flagship targeting us,” Gunnery reported.
“Fire back!” Morrison said.
Mark swiveled in his chair to face him. “Sir, we don’t have the weapon power to take her down—”
“I said fire back!”
Mark glared at him, then swiveled back to his console and concentrated on his troops. Red Six was out of trouble, but a wing of enemy fighters had managed to drive Blue One and Blue Four into an isolated corner of the space battle. He ordered the entire Blue wing to converge on the spot when—
Craaack!
With a boom and a screech of metal, the bridge’s ceiling fractured, and a stud thrust through it. It hit Mark’s console and the side of his chair, tearing it from its base and sending it flying. The last thing Mark recalled was pain in the back of his head.
Then blackness.
“Shane?”
Shane squeezes the phone and mumbles an answer, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.
“Are you up yet?” Alex’s voice needles.
“What?”
“I need you to wake up and come down to Rigsby as soon as you can.”
Shane sits u
p and throws off the heavy blanket. “What happened?”
“Shit, sorry. Nothing happened. Mark’s fine, nothing new.”
Shane exhales, inhales, exhales. “Then what the fuck are you doing, calling me at . . .” He checks. “Six in the morning?”
“I’ve had an idea.”
Shane groans and flips back on the bed. “I’ve had lots of ideas these two days. Doesn’t mean I wake you up with them.”
“But this one’s important,” Alex says, and Shane finally registers the tight edge to his voice, the urgency in his words. It’s contagious.
Suddenly Shane is not tired at all. “Give me thirty,” he says. “I’ll be right there.”
When he opened his eyes again, the bridge was in chaos. Smoke filled his throat and made him cough, but Mark was grateful for it—at least they hadn’t lost air pressure. He looked around. Above him—no, below, he was floating upside down—artificial gravity was shot—the central post had been demolished by the stud. The commander’s chair was floating nearby, with Morrison’s body still pinned in, apart from his head.
“Anyone?” Mark called and coughed again.
“Here,” came Becca’s reply from the gunnery officer’s post. “Weapons down. Main engines down. I think—I think Benton is dead.”
So much for Navigation, then. Mark launched himself off the ceiling and floated over to the navigation post. Globules and ribbons of blood floated in the air like a bubble wall. He grimaced and pushed past them. The navigation officer was dead indeed, with a metal shard lodged in his throat.
“Sir?” Becca said, pulling herself at a steep angle back to her post. “What should we do?”
Mark took in the destruction around him. No Punching ability. No weapons. There was nothing they could contribute to the battle.
“Take us away from the main firing area,” he said.
Shane arrives at Rigsby in twenty-five minutes and heads for the dining hall. The Bible Man is eating and reading in his usual corner. There are three new patients at the tables, and two nurses helping them out. Mark—and Alex—are nowhere to be seen.
“They’re outside,” Nurse Delgado tells him when he asks.
“What about Mark’s breakfast? Shouldn’t he be—”
“Nurse Park said this was more important.”