by Jenn Burke
“He’s—” Fuck. Elias blinked. “He was crew.”
“Indeed. I also wanted you to be aware that General Bradley requested that Mr. Anatolius’s body be surrendered to the AEF.”
Rage jerked Elias’s body straight. “Like hell! They have no goddamned claim to him, not now, not ever. They abandoned him when they could’ve—”
“You are preaching to the choir, Captain Idowu.” The idiom might have amused Elias at any other time—it was such an ashie thing, to purposely pepper their speech with human sayings—but Rhyniche looked cold as he said it. “I informed General Bradley that as the AEF relinquished any claim to Mr. Anatolius the moment they released him from his duties and refused to assist him any further, his body would be returned to his family. I further informed General Bradley that it would be regrettable should his continued presence cause a nervous technician to hit an incorrect button and send our files on a renowned AEF war hero to an unprotected server off-world.”
Elias’s brows rose. “You threatened the AEF with exposure?”
“Nothing so crude, I assure you.” A single wrinkle appeared over the ashushk’s eyes. “It was merely a suggestion of what might occur. We are not used to outsiders, after all.”
Wow. Elias blinked, hard, and looked down for a moment. “Thank you. Felix would not have taken that news well, so I owe you a great deal for stepping in.”
“How is Mr. Ingesson?” Rhyniche’s face smoothed out again.
“Still sedated.” He hoped. God, he’d never forget the abject terror on Fixer’s face, how he’d screamed as if he’d been back in the stin camps. One look at Fix’s eyes had told Eli that his engineer had not been on Ashie Prime with them anymore, which was why he’d encouraged Ness to tranq him. He just hoped it didn’t throw Fix into nightmares he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“It is probably for the best. He…” The ashie clicked. “He did not react well.”
Elias swallowed an inappropriate bark of laughter. None of them were reacting well. He could understand Fix’s grief—fuck, he’d loved Zed, probably more deeply than he’d even let himself recognize. But the rest of them? They’d only known Zed for a short time, during which he’d attacked them more than once, killed enough bad guys to get the Chaos in deep shit with the wrong people, and…
And brought life to a man who’d only really been half-alive before.
Elias looked at his lap, concentrating hard to keep his emotions in check. His jaw flexed and his eyes burned, and he barely noted the soft rhythm of Nessa’s hand rubbing his shoulder. He let himself have ten breaths, counting them, then looked up again and stood before the alien who had worked so hard to save one of his people, as though Zed had been an ashushk and not a human.
Elias swallowed. “May my gratitude flow with you until you join the stars, and beyond,” he said in the ashushk language. His tongue and mouth tripped over the odd syllables and weird clicks, but Qek had assured him the traditional expression of thanks would be understood despite his inelegant accent.
Rhyniche clicked in surprise, lines disappearing from its face. Its mouth opened in a small O. “It was my honor, Captain Elias,” it said in English. “You and your crew will always be welcome here.”
Elias didn’t miss the fact that the ashushk scientist had used his first name instead of his surname. Still paired with Captain, but he recognized the overture for what it was.
With a final nod, Rhyniche left the room and Elias sank back into his chair. He bent at the waist and braced his forehead in his hands, his elbows digging into his thighs. “Thank fuck Rhyniche managed to ward off the AEF,” he said, his voice rough.
He pulled out his wallet again and small, firm hands landed on his shoulders. “Do it,” Nessa said. “Let’s just get this all done so we can start to heal.”
Ignoring the Grand Moth’s message, Elias pressed the button for Brennan Anatolius with an unsteady finger. A virtual assistant intercepted the call, but mentioning his name and Zed’s got him through.
Brennan’s face appeared on the holo display. Hardly a breath passed before he said, “When?”
So much inevitability and resignation weighed on one short word. Elias’s mouth opened and closed as he realized Brennan had probably been expecting this call since Zed had reached out to him a couple of days ago. From what Zed had told Elias when they’d spoken, he’d been as vague as possible—but it wouldn’t take a genius to hear the goodbye in Zed’s words.
Oh, fuck.
Elias lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose. “An hour or so. He—”
If you call him…when…don’t tell him the truth, Eli. Don’t give Brennan or Dad or Maddox a reason to go after the AEF. Promise me. Let them think what they need to think.
Fuck, Zed had known too.
“It was over quickly,” he whispered.
“He…uh, we knew things weren’t…” Brennan swallowed hard. “How’s Felix taking it?”
“Not well.” Understatement there, but what more could he say? “Brennan, I’m—I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Not your fault. And not Felix’s either. Make sure he knows that, okay?” He paused, obviously trying to find some composure. “My little brother was a hero. I don’t know the details of everything he did, but I know Zed. He put everything he was into everything he did, and I’m not surprised he couldn’t find himself again after the war. I wish…”
“He loved you all very much,” Eli said, his voice ragged. “But you’re right, I don’t think he was the same man and he didn’t want you to see that.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. It never mattered. We love—loved—Fuck.” Brennan shook his head. “I need to tell Mom and Dad, Mad…. God.”
“If you need anything…” Elias sucked in a breath, one that burned his throat. “The Chaos will transport him back to Earth.”
“Thank you, Captain. We’d be honored if you and your crew would attend the memorial.”
How was he supposed to talk with his throat so tight? “Sure. We wouldn’t miss it.”
When Elias signed off, Nessa held up her end of the promise she’d made a few days before. She folded him in her arms and held him as he cried. He didn’t try to fight the deluge, letting it all wash over him—the sorrow at losing a friend, the worry of losing a second, and the unrepentant, impotent anger at a family having to believe their son hadn’t fought like hell to stay with them.
*
Even before opening his eyes, Felix could feel the killer headache just waiting to catch him. What the fuck had he drunk last night? Man, it had been years since he’d tied one on—must have been one hell of a party. His forehead wrinkled into a frown and his skin felt like a sheet of paper buckling. He reached for his head to smooth it and groaned as the world tilted and swirled. Then he managed to poke himself in the eye.
“Shit.” His mouth tasted of old socks. No, his tongue was an old sock and his short curse had emerged on a croak. Felix blinked both eyes open and winced as tears filled his right, misting his view of a clear, domed ceiling. “What the…”
His question, put to no one in particular, trailed off as he recognized the bubble overhead. He was on Ashie Prime and—
“Zed!”
Oh, fuck, he’d fallen asleep, or finally given in to temptation and drunk himself to oblivion. Fallen down on his duty. Zed couldn’t be left unattended! He might wander off, or hurt himself, or worse, try to kill someone.
Zed’s side of the weird bed lay untouched, the coverlet pulled straight, pillow all plump. Felix blinked stupidly at the empty space, at the wide gap in his understanding, and grappled with the idea he should know why Zed wasn’t beside him.
Then he remembered.
A sob lurched up into his throat and wedged against his larynx, effectively cutting off the howl building in his chest. He could be screaming and not hear it. Blood roared behind his ears and the promised pain of the headache that had teased him awake clamped down with iron fingers.
He grabbed the untou
ched pillow and pulled it into his arms. Eyes closed, he buried his face in it and breathed in the scent of Zed. Dark hair and blue eyes flashed behind his lids; a warm voice, a quiet tickle of laughter, an earnest gaze.
I love you, in case you wondered.
The pain in his head and the pressure at his ears and throat intensified. Felix thought he might burst, fly into a million little pieces. He braced for it, but the end did not come. Instead, fate left him alone and so aggrieved that he craved the vacuum of space.
He’d get to that when he figured out how to uncurl his body and had decided whether or not to take the pillow with him.
“Fixer?”
Recognizing Nessa’s voice, Felix curled tighter—so tight he might just snap something, and that would be a fucking blessing. A distraction. In brief succession, the other ways he might distract himself marched across the memory of Zed’s beautiful face. Drowning seemed the easiest. He’d never learned to swim and the ashushk planet had a lot of water to get lost in. Knowing Ness and Eli, though, one of them would haul him out of the sea before he got out of his depth.
A weight settled onto the bed behind him and a hand brushed his shoulder.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“No.” His parched throat mangled the word.
Her hand began moving in slow circles behind his shoulder. The touch hurt, like sandpaper on bare skin. Felix pulled away and crawled across the bed, inched his legs forward and let them spill off the rounded edge. The world tilted and swirled again, as if someone had whacked his temples with a mallet. Groaning, he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Sorry, I hit you with a pretty wicked sedative.”
His shoulders hitched into a vague shrug and then seemed to drop farther down than should be natural. Pulling the pillow into his chest, Felix tipped forward and buried his face in the softness again.
“Can I get you anything?”
Zed.
The million pieces of himself bunched together and then tried to fly apart again, the whole thing a quick, torturous squeeze that ended in another gut-lurching revolution of the galaxy.
“No,” he said into the pillow.
“You should walk around a little, get your blood flowing. Eat something. It’s been…a while.”
Felix pulled his face out of the pillow and turned to look at Nessa. “You really think I want to eat? Or move? Or drink? Or fucking even breathe? I just want to be left alone.”
Her face betrayed no hint of consternation. She’d expected such an outburst, which frustrated him. She might as well rub another piece of sandpaper over his raw skin, and why the hell did his skin feel sunburned?
Felix peered down at his wrist and saw only shiny scar tissue peeking out from his sleeve. Another flash of memory caught him, a struggle, something about his hands, an impression of shiny gray armor with articulated joints. A sharp odor. His dreams.
Time to move.
He needed to resist the sucking pull of grief that would lay him down and blot out the world. He would outmaneuver the pain instead. Try to step ahead of it. Nip this coddling shit in the bud before Nessa formed a habit. As he stood, Felix realized he’d acted on the doctor’s advice. He nearly sat down again, just for the sake of defiance. Instead, he strode toward the bathroom, pillow still clutched to his chest.
“Need help with the shower?” she asked.
He ignored her but left the bathroom door open while he showered, perverse in his need to fuck with her, piss her off enough that she would leave him alone. The steady beat of water massaged tight muscles, but the knots of tension didn’t loosen. His head no longer spun by the time he stepped out, though. Steam followed him back into the room. Nessa had straightened the bed cover and was now sitting on the small lounge-shaped blob under one of the weird ashushk plants that adorned every room. Felix wrestled a clean pair of shorts out of his bag and showed her his ass as he put them on. Utility pants and a fresh SFT, and…he felt like crap.
“Ready for something to eat?”
“No.” His stomach growled and folded in half. “You can go. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I’m not your babysitter. I’m your friend.”
“Don’t need those, either.”
He’d left the pillow in the bathroom. Felix ducked in after it and scowled at the damp feel of the fabric. Quickly, he tucked it up under his nose and tested the scent. Zed floated out and wrapped comfortingly around him.
There, he stumbled. Time stopped again and his heart squeezed.
Zed.
A sideways glance at Nessa showed her looking at the pillow. Felix threw it toward the bed and swallowed a gasp at the pain of separation. But he’d be damned if he showed her how much he hurt. He fished socks out of his pack and dropped onto the bed so he could pull them over his damp feet. He shoved his feet into his boots, thumbed the fasteners closed and pushed unsteadily back to his feet.
“Okay, I’m off. Let yourself out.”
Nessa stood. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“I’m not leaving you alone and I’d rather walk beside than behind.”
“You think I care?”
He got a reaction that time, a small flare of hurt in her eyes.
Satisfied, but not, Felix smacked the door panel and stepped into the communal room the moment the hatch opened. He thought about trying to close the thing on Nessa, but even in his current state decided that would be a shitty thing to do. Instead, he stalked off, leaving her to follow.
She caught up and walked at his side. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“I told you. I’m not hungry.”
She grabbed his arm. “Fix—”
“Don’t touch me.”
She removed her hand and shoved it into her wild hair. Felix looked at her properly, then, at the lines etched across her forehead, the pinch of her lips, and recognized that she was struggling with her own grief. But he didn’t want to acknowledge it. None of them could possibly feel as he did. None of them had lost so much, so he didn’t give a flying fuck about their pain.
“Just leave me alone. I’m not going to off myself, I just want to be alone.”
“It’s not healthy—”
“I don’t give a shit! I don’t want to be healthy, I’m not fucking healthy. I just lost my best friend, the only person in this galaxy I ever truly loved and…” His voice broke.
I didn’t tell him I loved him.
Grief wrenched and Felix looked for the nearest breakable object, something not flesh and bone. If he tried breaking his hands, he’d only be inviting Nessa to care for him. Failing to find something to smash, he studied every plump and rounded piece of furniture in the room—most now molded to the shape of someone’s ass—and got distracted as he wondered which of the slack chairs Zed had last sat in.
“We really need you to pull yourself together.” Ness was using her reasonable tone of voice. “I know you’re hurting and angry. Honestly, I’d be worried if you weren’t.”
He spared her a look at that, then went back to trying to identify the ass-prints in the chairs.
“We need to make arrangements. Take Zed back to Earth.” Her breath hitched and Felix felt the pull in his lungs. “And we have to think about Qek. She’s been really quiet today. I’m sure she’s grieving in her own way, but we have to consider the fact she might be experiencing the first effects of whatever the ashushk go through when they gender.”
That got his attention. Turning back to Nessa, Felix asked, “I told her to come to me if she felt something.”
“You’re not so approachable right now, Fix.”
He covered his face with one hand and worked to control the weird tug on his features, the way his forehead wanted to pinch and fold, his mouth spread into a grimace. Now would be a good time to start hitting a wall…
Remembering the window walls were harder than they appeared, he strode purposefully forward, fists raised. Nessa caught his elbow and yanked him back a step, her s
trength and determination surprising.
“Please don’t.”
“I need…” The pain ripped through him again, stem to stern. A cry of frustration burned against his throat. “I can’t do this, Ness.”
His knees gave way, dropping him to the floor. Felix folded forward, attempting to hide within himself. Ness’s restraining hand became another warm caress, and that hurt too.
“Got you,” she said and he had the idea he’d only heard the end of her sentence.
“Don’t touch me.” To his own ears, his protest sounded pathetic and he lacked the strength to pull away from her.
“God, Fix. Please let me help you.”
“I don’t want your help. I want…”
Zed.
The passage of cold and clammy hands across his skin cut through his grief. Felix groaned as the invisible fingers reached deeper, twisting his gut and stroking his testicles. Not sorrow—he’d never felt this way in sorrow—but he had felt something similar, the creepy sensation of being probed.
Beside him, Nessa stiffened and gasped. And then the alarms sounded, a quiet wail that rose in the distance, accompanied by a flash from the comm panel by the outer door. The bubble over their heads darkened and lights winked on across the walls, glowing against the now opaque windows. The floor vibrated, the ripple traveling up Felix’s legs and into his arms.
Felix hadn’t been on-planet often enough to recognize an earthquake, but that was his immediate thought. Quickly, he pulled Nessa into his side, and he attempted to curl around her, instinct driving him to protect her. Before she could tuck herself into the shell he provided, the vibration ceased and the world fell quiet except for the distant whine of an alarm. A breath later, the lights dimmed. The window walls remained dark.