Chapter 4

IN THE EARLY DAYS, IT DIDN’T MATTER WHAT HAPPENED TOMORROW BECAUSE WE HAD NO TOMORROW, SO WHEN OUR HEROES BEGAN TO DIE THERE WAS NO-ONE TO TAKE THE BLAME - IT WAS ON EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US.

-DR. AMELIA HANSEN, SPEAK NO EVIL: A COMPENDIUM OF FREED INFORMATION.

.•° ✿ °•.

Laurent had been doing his best to contact me when he hadn’t heard back in a reasonable length of time, inciting chirping beeps that harmonized from the wall panel and the monitor on my desk, and making abundantly clear his intent. But what was I supposed to say to him? What did I even have to report?

Oh, Lilt turned out to be a ghost from my past who by the way now thinks I’m a freakish subhuman monster because of my own failure to keep up on my basic maintenance.

I’m sure he would have taken that about as well as the station would have taken a volley right now. When I did get to my feet and had a chance to think about it, I realized that the station wasn’t moving anymore. Had I been so absorbed into all this that I didn’t notice it stop? Or had it just stopped? I felt distracted, fuzzy-headed, and the idea of not being able to recall something so simple was one that bothered me the way that bug bites used to back home.

Feeling the station move, or not move, that was just a part of being a Skipper. Just in the same way that I felt the way the air flowing in from the vent in the top left of my bedroom, the way my skin tingled as it passed through the space, diffused in my living room, and exited out the vent in my bathroom on the opposite side of the quarters.

Skippers could feel some things that other people simply couldn’t, but the feeling of Lilt’s disgust was something entirely more universal.

.•° ✿ °•.

“You should have checked in four days ago to have this realigned, Skipper.” The pencil pusher scolded me in the receiving lobby, not even giving me the dignity of looking up at my face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I did, I’d been notified a half a dozen times by Centra, I’d just been... busy.

“We notified you four times in the past week,” he turned over one form to another, stamped the first, and looked at his next project as though I wasn’t even there. “And yet when something goes wrong, now you feel fit to grace us with your presence, Skipper?”

“Right...” I couldn’t look up at him, now, even though he still hadn’t looked away from his papers.

When I was a child, when I was very young and the sky had been blue and we’d been full of optimism, daydreaming about what we’d do the day after tomorrow and the year after next, my Mom had talked to me about her faith; she told me it was important to her, but it had been six years since she’d gone back to her church. When I’d questioned why, her explanation had been simple: she was ashamed. Once she’d missed a single Sunday, she was anxious the following week and so she missed another, and another, until she got in her own head and talked herself out of going back for fear of having to explain her continued absence.

She called the feeling Church Shame in the years that followed, and I really did believe it was the only factor in why I’d been avoiding my maintenance. Believing something doesn’t make it true, though, because If it did, we’d all just believe that humanity would make it, and we’d end this awful war.

I was glad my Mom never had to see the days beyond the fire.

“I was worried about being needed for a Run, I’m always on call an-” 
 “There are other Skippers.”

He cut me off. I pouted.

I couldn’t remember his name, and he still refused to look up from the paperwork he was filling out in triplicate. Even upside down and from across the desk, I could clearly make out what he was writing, though: ‘Negligence.’ ‘Non-compliance.’ The last thing I needed was another administrative reprimand, so I really needed to turn this one around - the situation with Lilt had been bad enough.

“I know, I know, it’s just...” I started, dropping my tone from defiant into cute.

“It’s just that you didn’t take your responsibilities as a Skipper seriously.” Came his retort, with a hint of something on the side. Bitterness, maybe? What right did he have to be bitter with me? This had nothing to do with him!

“I...listen...” Stay chipper, Skipper.

“Listen? Madam, what if your joint had become damaged on account of the unscheduled delinking? You wouldn’t have been able to dock with your Faering, for a start, and if you’d been needed to go on a Run during a Crisis Drop, people may have died, and it would have been your fault. Or what if this unscheduled delinking had happened in a public setting? Have you considered the consequences, Skipper? Focus on a better future, and less on defending the poor choices of your past.”

Wow. Ouch. I didn’t need the lecture, and I certainly didn’t need it after the day that had unfolded thus far. The truth was, though, that the way he talked to me was severe and his words were well selected, his points all entirely valid. It made me feel so much smaller than even my diminutive fifty-one inches from tip to toe. His admonishment made me feel... guilty, like I’d done something inherently wrong. Fine, I get it, and I mumbled something to that effect under my breath with a pout.

He looked up from his papers.

“Excuse me, Skipper? Was there something you wanted to say?” If his smugness could have saved the human race, we’d all be safe and sound by now.

“No Sir. I’m just here to get my maintenance.” I muttered.
“Then take a seat, and the technician will be with you as soon as their schedule allows. Until then, you’re decommissioned from duty.”

My cheeks puffed out like an emergency vest expanding, and I crossed my one arm over my chest with

the other clutched in hand. I huffed pointedly, although it was mostly to hide my own contrition.
Why did he even make that distinction? Why did he even try to make a point? I was already here, so why try to shame me more?

I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer.
“You don’t have to be a jerk, I save your life y’know?”
“Not today, you don’t. Please take a seat, Skipper.”
And so, I sat, fuming; ruminating upon all the ways I wanted to inflict minor annoyance and inconvenience on this man. I would put exactly one pebble in every one of his left shoes! I would gently crease his note paper! I would... I would swap out his blue pens for black ones and swap his toilet paper roll from back facing to front facing, and I’d put his newer teabags in front of his older ones so in two weeks all his tea would be minorly stale and he wouldn’t even know why. I was that cross.

.•° ✿ °•.

“Cadence? Come on back.”

I recognized that chipper voice! It was a melody that could only belong to the owner of the most marvelous set of blonde curls ever to frame a face. And let me be clear here, because I say the term framed as the world’s most intense understatement - at least 50% of Perry Maple was blonde tresses and pouty smiles and the other half was pure distilled optimism.

She’d always been my favorite technician.

“Perry!” My fuming gave way to a smile the way that a storm gives way to a rainbow, and it showed in my voice; something was finally going my way today. All my thoughts and notions of history’s pettiest and most minor retribution went with the air out the vent by my feet when I stood up and followed the technician into her workshop.

“I was hoping I’d get to see you today, that’s why I waited, see? That’s why my maintenance was late - I waited to see you.” I’d have twirled my hair cutely and playfully if I weren’t also holding my own hand like a doll who was falling apart.

“You’re cute, Cadie, but there’s no fooling me today, little duck.” Oh, but when she called me that - and only she ever did - I fell still and quiet every single time. “Let’s have a look here. What were you doing when the delinkage happened?”

What was I doing? I sighed contemplatively. If I could tell anybody about my encounter with Lilt today, it was Periwinkle Maple.

“Well, um... so this friend of mine turned up at the pool today, and she wants to be a Skipper. I was trying to convince her that she shouldn’t, so I guess I got distracted and didn’t notice the connection warning.” Hadn’t I noticed it? I couldn’t remember, and that should have worried me a lot more than it did.

Had I been so wrapped up in Lilt’s attention that I blanked out that badly?

“So why shouldn’t she?” Perry asked, smiling, as she went through her tools with all the delicacy of a surgeon - an apt comparison.

“Why shouldn’t she what?” I blinked.

“Be a Skipper, Cadie. What’s so bad if she wants to help out?” There weren’t that many people on the station that could have asked that question without raising my ire and thankfully for Perry, she lucked out in being a part of that demographic.

“Because she has a life. Because she has people she loves, she has people who look up to her, friends and family, a life and dreams.” I didn’t expect to be getting so worked up over this.

“Skippers can have all of those things, though.” Her words were angelic, and her motions were gentle. She eased a yellow and a red probe into the open joint at my elbow and mused over the diagnostic results like she was appreciating poetry while we talked. “Can’t they?”

“It just means a lot of danger, Perry...” My voice caught and trailed off, interrupted midway through my own skepticism.

Was that my only reason? Was there really nothing deeper?
“You’ve been doing it a long time,” She retorted, playfully.
“That’s why it’s okay for me! And... and Perry, I have nothing to lose. You know that.”

“Don’t you?” She was so precious, she was so tender, I looked like a living doll, and she was probably more beautiful still. The Skipper program talked about mankind’s Rally Round Response in depth, a core tenant of our success, and while everybody on this station felt that pertaining to me, I think I felt it for Perry. She pressed something inside my arm and initiated the reaffirmation sequence that immediately made my skin light up with invisible fireworks all over. It was like every single nerve in every single part of my body sparkled and tingled, kicking off a billion supernovas on the way to recalibrating in preparation of accepting the appendage back into place.

“I’ve done this all my life. I’ve been... this... for my whole life.” I countered, finally, the moment of pending reconnection bringing my thoughts back into focus.

“And you don’t think she’s thought about it? Here, hold still, okay?” Her touch was comforting and maternal as she lined up the arm and eased it back into place, guiding the ball and socket together until the two formed a single joint once again. She used her slender fingers to press directly into the seams and guide the mechanism from closed to open and back to closed.

There were so many parts of me that were artificial, and the way Perry touched me made me feel so real.

“She was horrified when she saw this happen... when she saw my arm come off... I can’t imagine what she must think of me, now. Or if she has any idea what happens when we go out on a Run in a Faering. She’s just a dreamer, Perry,” I continued to babble with a mix of frustration and disappointment and a little bit of concern, “She doesn’t know what she wants, and she’s in over her head and it was better that she saw this happen when she did because it is so obvious that she hadn’t thought it through at all!”

“Because we both know you had so much time to think it through, didn’t you, Cadie?” There was that same Perry smile, that gotcha smile! She was as infuriating as she was cute, but only sometimes.

“That’s not even halfway the same!”

“Isn’t it?” Gosh I hated when she did that, I hated that she was so smug and beautiful, I hated that she used this upward inflection that made her sound like she was just so certain, I hated that at times it sounded like she was just playing off her darling and divine charm, and more than anything else, I hated that she was right.

Click.

“There we go. Good as Newborn.” Oh, I bet she thought she was so cute with jokes like that, but the fact was that she knew what I needed to hear. Come to think of it, Perry always seemed to know the right things to say.

“Hey Perry, how come you’re working here in maintenance and not on the Skipper Human Health team?” Human Health was how they described the collective that was supposed to keep us mentally sound - like the term mental health was just too dirty to apply to people as pure as we were, or like this was just another in a long list of ways we were othered.

“Because I like to help.”

“You don’t think that would be helping?” I queried, more than a little baffled by her response.

“This work makes sense to me, Cadie. You come in and I put your arm back on, or I fix a stubborn knee joint, I recalibrate a drive sensor, I block a faulty nerve. I see results here. And that makes me feel like what I’m doing matters.” Her smile was given to me as a gift, adorable but weary, and I offered her angelic in return - it seemed to help. “Tell me more about the girl who wants to be a Skipper?”

I pulled on my arm, flexed it, watched the fluid grace of the ball joint working as intended with a sense of distraction owing to my contemplation. What did she want me to say?

“She knew me when we were kids. She was different back then, though...”

“So were you.” Perry reminded me.

“So was I,” I concurred, nodding my head, continuing the narrative after a moment of thought. “She thought I’d died, the day the sky burned. I just don’t get how she’s been on the station all this time and she chooses now to try and seek me out?” I mused over that, talking the mystery through out loud.

“Lilt said she found me based on name, but I’ve been a Skipper for as long as the station’s existed, Perry. Why now?”

“Maybe she’s from another station? Or a ship? We’ve had some contact these past few days.” Perry suggested off-handedly, testing the reflex on each one of my tiny little fingers with an electrode while she did.

“What?” I didn’t mean for my tone to be incredulous, I didn’t mean to jerk my hand away, but I’d have known about something like that, like a Rendezvous. There was no way I wouldn’t have been told, and even if I’d missed a report or been left out, I was a Skipper! I would totally have felt...

Motherfricker!

“I felt the station move this morning, Perry!” I got to my feet, excitedly, annoyedly, “before this, before Laurent called me and told me to meet this stranger. But he told me it was just a routine maneuverer.” I paused there, and when I found my voice again it was much quieter. “Why would he lie to me?”

“Why would he?” Perry affirmed the question, patiently taking my hand back again.

“He knows I like to be there during Rendezvous events! There should be three Skippers present the entire time!” I lectured, like I was reading directly from Skipper Standard Ops, “what if something had happened?”

“What if it had?” She smiled.

“Why wouldn’t he tell me, Perry? I’m...”

“The best?”

“The best!

“Are you?” The blonde let go off my fingers, obviously done with the calibrations, or else just certain that I was going to snatch my hand back anyway.

“Yes!” Both my hands shot to my sides in frustration, and I stomped my bare foot on the steel floor, “my record is spotless, my Faering harmonization is always top of the fleet, so why...?” I needed a second to collect my thoughts. “Why keep that from me? I should have been there...”

“Cadie, how long do Skippers run during a Rendezvous?” She had this smile that said this question was asked as a friend.

“For the entire duration.” Obviously.

“The entire duration?”

“Yes! Perry, I,” I rubbed at my temples and took a deep breath in, “what are you getting at?”

“Just now you told me that she asked for you by name?”

“Okay?”

“How could she see you if you were on a run the entire time?” I felt the penny drop with a metallic twang in the deepest parts of my mind.

Laurent had... kept this from me intentionally? He kept it from me so I wouldn’t be out on the run because I needed to be available during the duration for something else.

Like an interview, requested by name, and dictated by the Skipper Command.

“Lilt...” Perry smiled while I spoke, like she’d figured this out long before I did, and like all her smiles she balanced pretty with non-judgmental, she balanced observing with listening to all I had to say.

“Lilt came from the other ship?” I phrased it like a question, as if I didn’t already know the answer, and like Perry did.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you really should be in Skipper Human Health, Perry. Geez. I...” Realization flashed on my expression. “It means I gotta go find Lilt before she goes back, before the Rendezvous ends!”