Chapter 3: Novak

Mom left after Sora had a bit to settle, promising to try to return on Visitors Day, but Sora got the idea she really wanted to get out of there—the room had cast a shadow over Sora’s mood far beyond her resistant attitude in the car, and seeing it was probably giving Mom too real a sense of what she was leaving Sora to face on her own.

The bed was made, and all Sora had left to do was lie in it. She had a tablet issued to her by the ward, all charged up and ready to go. She noticed that she had no network access to anything outside the ward, and the messaging system was extremely limited, allowing her to message the nurses on her care team and the doctors, but not other patients. It had a limited library of books to choose from—ugh—and some content feeds downloaded from the network, with videos, audio episodes, that sort of stuff. It sported a request feature for movies and music, which she liked; her care team apparently had to approve everything, so she couldn’t have it instantly, and no sound would play unless she had headphones plugged into the tablet. The level of control was so aggressive that Sora felt increasingly like a real prisoner, like she really had done something wrong.

Well hey, I mean… you did, right? That’s why you’re here, she reasoned. A whole lot of shit, actually. If you want to get into the long game here.

The tablet did have a logging feature where she could compose messages and export them later, so she laid her ass down on her bunk like it was really the goddamn ERS Omacatl and did what she would have done back on the Omacatl: started writing to Cass and Hayden. Hayden had told her to get a message to him when she arrived. How the fuck was she supposed to do that? Would they let her send anything while she was here? Did she have to get it approved? Did her “care team” have to read the messages first to make sure she wasn’t asking for someone to send her a cake with a file in it—or heaven forfend, a movie she wasn’t supposed to watch?

Sora went cold. Maybe they could read everything she wrote on their little machines no matter what she did?

She put the tablet down, only a terse paragraph in, and stared at the bunk above her. She’d spent a lot of sleep shifts on the Omacatl and then the Fenris this way—sleepless, frozen, staring, waiting.

Someone strode down the Omacatl’s hall just outside. Commander Loren off-shift, walking from the bridge to the XO’s stateroom, where he’d send her a message summoning her—

Stop it, you crazy bitch, Sora urged herself, closing her eyes. You’re on Earth. Get your shit together. The bastard’s dead, alright? He’s pink mist floating somewhere in space.

The door opened then, revealing that same orderly—poor dude was having a long shift—along with Sora’s presumed roommate.

Sora was vaguely surprised to see her roommate here was a man, though she shouldn’t have been—it was very common for all genders of commissioned officers to share the ensign bunkroom. He had a bright shock of straight, dark blond hair that caught the light in the hallway, about five centimeters of the stuff, standing almost straight up off his head, along with a short and well-trimmed blond beard over slightly sunken cheeks. He too had put on both the ward-issued gray thermals and a scrub shirt. They’d probably had a hell of a time finding him some gray scrub pants—he was tall, at least 190 centimeters, with light eyes and a runnel of red scars along his left cheek. He had a cane with him, leaning against it awkwardly, though he couldn’t be much older than Sora—maybe early thirties. He looked achingly familiar and strange all at once in the darkness, but she had trouble pulling him out of her mind, taking this guy in his current context with the cane and the scars and the beard. It was hard to match him up with someone in the slippery library of faces from before her death and cybernetics.

The guy took one long look around the room, his face freezing, before he glared at the orderly.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said tersely, voice deep and gruff, before he limped off immediately with the aid of his cane. Sora laughed at the orderly, as she watched him blanch and scramble to run after her roommate, nattering on about the therapy and “trust the program,” yadda yadda.

Eventually the guy was convinced to return, threat of violence unspecified, and the orderly came in first with a stack of clothes for him, having carried it to give the guy a hand while he used his cane.

“Shall I introduce the pair of you?” the orderly asked. Sora looked at her roommate as his eyes found her for the first time, and she saw him blink in sudden recognition.

“No—we’ll be fine,” the guy said, voice gentler, much more familiar. The orderly looked between them, as if waiting for Sora to give him the thumbs up. She frowned but shrugged at him, not afraid of this guy at all for some reason, and the orderly made trails, only stopping to remind them about dinner before closing the door.

Her new roommate leaned against the post of Sora’s bunk with one arm, hooking his cane over his forearm as if used to it.

“Kuromoto?” he asked. Sora just sat up, examining him, and he smiled quizzically, like he expected her to know who he was. “You really don’t remember me? Class of ’49? Water polo? Our dads are friends?” He laughed. “I used to come out to the stead once a summer and fish. Seriously?”

It took Sora a minute still, and she realized for the first time that his eyes were sea-glass green. She knew those eyes.

“Oh, fuck—Novak?” She sat bolt upright. “Goddamn. Didn’t recognize you with the beard—wow, you look like Misha almost.” She paused, extremely embarrassed, millions of memories starting to shower through her brain again, and she tried to cover. “And you know… not eating shit at practice trying to keep up with me.”

He grinned, looking younger for a second, and then she really started to recognize him, warmth and familiarity flooding in. Jase freaking Novak, in the flesh. Holy crap. A weird panic flooded her stomach all of a sudden.

“You wish. I smoked you. Never let you get a grip on me for any of your dirty tricks during pick-ups.”

Sora laughed, nerves firing wildly and her bio fingers tingling. “Yeah—you waxed like a fucking Torelli model, practically greased yourself. Coward.”

Novak didn’t drop the grin. “That’s the Sora I remember. Miserable fucking cheater.”

It was still hard to connect him with the Cadet Jaesan Novak she remembered; he looked older than he was already, pain and physical trauma taking their toll on his face. In her memories from Academy, he had an easy smile, intense energy, radiating health, incredible agility and careless good looks, clean shaven and tanned, with bleached blond hair in the pool and a wide grin she’d treasured. All that had given way to a man who carried himself like there were loads of bricks around his ankles, on a skeletally thin frame with an air of fresh frailty, and a deep well of shadows under his eyes. Novak looked a lot like his dad now—Misha Novak, former CO of the ERS Gorgon and currently an admiral, a friend of Sora’s father. That alone was terrifying and made her feel old, like the last seven years of war and pain had been a century.

Not using his cane for the short journey, Novak made a couple halting steps over to the opposite bottom bunk and painfully lowered himself down. Cybernetic leg—or legs. Shit. Novak got his ass blown up, or exsanguinated, or…. She found she had to stop, the thought clenching her stomach with sudden pain. This had to be the way her friends thought about her death and cybernetics, and it sucked.

“Guess I don’t need to ask what you’re in for.” Sora watched him out of the corner of her eyes, being careful not to stare. “Where you been, man?”

“Me? ERS Titan,” Novak said, sounding friendly and warm. Sora went a bit still. “You? Last time I checked in on your deployments, you were on the Medusa.” He shook his head. “Why’d they send you to that scrapheap, huh? Got a thing for exploded ships? What’s it even like on that thing?”

Somehow this didn’t offend her—the asshole was from the Titan, after all. He could say whatever he wanted.

“Uh. I’m on the Fenris now, actually.”

The light went out of his smile, and it became almost a frozen grimace. If she had to guess, he didn’t want their unexpected reunion to sour suddenly, but he couldn’t master his own feelings.

“Huh. That so? Wolfpack and everything—cool.” He started sorting through his sheets to make up his bunk with military corners, like they’d both been taught. “You XO there? Third officer? Thought I saw your name in the briefing chains somewhere.”

“Third officer.” Sora went on dismissively, hoping they could get past this without it being a Thing. She wanted to talk to Novak and see how he was, what happened… maybe have a friendly chat. “Nell Dorian knows better than to listen to me, though. What about you?”

“XO,” he said shortly. “Have been for a year and change. Guess you don’t pay much attention to the briefing chains, huh? I’m on there all the time.”

Oh, crap, Sora thought. He was definitely at Delta Pavonis.

Delta Pavonis was a battle Sora had missed when the Fenris flew into Skelow territory to help the ERS Odyssey fight an extradimensional enemy. The system, one jump into the Machine Sector, had been the line, a blockade established by the ichthoid fish aliens called “the Z,” because their actual goddamn name was unpronounceable, and when the Fenris left, the fighting had been going pretty well. While they’d been gone, though, the Z had used some goddamn superweapon to shoot waves of hyperspace into real space or something, for an hour at a time. It had destroyed much of the fleet at Delta Pavonis, not to mention the entire Kapstar military base, a Mars civilian dome, One Republic Shipyard, all the space-based infrastructure around Earth, and killed about three million people in Toronto from a fucking hyperspace storm in the atmosphere—whatever the fuck that was. The damage had been pretty extreme, but the Star Navy had taken the Z’s homeworld soon after and won the war on a wave of vengeance, not to mention some war crimes, and the Fenris hadn’t returned until they’d helped the Odyssey with an important fight. The admiralty hadn’t looked too kindly on that.

What made the Titan special was that they’d made it out of Delta Pavonis, along with the ERS Takshaka—the only two ships out of twelve to do so. The Titan had disappeared into hyperspace for days, and come back fucked sideways, but the crew was alive. That apparently included Jase Novak.

“So—I’m guessing we’re the only commissioned officers in the program,” Sora said, searching for a way to change the subject. “If they went out of their way to make a hellish bunkroom for us, I’m guessing they’d fill it up if they had more officers.”

Novak raised an eyebrow at her, folding and tucking his sheets with quick, ruthless precision.

“Or we’re the only two who think an ensign bunkroom on a Destroyer back during the Praezorian Wars is a vision of actual Hell,” he muttered, looking around like the walls were coming down on him. “Keep expecting to hear the hull breach alarm. Maybe that’s something they’re saving for 0300 hours. We used to call it fuck-thirty.”

“Yeah, us too. Where’d you spend most of the Praezorian Wars, anyways?” Sora asked. “I mean, what bunkroom does this look like to you?”

“Fomorian,” Novak told her, shooting her a brief, indecipherable look full of opaque darkness. The ERS Fomorian had been destroyed at Delta Pavonis; Sora wasn’t sure if it blew up before or after the Titan made the leap of faith into hyperspace, but either way, he would’ve known later, if he hadn’t seen his old ship blow up right in front of him. “I served under Davis for four years. Then I was XO on a V-class for a while—the Olrun. Then I was transferred to the Titan.” He was silent for maybe thirty seconds, tucking the last corner on his bed and moving on to his pillowcase. “Captain Davis said goodbye over the radio before their reactor blew. Fucking class act right to the end. I should’ve been there with him.”

Sora took a minute before she realized Novak wasn’t really here in the room with her—he was at the Battle of Delta Pavonis, during the Howl Incident, watching the fleet explode in front of him one ship at a time. She sat at the edge of her bed, staring at him.

“Hey, man, um… if you need to, like, talk… or—”

“Stop being so fucking nice, Kuromoto,” Novak interrupted her in an exhalation of pointless rage, taking Sora aback. She and Jase Novak had always been very friendly, if not outright friends, and he had never spoken to her in anger before—she remembered him as a big lovable sweetheart, sort of like a golden retriever, not a big ball of PTSD and rage. He tossed the pillow onto his bunk with both hands, coming back fully to the room with her, his eyes fierce. “Let’s just fucking talk about it, okay? You understand what the Fenris did to us. You know how long we were posted on that blockade?”

Sora folded her legs and scooted back on her bunk to sit against the wall, staring at him patiently, or what passed for patience on her watch.

“How long?” she asked, giving him a limited chance to vent, but setting her internal bullshit timer on a short delay.

“We were posted there for months,” he told her hotly. “It was like goddamn LTT in the Praezorian Wars, back when it was the line. Cycling in and out, fighting Murder Tuna for days on end, switching out with the Takshaka, the Hydra, the Valkyrie, the Kraken, seeing escorts come and go, like a fucking merry-go-round of death. And where the fuck were you guys?”

“You know damn well we did several tours at the fucking blockade before we left for the STF, Novak,” Sora told him, resisting an eyeroll. Dude was suffering—she got it—but this was getting stupid. “You might as well be pissed at the Hydra for not happening to be at Delta Pavonis on April 9^th, or the Valkyrie, or some V-class. It was a blockade. We all did tours and got sent elsewhere as needed. We didn’t choose to get sent to the STF. We had orders, same as you. Welcome to the fucking navy.”

He stood and glared around at the room for a moment, allowing the god-awful sounds of the fake bridge and alerts to punctuate the silence between them.

“You obviously don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said, a little subdued. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’re third officer. I know how you are, Kuromoto—if I were captain of the Fenris, I sure as shit wouldn’t listen to your hot-dogging ass.”

“Thanks,” Sora said flatly. She could tell he was sitting on a bunch of shit he wanted to say, but if he was willing to stomp it down, she’d never gainsay that. “You done? Want to cry it out, man? Watch a sugar rom and talk about our feelings?”

He chuffed once emptily, finished folding his blanket and pulled out his footlocker with practiced ease. Novak stared at the locker for a moment as if reminded once again of the terrible similarities. Sora had felt the same way.

“Heard your baby sister’s captain of the Odyssey?” he said, voice weirdly dead, like he was just going through the motions of making small talk with another officer. “Commander, right? Your dad must be proud. He always doted on the kid.”

“Man, you don’t have to make nice or talk to me if you don’t want to, okay?” Sora said, picking her tablet up from the mattress beside her. She hated talking about Teli and how much Dad adored her anyways. “It’s been years since water polo and going to parties together and hanging out. We haven’t talked in years. We didn’t keep up. Just because we’re sharing a room and have to be in therapy together doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to be buddies. Okay? I get it.”

Novak went on like she hadn’t spoken. “I stopped hearing anything from her after she was sent off to the Reginleif. You were always looking after her, right? Finding her tutors and making sure she had her cadet uniforms and helping her apply to Academy.” His voice was so flat that Sora shifted uncomfortably, wondering what the hell was going on in that head of his. Novak had always been a little bit of a strange guy. He put his facility-issued clothing in the footlocker, sorting it like one might sort ship whites and officer blacks into easily grabbable and identifiable units. “She must be what? Twenty-five now? Young for a captain. Inexperienced. Wouldn’t surprise me if you still felt pretty protective over her. I would.”

Sora looked around the room for a minute, not sure how to handle this guy anymore. “She’s always been a fucking baby, with the brain of a toddler. You remember she was seventeen still for her first six months at Academy, and I had to be her legal guardian until she turned eighteen in December? Scared the crap out of me. Glad she’s off in another sector, with a whole crew to look out for her now.”

“I remember you being her guardian, yeah,” he said softly. “That’s a lot. I heard the former CO on the Odyssey just ran off, left her holding the bag two-hundred lightyears from Earth and Command. Do you know if she was okay? I realize she became captain and everything, but still.” His voice remained weirdly dead. Sora had a bad feeling he was implying something, and he just hadn’t gotten to the point yet.

Sora wasn’t sure why she was still talking to this guy, as Novak sorted his mass of gray uniform thermals and scrubs. Maybe it was better than having to deal with her own thoughts.

“I don’t know, man,” she said a little helplessly. “We don’t, like… confide in each other like girlfriends. Okay? When I saw her out there, she was trying to win a damn war. Mostly she seemed just fucking tired.” She gave him the hairy eyeball. “Why the fuck do you keep asking about Teli? I wouldn’t predict you’d actually think about her much anymore. Been a long time since our families hung out.”

Novak examined her, his eyes opaque. “You were always off hanging out with the Barcas, but I spent a lot of time with her on fishing trips with the dads and my little brother. She was really cute, like a little sister. Hard to say no to, if I remember right. At least, I’d have a hard time saying no to her, and I’m not even her older sibling. You are.”

Sora rolled her eyes. “Okay, man—just what the fuck are you getting at here? Come on, just say it. I know you’re pissed the Fenris wasn’t at Delta Pavonis. Maybe we could have turned the tide of the battle. Maybe we would have been there instead of you. Maybe you’d still have your legs. Maybe lots of things. What do you want me to do about it?”

Novak narrowed his eyes at her, undistracted by any of her wild guesses.

“My little brother was in your year. You remember him?”

Sora needed to do something with herself at this point. She grabbed the rungs of the bunk above her own and swung out and off her bed, spinning as she did so and getting quickly to her feet and further away from Novak. She kept her eyes on him as she went, constantly aware of his presence—big, full of cybernetics in his legs and lower spine, probably stronger than her. Goddamn it.

“Yeah, of course.” She remembered Kae Novak, a tall, nerdy-looking guy, not bad-looking, a little quiet. “He was always lurking in your shadow at parties. I didn’t go out with him or anything. He was kind of a nerd at Academy, right? Where’s he at now? Logistics? Seemed like a Logistics kind of guy.”

“Kae’s dead—been dead for years,” Novak said simply, without emotion. “2151, on the Umibozu. Coming in here and seeing you… got me thinking about ghosts, I guess.”

Sora stopped, coming back to her feet. The Umibozu. She’d been there on the Omacatl, came into the Ross 614 system into the Umibozu’s debris field, in her first deployment as an ensign shields and helm tech. She’d been there, with Commander Loren on the bridge… shooting her up with combat stims, eyes hooking into her soul, almost the only thing she could see. She had a strange memory of hearing Jase’s voice that day, floating free inside her skull.

“He was on the Umibozu?” Sora asked softly. “That day… I remember that, barely. It was so hot on the bridge. We’d evacuated the Gorgon, and our life support was damaged. Not enough oxygen.” She breathed out slowly. “I didn’t know Kae was there. I swear to God. I’d have sent you something—a message about what I saw, saying how sorry I was. I was on the Omacatl that day.”

She felt lightheaded suddenly, then frantically went back to doing pull-ups, using the upper bunk as a handle.

“Kuromoto—it’s okay,” Novak said unexpectedly. He examined his footlocker. “I don’t blame you for any of that. I’m only saying… I’d never say no to him if he were still alive, not if he asked me to stay and help—even if I had orders to the contrary. I’d probably stay as long as possible, way longer than I should’ve, even knowing people were fighting and dying back home.”

Sora shot Novak a quick glance. “So even though you think I’m a screw-up Dorian shouldn’t listen to, you still think I convinced her to stay in the STF to help my little sister, totally against Command’s orders and Nell’s better judgment? Man, you don’t know Captain Dorian, that’s for sure.”

“I’m just trying to understand, I guess,” he said, but there was a whole lot of accusation in his tone. “Novaks stick together. Kuromotos the same way?”

Sora swallowed something hot and bitter. “Meaning? Come on. Say it.”

Novak glared, like he was mad she’d force him to say it explicitly. “Did you convince Dorian to stay in STF space for so long because Teli’s captain of the Odyssey? I don’t just mean after Delta Pavonis. I mean—you guys were gone for weeks, through the bulk of fighting on the blockade. You knew we were there, knew what it was like for us, that we were exhausted, that the Z weren’t letting up, that the Cetians were failing at peace efforts, and the Tardek kept launching their goddamn sorties and making everything worse. But you guys stayed out there all the way to the end of whatever you were fighting, all to help the Odyssey. Two Earth Republic Star Destroyers, helping a non-ally while we were in a conflict near home. With your sister in the mix and you on the Fenris bridge… I mean, come on, Kuromoto. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to just ask about your priorities.”

Looking away, Sora considered her answer, realizing how deeply the accusation stung, from Jase Novak of all people. The Jase Novak she knew was never suspicious, never fearful, always confident in people, always walked to the beat of his own drum. He had faith in others, and he didn’t think too hard about or cast doubt on their motivations. Dying sure could change a guy.

“Our orders were to help them,” she reminded him. “They were fighting an existential war to help the Skelow survive. We figured ‘help’ meant ‘help them do what they were doing’. How would you interpret that order, huh?”

Novak crossed his arms. “With a blockade in the Machine Sector that was engaging the whole fleet? I’d interpret those orders as ‘help the Odyssey get their asses home ASAP’. And I sure as shit would’ve interpreted the order to come home after the Battle of Delta Pavonis as ‘get your asses home RIGHT NOW’, not whatever the fuck you guys heard. My ship was missing for a week—the Kraken was gone, Takshaka was crippled, Fomorian was dust. The fleet needed you guys.”

Sora dropped back to her feet, surveying him with a hard expression. “Captain Dorian would never stay for a battle against orders unless she thought it was the right thing to do. Okay? We didn’t just bat our eyelashes at her and say pretty please. We talked it through, and she made the best possible decision with the information we had. We won a goddamn war. You know what wouldn’t have made all that shit you went through any better? Pyramids coming to finish us all off. So back the fuck off, Novak.”

Novak frowned, unfazed. She could see he was not one to be intimidated nowadays. “What the fuck are Pyramids?”

Sora rolled her eyes. “Interdimensional bastards that throw fucking pieces of stars around and kill people by the tens of thousands, every system they touch. Aren’t you an XO? Don’t you read shit? Briefings and stuff?”

“I’ve been up to my neck in casualty reports, tactical reports about Delta Pavonis and the new Kapstar base, not to mention catching up on everything that happened while I was doing months of rehab.” Novak sounded overwhelmed, and Sora felt something in her stomach backing off—not from intimidation, but compassion, which was a little alien for her. “I don’t have time for whatever shit the Skelow are fighting a hundred lightyears away. It’s not my business. Defense of the Earth Republic is my business, and yours too, I’d hope.”

Sora flopped back down onto her thin, hard mattress almost violently, staring at the underside of Ensign Wallace’s old bunk. The world spun for a second, and she almost tasted that metallic otherworldly tang in the back of her mouth that came on just as the mind weapons swept the ship.

“Yeah, well, remind me to send you the reports on them once we’re out of here. You know, so long as I don’t get thrown out for strangling an orderly or something.”

“You do that,” Novak said darkly, though she could practically hear him starting to disarm, like a robot toggling into Rest Mode. They were both quickly running out of energy for this. “I’ve never seen you reply or ask for clarifications on the briefing chains. Most of the third officers are constantly making their presence known in the chains, always going ‘look at me, pick me’, but not you—I barely realized you were on the list, and it doesn’t sound like you noticed I was there either.”

Sora chuffed softly. “Command and reading briefings like a nerd is overrated. I help command and train the Wolfpack. They’re elite marines, and they take up a lot of my time. We support ground assaults and boarding missions, that kind of stuff. I get to hang out with the marines and drink instead of writing like… reports and shit. I’d seriously rather be getting my ass chewed on by angry Praezorian boarding drones than read a briefing chain with all those ass-munching third officers.”

“Oh yeah, no reason to get you in here for therapy,” Novak said under his breath with a slight smile, before eyeing her. “When’d you get the arm? I thought the Omacatl blew up with all hands.”

Sora felt her eye twitch. “Good pun. Glad I didn’t lose my arm there, or I’d have to beat you fucking senseless with it.”

Novak winced and looked away, looking honestly chagrined. “Yeah, not intentional. Sorry. I’ve been dealing with stupid fucking leg puns for weeks now, and here I go making arm jokes.”

Sora looked him over for a minute, deciding. She felt no need to respond in some kind of time span—he could wait.

“It’s fine—you get used to it,” she said finally. “I didn’t die when Omacatl went down—got caught in an explosion about a year after.” She looked at his legs really quickly. “How about you?”

“Someone try to kill you? Got in too deep somewhere? Sounds like you, Kuromoto.” Novak had little cogs turning in his eyes, way too accurate for his own good. Dude had always been smarter than he looked. He paused a moment, shoving the footlocker under his bed and sorting his towels on the floor, unfolding and rolling them up tightly instead, like they did on real ships. “We took so much damage at Delta Pavonis that the bridge was practically caving in on us. I remember we made the jump, and everything went to Hell. My console exploded, and then the wall and part of the ceiling came down on me. I don’t remember anything after that.” He swallowed audibly. “My legs were pinned under burning material. By the time they got me out… well. I guess you know how it goes from there. I don’t even know which thing killed me—the crush damage or the burns or the smoke, or maybe shock.” He met her eyes, a little white. “Someone had the brains to dump me into a cryopod. Everything south of my hipbones is either reconstructed with regen therapy or replaced with chrome, and I’ve got infrastructure up into my hips and the bottom of my spine for support. The legs are damn heavy.”

Sora just stared at him. Normally when people suffered like this in front of her, she wanted to kick them for being so fucking weak. She hated weakness in herself, and she wasn’t any nicer about it in others. But she didn’t feel like that now—she suddenly did wish that they’d been back in time for Delta Pavonis, that the Fenris could have been there, that she could honestly tell Jase Novak she’d done everything she could for him, that she’d been there when he needed her. She found herself wanting to say something, anything that Novak might be able to use.

“Yeah, I bet they are,” she started, feeling like a dumbass. “My arm’s pretty heavy; took me a long time to get used to it. Do, um… I mean, have you ever met anyone else with extensive cybernetics like yours? I mean, before seeing me here?”

Novak frowned at her. “I didn’t know your cybernetics were extensive—but I guess you were caught in an explosion, so it makes sense. I guess they’re all the way into your spine too, like mine?” He shook his head, looking away. His speculation hadn’t been a real question, and he seemed both frantic and awkward with her after the heat of his anger burned off. “Couple other people on the Titan, I guess. They got theirs during the Praezorian Wars. I’m the only one who needed cybernetics after Delta Pavonis—or the only one who didn’t get discharged, I guess. We lost thirteen people outright during the fight and the jump. Only so many cryopods, and some people were just beyond saving. Including me, in my humble-ass opinion.”

Sora buried a wince. “I’m just, like… asking because I wish I’d had someone I could ask questions, I guess. So like… if you want, you can ask me stuff. Since I’ve had this damn thing for a few years now, and I’ve also got infrastructure into my spine, like you figured. Just… like… if you want to.”

Novak used one strong arm to lever himself up onto a sitting position on his bed, looking at her with a small frown line between his eyes, which were tired. He looked so much older than she remembered him, and she wondered if the last six months since the Battle of Delta Pavonis had aged him several years. She remembered Dad being that way after coming back from hyperspace—kind of drained, pale, a dried-out husk of a person.

“That’s kind of you,” he said distantly. “I can’t help but feel like you’re trying to make nice with me. I thought it was just a matter of being in the navy? Following orders? Nothing personal?”

Sora looked away again quickly. “Man. I can feel guilty without it being rational, okay? We were following orders, and I think we were doing the right thing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to’ve been there at Delta Pavonis for my old Academy buddy. I’m not a heartless maniac, despite my reputation.”

The room went scary quiet for a couple minutes. The noise sample from some old Destroyer still hadn’t looped or repeated. Faraway conversation outside in a mythical hallway seemed to pass by the door, boots on steel instead of slipper socks whispering down biodegradable linoleum. Ghosts encased in bulkhead.

“I know you’re not heartless,” Novak said softly. “I’d never call you that. I probably shouldn’t be taking all this out on you. I should be asking you how you’re doing. How you’ve been. It’s been years.”

Sora looked up. “Yeah, well. It’s been a crappy bunch of years, while we’ve been going our own ways. I don’t blame you for being fucking angry. You just got res’d a few months ago. I was a nightmare when I was resurrected, for at least a year. You’re doing great, far as I’m concerned.”

Novak let out a small breath, and when she glanced at him, he was smiling slightly.

“I’m just remembering how good you are at that.” When Sora raised a querying eyebrow at him, he clarified. “Focusing back on me… avoiding personal questions. I know you were deployed to the Omacatl… then Kapstar. Right? Where’d you go after that?”

Sora blinked rapidly, surprised he’d kept up with her deployments. She’d asked after him with a couple friends in her first few years of deployment, but Novak had clearly asked to be left alone. So why had he kept a record of her service in his brain like that?

“Uh… you know. Here and there,” she said evasively. “Career went down the pipes pretty quickly. Rode a desk for a while on a bunch of bases. Deployed to some garbage taskforces. Surprised you kept track of me.”

Novak shrugged, eyes piercing. “Hasn’t been easy. Even Geras lost track of you at some point—or he pretended to, anyways. You totally disappeared for a couple years in there, then I heard you were on the Medusa.” Sora’s stomach clenched horribly at the mere mention of the ship, and she looked away. Novak went on. “You’re a lieutenant-commander now, right? Like me.”

Sora chuffed and shook her head. “A promotion? Ha. No way, man. I haven’t been promoted since ’51. Not since, um….” She fell silent, shaking her head more vigorously and looking down. “Anyways… black mark on my record. Big one. I’ll probably get my twenty-year pin with lieutenant bars.”

Novak leaned forward a little, forearms on his knees. “You were promoted on the Omacatl. Right? So you could command an escort.” He observed her silently, and Sora found the intelligence in his eyes weirdly unnerving. He had often hidden his smarts in school, especially when it came to reading people. “I could’ve sworn you were promoted again. Did you get demoted when you left the Medusa?”

Sora tucked her bangs behind her ears, embarrassed and totally unsure what to say. “Man, Novak… you ask a lot of questions for a dude who hasn’t written me a line in seven years. Who cares, right? One deployment’s the same as another. I’m just some console jockey with a bad reputation and no advancement prospects in my career, and you’re XO on the flag. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

The corner of Novak’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Oh yeah. Fried a lot of fish in my day, actually. But you know that.” He ran the flats of his hands over his cybernetic quads, obviously thinking. “I don’t mean to interrogate you, Kuromoto. I’ve probably got no right to ask any of this shit.”

Sora shrugged. “I don’t mind. Don’t blame you, really. Questions are better than, like… what everyone else does, which is… you know. Just assume shit.”

Novak spoke tightly, teeth clenched. “Yeah. You ever, uh… feel guilty? For not being on the Omacatl?”

He didn’t say the key phrase, but Sora heard it anyways. When they blew up.

Sora stared at the bunk above her. Ensign Wallace’s crypt.

“Some part of my brain’s still basically convinced I died that day,” she said honestly. “Something died; I don’t even know what. You think when stuff like this happens that you’ll just fall to your knees, or scream, or jump into someone’s grave, but like… when you’re me, I guess, you just sort of feel something go. Doesn’t even say bye. It just leaves, and then it’s gone, and it doesn’t come back.”

Novak was quiet, so Sora got her shit together enough to look at him. There was a kind of recognition in his eyes, but he looked away quickly when their gazes met.

“You guilty for not being on the Fomorian?” Sora followed up, looking back at the underside of the bunks, for some reason unable to get Ensign Wallace out of her brain. “Or on the Umibozu with your brother? I’m pretty lucky, I think—I got to be there in the same battle with the Odyssey, make sure nothing happened to my sister. Usually I don’t get a chance to stop anything bad from happening. Shit just fucking happens to people I love, and I can’t do a goddamn thing. Fenris is out there right now without me, and I can’t do anything. Just gotta sit here with millions of Versa stuffed into this fucking arm, and nothing to punch. Goddamn useless.”

Novak was quiet for a while longer. “You don’t seem like the type to admit to loving people, Kuromoto. You always put yourself forward like… I don’t know. Some pretty chunk of diamond. Beautiful and hard and sharp and totally transparent. That’s the kind of strength you always put off. Like nothing affects you. Nothing gets into the core of you.”

Sora blinked and frowned at Ensign Wallace’s bunk. It was weird to hear the way other people saw or thought of her. Usually, she just didn’t give enough of a shit to ask.

“You’re good at avoiding questions too, man,” she said, instead of responding to his diamond crack.

“I didn’t ask because of my own guilt,” Novak told her, sounding inward and kind of thoughtful. “Of course I’m guilty. We’re all guilty, all the time—or at least, most of us are. I can look at nine out of ten officers and know they have survivor’s guilt over some ship or base or battle. But you… I dunno. I guess I just wondered about you. If anyone seems like she’d do fine getting an arm blown off and replaced by chrome before jumping right back into the fight, it’s you.”

Sora felt a flash of rage so hot it was almost hatred—but this was Jase Novak, and she couldn’t hate that guy, no matter how much rage and grief he carried back into her life with him. Before she’d gone off to Tau Ceti with Cass, she’d have gotten right up and punched the bastard hard enough to land him in the infirmary—but she controlled herself this time, refusing to move, keeping herself still and calm inside and out, until the heat of the wave passed over her.

“So I guess you’re wondering why I’m even here.” She tried to keep her fury out of her voice, probably failing. “Wondering why the class slut needs therapy, right? Callous old Sora Kuromoto, sleeping her way through three cohorts, dumping people the moment they got too serious or said they were in love with her—why the hell would she give a crap about any of this?”

Novak said absolutely nothing. It took him a while, long enough that Sora considered making some excuse about going to take a shower, but he finally spoke.

“That who you thought you were?” he asked softly, maybe a little surprised. Sora looked over at him, frowning in confusion. He didn’t clarify anything, just glanced at the clock on his tablet. “They said dinner’s at 1800 hours? We should get going.”

←Previous Chapter

Next Chapter →

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae