Chapter Text
Her eyes lingered on the green dots displayed on the terminal and then her fingers tapped a request for the layout of their course. The ship answered back, ran the logistics and awaited confirmation. Her back relaxed in the comfortable crash couch.
She caught a couple of gestures from the man seated to her left and her smile only got wider when a mellow whistle grew from his humming.
The console beeped twice and the thrust came gentle and natural; the seats welcomed their bodies, and the vibrations around them resonated within, down their spinal cord as if they were becoming one with the ship.
‘And this is the sound my lady makes when she wants to get me weak in the knees.’
A chuckle escaped her lips and she tugged a lock of hair behind her ear.
‘I can see how easy it is to fall in love with her.’
She closed her eyes and enjoyed the even speed of the Corvette.
‘Don’t let her break your heart when we’ll have to dock. She's a harsh mistress.’
She was already too far-gone to answer, feeling the movement of the ship with her entire body, breathing in the rhythm of the momentum and listening to nothing else but her song.
The Rocinante; she never asked who had come up with the name but she didn’t need to. It was an old Earthen story she used to read under the oak tree in the garden when she was a kid. The irony of adventure and chasing impossible ideals wasn’t quite lost to her now, in the vast void of the universe.
It fit though. She let her head fall slowly to the side as she analyzed the flow of information coming from the cockpit.
Then a thought got tangled between all those numbers and coordinates. It was enough to make her straighten in her seat. She went for the terminal but stopped, turning at the pilot.
‘May I?’
The Martian grinned for a while almost as if buying time to consider the question.
‘Any other person would have asked, I’d have to come up with excuses to say no.’ As the words came out, he interacted with the terminal in front of him and pointed to the controls on her side. ‘All commands are unlocked from your end.’ His hands continued to dance on the terminal. ‘All yours. Just one more thing’ His accent drawled at the end of the sentence, true to his typical easy-going self.
The woman smiled, pulled her own terminal closer and checked the console, glad to see that it answered back.
‘Darlin’, this is Julie Mao, talented pinnace racer, relentless pilot who’s been rumored to have conquered space against dozens of furious missiles. But those rumors came from a group of nobodies that used to work on ice haulers; I wouldn’t trust popsicles like them too much’. He glanced her way and winked when their eyes met.
‘She’s an Earther - doesn’t really understand the fine contribution Mars has brought to the world, so do be gentle with her.’ After a pause and a couple more taps on his own terminal he went on. ‘But not too gentle; see, she thinks she’s a hotshot and we want to impress.’
Her laughter filled the air and if it traveled around the command deck it held no importance since they were the only two on board of the Rocinante.
It was a relaxing and curious thing, to feel the ship move under her guidance. It took a while for Julie to get used to the movement, time or reaction and all the other facts that made her familiar with the Roci. She wasn’t a standardized MCRN Corvette ship; not anymore and it was fascinating.
She took up speed and fired up a few more Gs.
‘You better buckle up, space cowboy. There’s something I always wanted to try with a ship her size.’
‘Should I like the sound of that?’ Nevertheless, he was already checking his crash couch. ‘We’re not going to need the juice for this, right?’
‘If I do this right, you’ll even miss the chance to pump it.’ She spoke again before he could voice his concern. ‘Relax, she’s in good hands.’
‘So are we.’ Might have been an inquiry or an attempt at reassurance. By the time he finished his sentence the ship was asking to power up the Epstein. She knew he wanted to ask something but his question got stuck in his throat the moment she granted permission.
Panic installed in his mind and his hand fumbled for the terminal; he had no time to prepare the juice; to bring up the command; his thoughts raced to a thousand places - from not ever imagining his death to be with a popped vein out of carelessness, to the beer he had left in the fridge back on Tycho Station, how he could almost feel the taste on his lips; there was one fugitive regret when Bobbie’s image popped into his head; he knew there was a question he had been meaning to ask for a very long time but never realized what it was until that moment; and then there was something else; thrill, adrenaline; it was all wrong, but at the same time, everything about that moment felt so right.
Alex wondered if the ship had really propelled with the force he felt with all his muscles or if it was more of a product of his imagination. It all washed over him in a dreamlike state. It lasted less than a second but also forever.
The only few occasions he had been high on something were under medical conditions. There was a certain familiarity to it. The Martian could not say when exactly his body had gone from being completely crushed against the gel of the couch to floating in zero G. The funny thing was that through the feeling of euphoria he knew his lips were lining into a mad grin; when he laughed it felt as if it was starting from his lungs.
The ship was spinning by sheer inertia. Statistically speaking under such maneuvers chances were most people would need medical attention if they were lucky. He felt his limbs floating, his world still dizzy, and the engines of the Roci completely asleep.
‘You smooth maniac!’ there was a chance he had managed to say those words under his breath but judging by the woman’s liberating laughter he was pretty sure he had yelled them. He could not tell for sure. There were few things his mind could perceive right then; few things besides the crazy stunt his ship had performed going from high G burn to a full return to the float in just a couple of moments. Something inside them should have broken by the laws of physics or at least given them nausea for days, but damned good pinnace racer Juliette Andromeda Mao had been so smooth and calculated in controlling the rise and decrease of speed that adrenaline and blood pressure had been the only factors to kick in. He could not say for sure where was up and where was down or in which direction the Roci was spinning but it didn’t matter. There were no directions in the universe except those manufactured by their needs for orientation. The occasional silence was interrupted by their ecstatic laughs as the ship continued to carry them throughout the endless sea.
As he felt the sensation of dizziness washing away he considered looking at his terminal to satisfy the curiosity. And yet he chose not to.
The woman’s breathed laughter ended in a long inhale and he felt like there was something ephemeral about that moment. His life in the past few years seemed like an endless race against the currents. No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good. The heavy meaning of those words became so clear to him; and yet those words couldn’t reach them. Not there. Not in that moment. The three of them were lost to the world; and it wasn’t such a bad feeling. Right then, he could not make sense of the world and it felt like the entire universe could not make sense of him either. It felt pretty good in fact. So why rush? He decided to wait and let the world catch up with him again. His head turned just enough so he could see if his co-pilot shared the same reverie as he did. With her eyes closed and her arms floating freely by her sides, she looked as detached from the universe around them as he felt.
He tried to trace back the details of her story, of how he came to know her, and he realized he didn't, in fact. He knew nothing about her and what he did know had never orbited too much around his head to make sense of her.
Alex came to acknowledge the following: they shared a mutual understanding of things that started and ended with the pilot’s seat; like the thrill of traveling through the vast space between the stars; the inability to spend a lifetime on a rock or station; the need to go and go and the sweet moment of return; the knowledge that nothing stayed still. People like them... they would sit still when then die. And probably not even then as one way or another they would be thrown back to the universe. Nothing is wasted here, in space. But what did he even know? He was no poet, just the epinephrine in his brain made him think otherwise.
But those were their lives; and their stories, whatever they were, it was just outside of that moment. They were stuck, floating in the endless Universe, between what had been and what was going to happen. There had been horrors and losses in the past; and ahead was still a war that was slowly but surely killing the Solar System. They were caught right in the middle.
His eyes were gazing aimlessly at the feed that Roci kept for him on the terminal; on the information coming from the outside cameras.
And then he breathed out, feeling lighter than ever, like setting himself free of a burden that had kept his bones clenched, his muscled tight, and his lungs clogged.
'What a ride...'
She had opened her eyes and a slow content smile made its way to her lips.
'The best.'
They shared a mutual understanding of things that started and ended with the pilot’s seat; like the fact that their exchange of words had nothing to do with the ship or the present moment.
The com system flashed green in front of Alex with a request.
His crafty grin was back in place, as if he had already figured out what it was about. He tapped the terminal and accepted the connection.
'Howdy, Cap!'
'Here's a story: I went down to the docks, ready to get the airlock to the Roci and spend the rest of my day safe from politics-induced headaches, with a good cup of coffee. Funny thing is, as it turns out, the Roci's not on the station anymore and apparently, it had been authorized for release in the captain’s absence, for scheduled ‘driving tests.’ There was a pause and they had the advantage of reading Holden’s frown through the feed of the message. ‘They were not scheduled nor do we have any driving tests.’
‘Yeah, about that… It’s more of an evening out, but we had to be more technical than that to get that authorization on.'
The woman chuckled.
‘Funny that you think that got us approved for release.’ When he directed his confusion at her, the woman continued. ‘I ran a little favor through Drummer.’
‘What? We? Who’s we- ‘ and as if putting voices in place the man at the docks continued ‘Is that Julie Mao with you?’
‘The one and only; our amazing wingman that just perf-'
‘You better take back the ‘W’ word Cowboy or I’ll send us spinning the other way around.’ To her taunt he answered with a renewed grin, ready to take the challenge.
‘Guys! The Roci? My coffee.’ On their screens he let out a long sigh as they started to re-engage the engines and stop the spinning. ‘You know what? I don’t even care what you’re talking about and I am sure I don’t want to find out either. Can you just get back before someone else decides to give me a grand speech?’
'Heh, don’ worry, Hoss. We'll burn the engine back to the station and have one big bulb of coffee ready for you. We'll be there in...' He tapped the screen trying to get information on their whereabouts for the first time since they had been sent adrift . Then he frowned and a low whistle left his lips. '… a while.'
The woman next to him did not look up from her terminal as she set the course and sent it to his screen. But the innocent twinkle at the corner of her eye was enough to rest her case.