Chapter Text
Beau Butler needs some adjustment, Nureyev decides. Bored apathy served him well in Vulcan, but he’ll need some more charisma for this.
So when the van pulls up to the Hermes east tunnel checkpoint, Butler is exceeding the speed limit by several dozen kilometres, and waving frantically. He pulls so close to the gate he almost knocks into it.
A guard looks up, and, seeing Butler’s frantic hand gestures and the unmistakeable shape of his lips shouting something through the glass, goes pale. He trips on his way out of his booth, recovers, and has his laser pistol half-out of his holster by the time he reaches the window. Butler rolls it down quickly, glancing back over his shoulder with a furtive expression.
“Quick, my good man, when was the last maintenance done on the tunnel from here to Vulcan?”
Whatever the guard was expecting, it wasn’t that. He stumbles around his next words. “I — should I check — don’t know —”
“It doesn’t matter!” Butler snaps a finger under the guard’s nose. Nureyev knows they picked up a lead after speeding through the last few kilometres, but the longer this takes the faster the hover cycle will gain. “You need to seal it off immediately! It’s cracking! We barely made it here!”
If possible, more blood drains from the guard’s face.
Venus is coated in a thick layer of acidic greenhouse gasses, dense as water and hotter than a furnace. If the tunnel collapses, while still open to the dome, the dome will flood. Not with liquid, but searing hot, thick gas.
The deaths would be devastating and instant.
The guard lurches into action, sprinting back to his booth and jabbing at the comms. The boom gate opens up, and Butler hears snatches of conversation.
“No scheduled transports — empty portion — pressure equalisation — yes, ma’am —”
The van pulls forwards as thick doors slam closed behind them.
__________
Nureyev can hear Juno’s gasp from where he sits in the bed of the van, hidden from sight. But it’s terrified enough that Nureyev hits the AUTODRIVE button and twists around in his seat, just in time to see the translucent dome withdraw from the Hermes dome.
The motion of a million tons of gas, held at bay by nothing more than dome tech and reinforced glass, is mesmerising. It swirls in, thick and cloying, and beyond those shut doors the tunnel is intentionally flooded with scalding air.
“No scheduled transports,” whispers Nureyev, stunned.
Juno turns around, face contorting. “What the hell did you say to him?”
“Juno, I —”
“What the hell did you do, Nureyev? We only needed to close the gate, we didn’t need to quarantine the tunnel!”
“The officer following us didn’t log his trip,” says Nureyev helplessly, spreading his hands. “They weren’t aware of anyone in that stretch of tunnel. They likely flood it until they can get appropriately suited maintenance crews to check the infrastructure, equalising pressure is the easiest way to —”
“There was a person back there, Nureyev!” Juno spits, and Nureyev feels it, as clear as day; that same revolt, the same dark mistrust, that he saw in Juno’s eye when he learned about Brahma. The same dark anger that clouded everything between them the moment Juno Steel snapped those cuffs around Rex Glass’s wrists.
He tries for gentle calm. “Juno, it wasn’t your —”
“What the hell did you say to him? Did you ask him to open the tunnels? Give him a hand with his job, maybe?”
“You know I —”
“Goddammit,” Juno hisses. “No one ever changes! Good to know you’re still killing people in cold blood, Nureyev. I knew you were ruthless, but this takes the fucking cake.”
“Please, Juno —”
“This is exactly what Rita warned me about, you know? She said you were all trigger-happy crooks and boy, looks like she was right.”
“Juno!” Nureyev has never raised his voice over the detective, but he feels this time he needs to.
Juno stares back at him, angry and fists clenched.
“Juno. If you will kindly remember, I did not kill a single person during our heist today. Yes, perhaps that is more restraint than I am used to, but I am not an assassin, Juno. I am a thief, and it has never once factored into my plans for this heist to spill anyone’s blood.
“I told the guard back there our cover story. This was improvised, I’ll have you note, and in unforeseen circumstances things tend to take unpleasant turns.”
He’s settled a bit. The flush is still high in his cheeks, and he’s clutching his ribs as he glares at Nureyev over the seat of the car between them.
Finally he breaks the silence. “Move,” he grunts, and hauls himself up, teetering as his nerves fire randomly, trying to figure out which way is which. Nureyev doesn’t offer a hand to help him settle into the passenger’s seat; he figures it will be declined.
They are seated, eventually, side-by-side in the front of the van, still driving itself.
“We just killed someone,” Juno says.
“Yes,” Nureyev replies.
“Is that it?” Juno snaps, and Nureyev keeps his hands down by his side with deliberate force. “Someone just died and all you can say is, ‘yeah, I guess that happened’? Dammit, I am so sick and tired of people dying! I keep getting people killed left and right, when all I —”
“Juno.” Nureyev is tired of interrupting, but he knows this line of thought won’t do any good. “Look at me, Juno. Look at me.”
He hopes those words from so long ago jog the detective’s memory. Juno’s response is instant and visceral; he stares Nureyev down with fire in his one good eye.
“What did we talk about, when we were stepping you through this heist?”
“What do you mean, what did we talk about, we talked about a lot, Nureyev, for hours —”
“We talked about minimising casualties. Which we have done, to astonishing success.”
“You stabbed a guy!”
“And I’m certain he’ll make a full recovery,” Nureyev counters. “I’ve been stabbing people for quite a while Juno, give me the benefit of the doubt when I say I know what a light stabbing looks like.”
He knows that was the wrong thing to say as soon as he’s finished the sentence. Of course, to know what a light stabbing looks like, you have to compare it to more vigorous stabbings. And every line in Juno’s body is screaming at him that this isn’t what the plan was.
“We agreed to the plan, didn’t we?” Nureyev asks.
“Yeah?”
“We talked about it and we decided to try our luck with locking him out of the dome,” he continues. “We cannot be blamed for unknown security measures.”
“We could have done something —”
“Yes!” Nureyev says, and he feels his grip on this conversation slipping away, along with his patience. “Yes, of course we could have! We make a lot of decisions, Juno, and every time we make one there is something that we could have done differently, that’s what a decision is.
“We had limited information, and even more limited knowledge about the consequences. We took what we had and made the best of it, like you have to in every job. It’s simple and it’s brutal but it is also a fact that we make decisions based on what we know going in. Every decision is made with an incomplete data set, no matter what we do. What matters is that the choices we make, that they’re the best choices we could have made under those circumstances. And these were extenuating circumstances.
“We have regrets, Juno, we all do, but we only have regrets because new information comes to light, usually in the form of consequences. And that is something we couldn’t have known, not when we were making our decisions. Choices have to be made, and we have to live with that. But we can also live with the fact that we did everything we could with what we knew."
For a long, long moment, the car is silent. Then Juno mutters, “Pass me the water, would you?”
Nureyev practically tosses it at him. Juno drinks, gulping it down. He wipes his mouth and maybe, Nureyev wonders, wipes his eye.
“Juno?”
“I think I’m gonna sleep some more,” Juno mutters. “I’m done talking.”
Nureyev nods, and, for something to do, removes the van from automated driving mode. He winds through Hermes, making his way through the quiet nighttime city to the other tunnel, the one that will take them directly to Ares. He considers calling Buddy, but figures it can wait until Juno is in a more reasonable mood.
The headlights of the van cut through the dimmed evening of the Hermes sphere, and outside, the amber swirls of a Venusian hurricane curls around them.