Chapter Text
I
Their first temporary truce is celebrated with vodka and kisses, but their second is accompanied by sobriety and the incessant shriek of a distress beacon.
Huddled together in front of the only functioning computer on their base with Mike, Ezra, Sherry and the others, Vera tries to block out the noise. She can tune it out okay, and she doesn’t really mind shutting her ears off. No one’s saying anything anyway, just holding their breath.
A green glow illuminates the cold, dusty room, barely big enough to be a closet, interrupted only by a flash of red light every few seconds. The green light is from the outline of a suit of armor—of a body—displayed at the left side of the screen. There are words on the right, but either they’re scrolling by too fast or Vera just can’t read the language. She thinks it’s English. Too blurry to tell.
What she can tell is who the armor belongs too, and she chooses to focus on this fact for as long as possible.
But it’s kind of hard to ignore the flashing red light coming from the armor’s throat.
“Is that—?” Ezra starts to ask, but Vera cuts him off.
“Agent Maine.”
“Another Freelancer?” Terrill asks from behind Mike’s elbow. He and Darryl stand shoulder to shoulder hunched over Mike and Sherry, who are pressed tight up against Vera and Ezra.
A wave of irritation washes over Vera—maybe at Terrill, maybe at the elbow digging into her ribs, maybe at the fact the room is no longer cold but is, in fact, very warm—and she sighs.
“Yes, Terrill,” Vera retorts. “Agent Maine is a Freelancer. Just like Iowa, Idaho, and myself.”
“You don’t have to talk so slow, I’m not an idiot,” Terrill says. “It was a valid question!”
“Shut up, Terrill,” Sherry snaps.
Vera can hear the hitched breath and clicking of teeth as Terrill contemplates arguing before closing his mouth, and she sends Sherry as many vibes of gratitude she can muster. She can’t turn around to look at her, because, well, she can’t fucking move in this computer “room”.
“His vitals are so fucked,” Ezra mutters. Vera glances over at him. His eyes are glazed over, reflecting the alternating red and green lights.
“But he’s still alive!” Mike points out.
“Yeah.” Vera looks back up at the computer screen. She wonders if it’s possible to go blind from staring for too long. Then she realizes it’s been about a minute since she’s blinked.
Closing her eyes, she lets out the first of many exasperated sighs.
“How long do these distress thinga-ma-jigs last?” Sherry asks, leaning forward. Vera feels her breath tickle her ear and she shivers.
“I don’t actually know,” Vera answers. “Never seen one before. I’m surprised this one reached us.”
“Did your helmets’ comms systems notify you of anything?” Sherry asks.
Vera blinks. She hasn’t put her armor on yet today—the distress beacon screaming at them from the computer room is what woke her up. After that it was a blur of shaking Mike awake while Ezra put up the blue flag they found in the lower levels of the base. Some sim trooper thing they used as a truce signal.
Sherry, Terrill, and Darryl rushed over, brandishing their guns in case it was a trick, dropping them and shucking their armor when they realized it wasn’t. Then they gathered around the nine-by-thirteen computer screen, watching in silence as almost certain death claimed their old teammate.
“I don’t know,” Vera says. “And hopefully there won’t be another chance to find out.”
At that moment the computer flashed one last time, flickering out with a final squawk. The sudden darkness was both refreshing and disorienting, the silence unsettling.
Vera popped her jaw, trying to get rid of the ringing in her ears.
The beacon had been going off for an hour, the only change being Agent Maine’s erratic vital signs. It hurt to look at, but now Vera would give just about anything to get it back.
“Does that mean he’s—ow!” Darryl squeaks as someone—probably Sherry—jabs him in the ribs.
“I don’t know what it means, okay?” Vera snaps, leaping to her feet.
Or, she tries to leap to her feet. As she rises, Ezra is knocked backward, taking his chair, Mike, and Terrill with him like a row of sentient dominoes. Terrill lets out a squeak as he smacks the back of his head into the metal door. It beeps and slides open, something it’s not technically supposed to do without a code, but whatever.
Everything’s broken here.
“Ow, the back of my head!” Terrill cries.
“Shit, I’m sorry!” Vera exclaims, whirling around to help Ezra to his feet.
Sherry grabs hold of Mike and pulls him up while Darryl takes care of Terrill. Massaging his head, Terrill gives her a dirty look, but it quickly softens.
“It’s all right,” he says. “It, uh, doesn’t hurt that much.”
“Hey, you okay?” Sherry places a hand on Vera’s shoulder.
Vera’s face goes hot, and she’s not sure whether to shake Sherry’s hand away or lean into the touch. She decides on option C, which is doing nothing, standing frozen like a deer in headlights.
“Yeah, just,” Vera sniffles, unable to finish the thought. She reaches up, presses her fingers into her eyes in a feeble attempt to stop the tears.
She’s not even sure why this hit her so hard, she hardly knew Maine—and the boys only met him once or twice. The Alpha Team were like, likened to gods practically. When David and Connie moved up, Vera was afraid they’d forget about her, Mike, and Ezra, leave them all behind to choke on their super badass Freelancer dust.
Not that they were around long enough for that to happen.
“I hope David and Connie are okay,” Mike says, echoing Vera’s thoughts. Ezra hums his agreement.
Sherry coughs, tightening her grip slightly. Vera looks up at her, praying her eyes aren’t too red. She’s managed to stop her tears, but she still feels as exhausted as she might be after sobbing her eyes out.
“We, uh, forgot our extra ammo, so we surrender,” Sherry says. Darryl nods so hard it looks like his head might fly off as Sherry continues, “Why don’t we make some coffee and watch a dumb movie, or something?”
Vera nods once, head heavy, and follows the others out of the computer room.
“We’ve only got, like five movies to pick from,” Ezra says. “I vote—”
“Four,” Mike interrupts.
“What?” Ezra asks, turning his head to squint at Mike.
“Four movies,” Mike says. “Someone accidentally blew up ‘Charlotte’s Web’.”
“Goddammit, Mike—”
Sherry halts, grabbing Vera’s hand and pulling her gently backwards. Vera, unprepared, yelps, almost toppling over. Sherry holds her steady.
“Hey.” Sherry grips Vera by her shoulders, looks her dead in the eyes.
Vera can’t decide whether to be concerned or enticed by Sherry’s gorgeous fucking eyes, then shakes her head.
Snap out of it, dummy, she scolds herself.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Sherry asks her.
Something that Vera can only describe as a stab knifes through her, allowing those feelings she had just locked up tight to leak out. She wants to scream, she wants to cry, she wants to break something.
Instead Vera reaches up, wraps her fingers around Sherry’s wrists, and gently peels her hands from her shoulders.
“I’m fine, Sherry,” Vera says. “I don’t want to talk about it. Maine wasn’t my friend, anyway. I hardly knew the guy!”
Sherry frowns, but she doesn’t protest. Doesn’t yank her hands away either. Vera, suddenly very shy, lets Sherry’s wrists go.
“I’m fine,” Vera repeats. “Now just drop it, okay?”
“Okay,” Sherry says, voice short.
They walk the rest of the way to the breakroom in silence.
II
Vera can feel the room closing in on her and she struggles to breathe. Black spots dance before her eyes as she sinks to the ground, hands around her ears as if it’s going to block out the beacon’s scream. Muffled voices come from the blurry shapes fussing around her, but she can’t bring them into focus. She presses harder on her ears, slamming her eyes shut.
But she can still see it.
It’s still there, burnt into the back of her eyelids.
The outline of the soldier on the screen is unmistakable. Like Maine’s, one of a kind. But this one’s much shorter.
“Connie,” Vera croaks. Tears, hot and heavy, roll down her face. She brings her knees in as close to her chest as possible, trying to fold into herself, to make herself smaller. Maybe even disappear.
Everything happened so fast.
Vera’s helmet screeching in her ear mid-skirmish. Vera looking over at Ezra and Mike, also frozen, before throwing down her gun and sprinting towards their base. Sherry shouting something. Stray bullets smacking into the snow around Vera as she ran. And with every heartbeat, with every strangled breath, one name reverberated through Vera’s head.
Connie. Connie. Connie.
Vera reached the computer first, chucking her helmet to the side. Eyes burning, she watched the little green-and-red model of Connie rotate on the screen. It didn’t take long for the vitals to bottom out.
But the distress beacon kept going.
For forty-five more minutes.
For forty-five minutes, Vera sat there, hardly registering the sudden warmth of Ezra and Mike sinking to the floor beside her, wrapping their arms around her.
For forty-five minutes, Vera wishes they’d destroyed their comms systems. It’s painfully clear no one is coming for them, that they’re clinging like idiots to false hopes.
For forty-five minutes, Vera considers shooting her gun next to her ears to drown out the computer’s eerie lament. She considers it, but she can’t bring herself to move even a finger.
For forty-five minutes, Vera wants to murder the Director. Because if anyone’s responsible for Connie’s death, it’s that motherfucker.
When the beacon finally dies, Vera’s run out of tears. Blinking, she lets out a shuddering sigh and returns Ezra and Mike’s embrace. Her arms and elbows complain as she eases them from their tensed position to drape them over her friends’ shoulders. Mike sniffles, but Ezra stares at the floor like he can see through it, eyes miles away.
Their grief eventually gives way to discomfort. Power armor isn’t ideal for sitting in a sad huddle with your friends. Extracting herself from the hug, Vera rises to her feet, knees popping. She looks over at the computer screen, watches the cursor dart across the screen, writing out the date, time, and cause of death in bright green letters.
One word at the bottom of the report catches her eye, and Vera shuffles over to the computer, eyes narrowed.
There, at the bottom of the screen is one word, this time typed out in glowing red letters:
MISSING.
What the hell does that mean? That Connie’s missing? Missing where?
“What the fuck is going on?” Vera shouts, kicking the desk chair. It clatters across the room and smacks up against the wall.
Ezra and Mike don’t say anything, but Ezra comes up beside her to look at the computer as well. His brows furrow when he reads the red lettering.
Vera growls and stomps out of the room, making her way down the corridor and toward her bunk.
This isn’t fair, how come she and the others are here while Connie, Wash and the others are out risking their lives and—and fucking dying? If Freelancer was looking for soldiers ready to die for the cause, they threw away three of them on this frozen planet.
And now—what, Connie’s freaking body is missing? Vera has no idea what’s going on, and those old feelings of helplessness, of being useless, surface after months of figuring out how to shove them away. Freelancer continues to haunt them, which is hilarious to Vera, because shouldn’t she, Mike, and Ezra be the ones to haunt Freelancer? Of course, that would only make a difference if the Director had a conscience.
Reaching the door to her bunk, Vera punches the button to open the door. As the door slides open, the pad the button is attached to pops, sparks, and fizzes. The door freezes half way, and Vera groans. She tries to shove the door the rest of the way open, but the base is content on working whenever the fuck it wants, and right now, it doesn’t want to.
Vera huffs and removes her armor, dropping it all to the floor right outside the door before slipping inside her bunk.
She doesn’t even bother turning on the light before falling into bed. Shoving her face into her pillow, she closes her eyes, only to find Connie’s face smirking at her. Eyes flying open, Vera flips over and stares at the small sliver of light cutting across the ceiling.
Maybe they should just shut off the computer.
III
They don’t shut off the computer, of course. The miniscule chance someone would contact them, or hear their distress signals, keeps them from blowing it all up.
Deep down, Vera knows—and she knows the others do too—that no one is ever going to call their names over that radio.
“You could take turns checking the computer,” Sherry suggests to Vera one night.
They’re laying in Vera’s bed, limbs intertwined and tangled in the sheets, enjoying the warmth of each other’s bare skin. Sherry’s arm is around Vera, and she reaches up to stroke Vera’s hair.
Sighing, Vera leans into Sherry’s hand. Electrified by the touch, she almost forgets what Sherry said.
“Maybe,” Vera says, closing her eyes for one. Two. Three seconds. Then she says, “I guess. I don’t know.”
“Then maybe you wouldn’t have to have it thrown in your face every time,” Sherry goes on. “Take turns reporting what you see?”
“I don’t think Mike could do it on his own,” Vera says. “Shit, I don’t know if I could be in there alone. What if—god, what if it’s David who dies next? I mean, Connie’s gone, Maine’s—Maine’s maybe gone! What if they all just fucking die, Sherry?”
Vera sits up, slipping out of Sherry’s embrace and pulls her legs up towards her chest. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she presses her eyes into her knees. She shivers, her back now exposed to the barely tolerable chill. Since the base’s energy is finite, they’ve started turning the heat down. Vera would almost rather die warm than freeze her ass off.
Almost.
There’s the swish of sheets as Vera feels Sherry sit up as well, and a warm pressure around her shoulders as Sherry holds her once more. Sherry rests her chin on the top of Vera’s head.
“I’m sorry, sweet cheeks,” Sherry murmurs into Vera’s hair. “If I knew a way off this ice cube, you’d be the first to know.”
“Ha!” The corners of Vera’s mouth twitch. “Thanks, Sherry.”
Straightening out her legs, Vera moves to lay down again, and Sherry follows suit. Vera reaches up for the light switch, remembers there is no light switch, and sighs.
“Lights off,” she commands, and the room goes dark.
Well, it sort-of goes dark. There’s still light peaking in through the door, which is still freaking busted. Luckily Mike and Ezra’s rooms are a floor below her, and they… probably can’t hear anything.
Soon Vera can hear Sherry’s breaths deepen and slow down as she falls asleep, humming softly into her pillow. Vera stares at the gap between the wall and the door, listening to Sherry sleep, trying to find some of her own. She’s generally good at falling asleep—a master, really. When her body finally realized no one was going to play “Reveille” every morning at 0500, Vera even overslept.
It’s kind of hard for Vera to fall asleep when she’s waiting to be awakened by the sound of someone else dying.
Eventually, maybe two hours later, Vera starts to drift off. She nestles a little deeper into Sherry’s arms and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. Her last thought before she slips into an uneasy sleep is that she should probably just ask Sherry to move in.
At that same moment, far away in a distant corner of the galaxy, the Mother of Invention falls from the sky.
IV
Vera crosses every name off in her head, each Freelancer popping up for a few seconds, screaming out vitals, and vanishing to make way for another soldier’s injury map.
Kansas. Louisiana. Vermont. Minnesota. South. North. York. Carolina.
Washington.
(It’s easier than calling him David, than seeing his first name glaring at her; easier to picture Washington with all those broken bones, to picture David smiling, using that dumb silly straw—)
Some are dying, some dead. The lucky ones only have a few broken bones—well, the lucky ones are probably the Freelancers that aren’t showing up on the screen. Did they escape whatever fate the others met? Off on other missions, out of harm’s way? Or maybe they’re just out of their power armor—Vera shakes her head, refuses to consider the option a second longer.
“It’s gotta be an ambush,” Ezra says, his voice hitching up an octave. “I—I mean, how does someone get the drop on a ship full of fuck—fucking Freelancers?”
They’re all crowded in the computer room once again, this time without Terrill and Darryl, still asleep at their base. Sherry is the only one not huddled around the screen. Instead, she stands in the doorway, permanently open after the boys fell into it the one time, wrapped in Vera’s itchy wool comforter.
“Whoever attacked them, or whatever happened,” Vera croaks, finding her voice, “Lots of them died from some huge impact.”
“The Mother of Invention?” Ezra looks over at Vera, wild eyed. The green and red glow from the screen casts odd shadows on his face, making him look hollow. Horrifying and horrified. “You mean, like, something hit it?”
“Or it fell,” Mike suggests.
“Or it fell,” Vera echoes.
They watch until the distress beacon screeches to a halt, about fifteen minutes too early. Something must have happened to the ship’s comms, or maybe it was something else, but Vera is the last person to ask about technology of that caliber.
What she does know is her friends are dead or dying, and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Letting out a shriek, Vera leaps to her feet and punches the computer. The screen cracks, but doesn’t go out, and Vera feels her anger surge, clawing its way out of her throat. Howling in frustration she strikes the computer again and again and again, ignoring the pain in her knuckles. She lifts her leg up and brings her bare foot down on the keyboard, and the machine finally pops and fizzes out.
Chest heaving, Vera watches the smoke rising and the sparks spitting from the screen. She hoped to feel some satisfaction, but all she feels is more anger.
Vera feels a hand on her shoulder and jerks away.
“Don’t touch me!” she hisses.
“Vera,” Sherry says, softly.
“Just—just go,” Vera says, face hot. “You don’t wanna be around me right now and—and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.”
Sherry doesn’t say anything, but Vera can feel her eyes burning into the back of her skull. It takes everything she has not to turn around and scream, curse, break something. She can feel Ezra and Mike on either side of her, tense, waiting—not for her reaction, but for their own.
Vera sucks in a huge breath and lets it out. Then she turns around to face Sherry. Their eyes meet, and Vera sees her pain reflected in Sherry’s.
“I love you, Sherry,” Vera says. “But right now, me and Mike and Ezra need to be alone, okay?”
Sherry looks ready to protest, but then she seems to see something in Vera’s face. Nodding, she reaches out one more time, pausing inches from Vera’s face, and then let’s her arm drop.
“I love you too,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
And then she leaves the three of them to mourn.