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"What's it like? Being there."
Jaing sighed and then laughed and said, "Like a bad taste in my mouth."
"How's Prudii?"
"Okay, I think." Jaing licked his lips. His tongue felt dry and heavy.
"It's late for you, isn't it?" Kom'rk's voice was soft, hissing through the comm.
Jaing sighed. "Yeah."
"It's the middle of the day here," Kom'rk said. "This planet is so hot and dry. Nothing but scrub brush and plateaus for hundreds and hundreds of klicks."
"Sounds like a dream." Jaing stood up and went to the window and adjusted the dial until the pane of transparisteel was clear. There was no division between the sea and the sky, just an unending black void. For an instant lighting illuminated the belly of a far-off thunderhead, and Jaing watched it fade, and then set the window opaque again and stepped back from the window.
Kom'rk blew a sigh into the comm, a crackling staticky rush. "It'll be morning for you before it's night for me. It's funny how that works, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Jaing said, returning to his bunk and lying down. He clasped his hands above his head. A dry ache settled behind his eyes. "Kom'rk," he said, almost an accident, "Are you lonely?"
It felt like such a di'kutla, childish thing to ask. Jaing shut his eyes.
"I miss you, vod'ika," Kom'rk said softly. "It gets so quiet out here."
“I’d bring you some noise,” Jaing said. “You’d kill to get rid of me if I was there.”
“I would,” Kom’rk laughed, low and hissing with distortion. Jaing wasn’t sure if he was joking at all.
“Good thing I’m here, and you’re there,” Jaing said. He felt himself smiling. It wasn’t a familiar sensation, and neither was the loosening sensation in his chest. He’d been away too long.
“We might kill each other if we weren’t,” Kom’rk said, distant and inscrutable.
Jaing ran his tongue across his teeth and unlatched his chest armor, ran his fingers through the line between the separated plates, over the exposed flightsuit and the skin underneath. “Well, you know I’d do anything to protect you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Kom’rk said. “I just need you to make it through this without doing anything stupid.”
“You say that like there’s an end to any of this.” Jaing sat up, shrugged off his chest plate and lay back down, setting the comm on his breastbone, over his heart. The muted sound of the rain on the transparisteel window made Jaing feel sick with the familiarity of it. Private quarters was new, and felt like a ploy to give him a false sense of security, make him forget that he was still a slave, even when he was different from the rest. But sleep was dragging at him anyway, a comforting lull for once rather than the irresistible collapse he was used to.
“Just hold on,” Kom’rk said, warm and assured. “If nothing else, one day we’ll be dead.”
“Oh happy day,” Jaing mumbled.
Kom’rk huffed a soft laugh. “Something like that, yeah.”
It was quiet for a while. Jaing counted his breaths, lost track, slid deeper.
“Goodnight, Jaing,” Kom’rk said at last, quiet enough that it didn’t rouse him. The comm line went dead. The rain rushed on faintly outside the window.
It was such a strange feeling, being alone.
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End