Chapter Text
Then…
“Not that I don’t appreciate spending time with you, love, but I’m wondering if perhaps you had an intention beyond sitting across from me at this table for the entirety of today?” Loren Matsumoto asked with an amused but curious expression.
Tobias continued to fidget in his seat across from her at the kitchen table. It was an old, beat up thing, its short leg propped up with a scrap of wood, and another leg that had been replaced by an entirely mismatched one that somehow was the right length. It had been in the house longer than he had, but he reckoned that she’d salvaged it from somewhere, as she did most things. “I, uh… I got a job offer today,” he mumbled.
His mother raised an eyebrow at that. “A job?” she said. “You got a better flying offer?”
Tobias leaned back in his chair, which wasn’t a particularly great idea as it wasn’t in much better shape than the table. “Uh, that… that sort of depends on your definition of ‘better,’” he mumbled.
Loren sat her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. “Is this whole conversation going to be spoken in riddles?” she teased.
“The work’s a bit… Well, I mean, they didn’t say, but… Okay, you know those ranchers I ship supplies for occasionally?” he said, and she nodded. “Well, their daughter and a former foster kid work for a salvager, who has recently decided that he needs a pilot that’s not him.”
“Isn’t most of your work trick flying?” said Loren.
“Yeah, I pointed that out,” he agreed. “I mean, I told him I’d be glad for steadier work, and of course I navigate just fine, but I was wondering why he came right to me.”
“And he said?” she prompted.
Tobias crossed his arms and allowed his chair to snap back into an upright position. “Something convoluted,” he admitted with a shrug, despite the fact that she couldn’t see him shrugging. “But I got the distinct impression that what he was getting at is that their work isn’t always legal.”
Loren frowned. “I didn’t think you had a problem with that,” she said.
“Not out here. But they work a lot on the border and core,” said Tobias. “They have a Companion with them. Like an actual registered Companion. That’s their pass to the core.”
“They licensed?” she asked, and Tobias told her they were. “How long have they been at it?”
“A few years,” he said.
“They been arrested in that time?” she asked.
He shrugged again, pointlessly. “They say no,” he told her.
“Then I suppose, even with a bit of illegal work, they know how to handle the core,” she said. “That will get even easier with a pilot like you. So what are you worried about?”
Tobias chewed his lip. “I just… wanted to sound it out with you first,” he said. “I mean, there’s the danger, and there’s being away from here much longer than ever before…”
“Maybe for you,” she said. “But I’ve been away months at a time before. I can handle it here. If the pay is good enough for you, then I think you should take it.”
Tobias sighed. “It can be good, but the captain admits its not always steady,” he said. “And… I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t… y’know… overeager?”
That had her interest. Slowly, she lowered her hand again. “Why would you be overeager?” she asked.
Though she could not see Tobias blushing, she could hear it in his voice, and it made her smile. “I, uh…” he floundered. “I… There’s… maybe… a girl? Sort of?”
“I didn’t think you had crushes,” she said, and he shrugged again. After a pause, she reminded him, “Tobias, if you’re shrugging, I can’t see it.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I don’t know. It doesn’t happen much. Or for long. Maybe it’s not a crush and it’s just like… She’s really cool? The point is I sort of feel like I’m running off over something silly.”
Loren shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “So be silly,” she said. “You’ve always been so serious, Tobias. Follow a whim for once. I mean, it sounds like a good job anyway.”
Tobias grimaced uncertainly. “You sure you’re fine with me leaving?” he pressed.
“Are you kidding?” she laughed. “I can finally have guys over!”
Tobias’s grimace deepened into disgust. “Oh god, Mom…”
“Maybe even get laid!”
“MOM!”
－ －
Now…
Tobias woke up standing, staring at his hands. Confused, he looked around. He wasn’t in his and Rachel’s cabin, but one of the passenger cabins.
He looked around, trying to figure out why he’d sleep walk into a passenger cabin of all places and was embarrassed, at first, to see that there was luggage present, meaning it was an occupied one. Then, he realized that he recognized the strewn belongings. They were Fangor’s. Jake had asked him, Marco, and Rachel to comb through them for any contact information or clues that might help figure out what to do with the still comatose man, his vital signs slowly diminishing. For the moment, they were headed on to Aberdeen, home to Tobias, Cassie, and, in a way, even Rachel, as had been originally intended.
Tobias realized he was holding something. A small device, made of a material like milky white glass, roughly the shape of one of Rachel’s mirror compacts, and beeping. He’d seen it before when they’d gone through Fangor’s things but had dismissed it on account of it not being beeping at the time.
He flipped it open. On one circular surface, text immediately darted across the surface in an alphabet he’d never seen before. On the opposite side appeared to be a tiny starmap. The markings on it were unfamiliar, definitely not Alliance Standard, but Tobias recognized the layout. Whatever it was that the device was summoning him toward, it was close.
He made his way to the bridge, sat at the pilot's control deck, and set the compact carefully down next to navigation panel. Squinting at the small image, Tobias began working out a chart of where it might be trying to send him. It was almost the opposite direction from where they were going. They were headed from Lux to Kalidasa. Georgia was currently half way to the other side of the Core. Not only that, but the area the device seemed to be fussing over wasn’t even a planet. It was empty space just outside of Athens’s orbit.
Tobias reached over to the intercom panel and used the private connection to the captain’s cabin. “Captain, would you please come up here?” he asked as politely as possible, knowing that, one way or another, an argument was about to ensue.
He got no reply.
Tobias tried again, a little more sharply. “Captain?”
A moment later, the bridge intercom clicked on. “Captain’s a little busy,” Cassie’s voice replied, rasping slightly.
Tobias rolled his eyes and groaned. He pressed the button again impatiently, “Well, how long does that take?”
A longer moment, then Cassie’s giggling voice replied, “Is it－ Ssh! Is it an emergency?”
“No,” Tobias admitted, “but sooner is preferable to later.”
“Okay, give us ten minutes,” she said.
“Fifteen minutes,” Jake corrected. His voice had a rough, growling tone to it that Tobias had never heard before and hoped to never hear again.
“Right, give us twenty minutes,” Cassie relayed. With another giggle, the intercom clicked off again.
Tobias groaned and rubbed his face. “Might as well go back to sleep then,” he complained to himself. He didn’t, though, afraid of where his unsettled mind might cause him to wander next.
－ －
Then…
“I can’t have it, Loren!” his aunt － half-aunt? － was shouting. “I can’t handle this and work, too!”
“You work at home!” his mother insisted back. “I’ve gotta go out in the field every day for the next month. It ain’t right to leave the boy alone at the house. You know what’s it’s like out here.”
As loud as they were being, Tobias might have been able to hear with a glass pressed to the floor in his borrowed room. But that wasn’t where he was. He’d been banished to the hallway until they figured out what to do with him. So he listened to the fight in the kitchen from the top of the stairs.
“Like your work is necessary,” his aunt snipped.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Loren demanded.
“Oh everyone in this town knows who’s doin’ the plowin’ when you go into the fields.”
Loren choked on a noise of indignant rage while, out of their sight, Tobias’s fingernails bit into his palms. It was far from the first time he’d heard people accusing her of prostitution over “real” work, but it was rare that he heard it said to her face. Aunt Lynn must have been really angry.
“I ain’t even arguing that with you,” Loren finally snarled. “You think up whatever you like. Heaven knows facts ain’t ever deterred you before. So tell me, Lynn, what you think I oughta do? You’re goin’ back on taking him. Ichiro’s a quarter ’cross the planet. So what am I to do?”
“Don’t put this on me, Loren. When you asked, you didn’t say he was suicidal!” Lynn shouted, and Tobias folded up into his arms, biting his lip and trying not to cry.
“He is not suicidal!”
“He jumped off the gorram roof!”
“He has an imagination! It’s normal for a little boy!”
“He ain’t so little these days, Loren,” Lynn snarled. “He’s growin’ wild, and what else is he to do with a wild mother? You want him to settle, then settle yourself!”
“And where am I to get the money to do that?!” Loren demanded.
“And where am I to get the money to support me so I can spend all my day making sure he don’t jump offa somethin’ higher?!”
Tobias failed his efforts at not crying.
－ －
Now…
Eventually, Jake made his way to the bridge. The first thing he said was “The hell is that?”
Tobias looked up from the compact clutched in his hand and turned to his captain. “Remember how you had us looking through Fangor’s things for clues?” he asked. He started to hold it out to Jake but suddenly realized that he didn’t want to hand it over, clutching it so tightly that his fingers paled.
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he said.
“Well, I, uh…” Tobias fidgeted and started to run a hand through his streaky blonde hair only to be reminded that Rachel had braided it. “I looked again,” he said, trying to pretend that he’d found himself in Fangor’s room on purpose. “I found this.”
“Which returns us to my original inquiry,” Jake reminded him.
“I’m not quite sure,” Tobias admitted. “But, uh, well, it’s beeping. Pretty frantically, actually. And it seems to be directing us to this space just outside Athens.”
“Georgia system? That’s nearly the opposite of our direction,” Jake said. Then, “What do you mean ‘seems’?”
Tobias held the compact out so that Jake could see. “I can read the chart, though it’s not in Standard, but I have no idea what any of the text says.”
Jake nodded. “Hold on.” He stepped forward and reached over Tobias to the intercoms. Tobias made a face and turned away. “What?” Jake demanded.
“You smell like sweat,” Tobias said, waving a hand.
Jake rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ll be sure and take the time to bathe next time you tell me to head to the bridge as soon as possible.”
“Please do,” Tobias groaned.
Jake flicked the switch Shuttle One’s intercom system. “Guerra to Bridge,” he called.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Marco said, enunciating each word carefully so as not to show how pissed he was at being woken.
“No clocks in the black,” Jake teased, knowing good and well that time was standardized, not solar. “Come on, you’re always saying how much you need to practice your written translation skills on something that ain’t Chinese.”
“You need me to translate something at… Four in the morning?”
“Yes, please.”
“What language?”
“Not a clue.”
There was a pause, then, “Be right there.” And he was. Only a few minutes later, Marco was hurrying onto the bridge.
“See?” Tobias said, gesturing to Marco for Jake’s sake. “That’s what ‘sooner’ looks like.”
Marco looked at the two of them, confused. “What am I translating?” he asked. After a moment’s hesitation, Tobias handed him the compact. Marco squinted at it in surprise. He rubbed his eyes, then squinted at it again.
“Do you know the language?” Jake asked, rocking lightly on the balls of his feet, his arms crossed tightly and impatiently over his chest.
Marco shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve never even seen the family. It might be from one of the smaller cultures? But it’s probably a distress signal.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Tobias.
“It’s short and repetitive and continuous,” said Marco, tapping the screen. “If it was a rendezvous, it wouldn’t be continuous, for fear of being caught. If it was a warning, it would be longer. If it was communication, it would be even longer and unlikely to repeat more than once. Also, it seems… insistent?”
Jake glared at the device and chewed his lip indecisively while Tobias pouted up at him. “We got enough fuel to get as far as Athens? The actual planet, I mean, not this blank space out by it. Enough to burn our way there quickly?”
Tobias nodded. “Yeah, plenty. Fresh stock.”
Jake nodded, took the compact from Marco, and handed it back to Tobias. “Alright,” he said. “Plot a course for Whitefall, not Athens, and burn hot. There’s a cheap fuel station there and business enough if you avoid the eye of the Lady, so we got reason to be there. Just slow it down if we run near Alliance, so we look less suspicious. Keep all the sensors on watch for them. Take as direct a path as possible.”
Tobias nodded and turned to make the necessary navigational changes.
Marco was frowning at Jake uncertainly. Jake raised an eyebrow. “What?” he asked Marco.
Marco shook his head. “Jake… if you don’t mind me asking… exactly what are we hoping to find at these coordinates?”
Jake shrugged, at a loss. “I have no idea,” he admitted. He glanced back at the device clutched in Tobias’s hand. “But I have to hope that any something is better than the nothing we’re currently working with.”
“That’s fucked us over more often than not,” Marco pointed out.
Jake just shrugged again and headed for the door. “Yeah, but that’s half the fun.”