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Lh'owon fell away behind them, soon to be nothing more than another point of light in a sea of stars.
Its sun was going to be a fair bit brighter than the rest in a few minutes, if Thoth's parting message was to be believed. In a final act of spite, he said, the Pfhor deployed their ultimate weapon—the trih xeem—right into the heart of the sun, and if Blake's crew wasn't out of the system in ten minutes, everything would be for naught.
They'd cleared the blast radius in about seven. Every Pfhoric ship came outfitted with an FTL drive, even the refueling vessel that Vince had helped his teammates hijack.
He stood on the bridge now, crowded by what seemed like over half the surviving BoBs as they all watched the starts distort and streak past the frame of the dashboard. By all accounts, he should be feeling relief, or elation, or anything about finally making it off of the doomed homeworld of the S’pht—but his emotions just weren’t working right now. Their escape had come at a heavy cost, and the worst part was that Vince knew he was the only person on this ship bereaved that Durandal hadn’t made it.
Blake said something to his co-pilot, Lh'muria, too quietly for anyone else to hear, then staggered out of his seat and walked towards his people, leaning against a nearby console for support.
“We made it,” he whispered, as if he couldn't quite believe it himself, then slowly broke into a relieved grin. “Guys, we're—we're going home!”
A moment to absorb this, and then everyone burst into what had to be the loudest cheers Vince had heard in his life. Someone behind him clapped him on the shoulder; other people moved away to embrace each other, or find a spot around the bridge to weep in gratitude. Vince quietly maneuvered his way around them all and ducked out of the bridge into the hallway leading to the barracks. Wasn’t in the right frame of mind to join the celebrations—and besides, if he didn’t find a bed soon, he was going to collapse.
Even with all primary lights shut off, everything outside the bridge was cast in a faint glow; the Pfhor always had some sort of bio-luminescent material strung through the sinewy walls of their ships for reasons Vince wasn’t sure of. Probably blackout insurance. It let him reach the barracks without tripping over anything; once he’d found the bunk farthest away from the entrance, Vince stripped down to his waist, silently appreciated how the cool gel-like substance that was the mattress felt against his skin, then winced sharply from the realization that he’d barely gotten proper rest since the BoBs had broken him out of prison.
And given all the myriad uncertainties weighing down on him, Vince wasn’t sure he’d get the time now. He sighed and closed his eyes.
–
“Durandal left us plans for the shortest route from Lh’owon back to Sol Core; it’s gonna take us around two-and-a-half to three weeks as long as we don’t strain the Hfarl’s FTL drive. Last I heard, the UESC had some outposts set up around Pluto, so we’ll try stopping there first.”
Somewhere to Vince’s right, he heard Rachel snort. “Three weeks of nothing but horsemeat. Joy.”
“Hey, at least the replicators can make stuff that’s human-safe,” Blake replied. “Anyway, it should be smooth sailing from here on out. We’ll turn over everything we know to the UESC, and from there, maybe resume some semblance of a normal life.”
Those words cut into Vince far harder than Blake intended. What little worldly presence he’d had on Mars would be nothing but dust in the wind by now, if even that; he’d be returning as a stranger who nonetheless could remember every atrocity he’d witnessed there clear as the day they happened. Earth...well, it was their goddamn fault that Martian society had deteriorated to the extent it had. Didn’t know enough about Astarte or the Jovian Republic to want to settle at either.
Closest Vince would ever get to a ‘normal life’ at this point was on a ship...and he kept tensing up at every little noise on the Hfarl, so maybe he couldn’t even have that.
What could he look forward to, then?
Blake ended his meeting with the BoBs, then began moving through the dispersing crowd right to where Vince was sitting. “Uh, hey, Callahan,” he began nervously. “I—wanted to apologize for sending you back out onto the field so soon.”
‘And yet, that didn’t stop you from doing it multiple times,’ Vince thought bitterly, but he shoved it down—realistically, Blake didn’t have much choice with the Pfhor bearing down on them all in earnest. He silently nodded.
“How can I make it up to you?”
Vince had to mull over that one. “Help me find a new home, I guess. And don’t ever let me hear you talk shit about Durandal again.”
Everyone still in the impromptu meeting room became visibly uneasy, which was Vince’s cue to leave. Blake, for his part, just nodded and didn’t say anything while Vince slowly pulled himself out of his seat, careful to avoid moving in such a way that’d irritate his many wounds. No, it was Mason who openly took offense to that second request.
“You know Durandal was the one who dragged us into this mess in the first place, right?!” Mason said angrily, possibly loudly enough for people outside to hear. “What’s your problem, man? You got along better with him than you did us!”
Vince sighed heavily; if he wasn’t so drained right now—physically and emotionally—he might not have hesitated to tackle Mason across the floor. They’d gotten along most of the time on Lh’owon, but there were certain things about Vince that this guy just couldn’t seem to wrap his head around.
“Because I knew him better than I did most of you,” Vince said, walking towards the exit. “And I’m not gonna spend the next few weeks justifying my feelings to people who’ve already decided that I’m wrong.”
It sounded like Mason was going to say something else, but was stopped. Just as well.
–
Turned out their group wouldn’t have to wait until Pluto; a week in, the Hfarl crossed paths with a human vessel, the UESC Peregrine, who were all too happy to take them aboard after that brief misunderstanding about whose side they were on (and confusion over the S’pht) was cleared up. Of course, the Peregrine’s FTL drive wasn’t nearly as robust as the Hfarl’s, so everyone would have to pile back into the latter at some point—but it was nice to be back on a human ship for a few days and have nothing to worry about except stockpiling supplies.
At least, Vince assumed it was nice for the others. The captain had taken one look at his injuries and had him escorted to sickbay, where over the course of two hours he’d had all his bandages changed out, medical salve applied to roughly a third of his body, and multiple nurses prodding him and trying to figure out where his implants had come from.
That last one made Vince rather snarly; the prodding (physical and verbal) ceased within minutes.
“So, you say you were held in a Pfhor gulag for an entire month?” The head doctor checked over something in her notes that Vince couldn’t see. “I’m amazed you aren’t in worse shape. We’ve pulled people out of Pfhor captivity who weren’t even identifiable by their dental records.”
“That’s...nice.” And not something Vince wanted to think about. Without Tycho constantly blocking attempts to have him shipped off to Gr’ndl Prime, that’s how he could’ve ended up. “Say, um—you guys wouldn’t happen to need another security officer on board, would you? I could--”
To his dismay, the doctor shook her head. “We’re not currently in a position to take on more long-term crew, I’m afraid—oh, looks like you’ve got a visitor.”
Vince followed the direction of her gaze to see Volker von Müller leaning against the door frame and putting too much of his weight on it to properly feign casualness; he took a seat next to Vince’s bed and silently indicated for the doctor to leave sickbay for a moment.
Volker didn’t speak right away, giving Vince a few precious seconds to look him over. He’d swapped out his torn, bloodied Marathon uniform for the Peregrine’s standard olive-drab pants and jacket, along with a white shirt that had that distinct quality of “spat out of a replicator in ten seconds”; the wounds Volker had sustained on his right arm during the very last battle on Lh’owon were bandaged up the same way Fynn had done it.
More than anything, though, it was the expression on Volker’s face that had Vince mildly concerned: tired and a bit nervous.
“Do you want a preamble, or should I get straight into it?”
Vince gave his ex the best shrug he could lying down. “Get into it.”
Perhaps unconsciously, Volker tugged at the lapel of his jacket. “Blake contacted some UESC bigwigs in the hopes of getting you offers to transfer, but when he described how you handled things on Lh’owon, they seemed...too interested in snapping you up,” he said. “It was freaking him out, so he came to me to work on a new plan.”
Wherever this was going, Vince felt apprehensive. “And he consulted you instead of going to me, because..?”
“Because I’m asking you to come live with me.”
That got Vince sitting up—not too quickly lest he get a nice big jolt of pain through his abdomen—to better face his ex. “You’re—you’re serious, now, dude.”
“Absolutely.”
The two stared at each other for about a minute, not a single word passing between them.
“Where, though?” Vince asked, finally. “Where could we leave for that’s not gonna devolve into a hell pit like Mars did?”
Volker sighed. “You know Mars was a special case--”
“Was it?” Without even thinking about it, Vince gripped the edges of the bed more tightly. “I’ve lived in Sol Core, Volker. Mars, Astarte, Earth, the Asteroid States—they’re all just a bunch of wolves waiting for each other to let their guards down and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do to protect ourselves! I can’t—I didn’t go through all that shit on the colony and Lh’owon just to return to that infernal planet and wait my turn to die!”
Volker took Vince’s shoulders firmly in his hands, cutting off his rant. “Listen, babe. One, you haven’t been to Sol Core in over three centuries. Two, you’re treating a nonzero chance of conflict breaking out as a certainty. And three, I wasn’t thinking of heading back to Sol Core, anyway.”
Well, item three eased Vince’s nerves slightly. But not by much. “...what do you have in mind? There’s—not a lot of other places to go, dude.”
“The UESC’s been busy establishing outer colonies for the past...I’unno, a while,” Volker said. “From what I heard, they tend to be pretty quiet; mostly rural territory. We could try there.”
Sounded like a welcome change in scenery from Tharsis, in theory.
Vince fell silent for a minute or so, internally mulling it over. After Mars, even the idea of trying to settle down at another colony made him jittery, but he didn’t feel that eager to find out what the UESC was so eager to recruit him for…
“I’ll follow you to wherever you have in mind,” he said finally. “Don’t know if I’ll stay, but I’ll give it a shot. And you,” he added, poking Volker in the chest for emphasis, “promise me this.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna make up for all those times on Lh’owon you almost got yourself killed. And not talking to me most of the time we were there. And not showing me how to reload those damn N-cannons.”
Volker blinked, then broke into an awkward smile. “What, was that one night in the base not a good enough start?”
Despite himself, Vince returned a grin—possibly the first time he’d experienced a truly positive emotion in a little over a month. “I’d say you were just getting warmed up there, dude.”
–
They arrived at Sol Core within Blake’s estimated window and soon dispersed to the four winds, eager to restart their lives. How many of these people he’d fought alongside for so long Vince would ever see again, he wasn’t sure; while all the S’pht were quick to inform him of what they’d be doing and where they could most likely be found in the future, of the humans, only Blake, Rachel, and Fynn had taken the time to exchange contact information with him and Volker (limited to radio frequencies with none of them having homes yet). It made Vince feel...some way, that was for sure; melancholic, maybe, though he couldn’t quite place it.
He tried not to dwell on it too long; he and Volker had a trip to make.
The outer colony that the two had chosen, designated simply “LV-79” until a proper name was settled on, wasn’t too far from Sol Core—using the new definition of “wasn’t too far” as granted by FTL tech. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Earth with its blue sky and rustic landscapes, and the single town was, as Volker suggested, a rural one—nothing but trees and farmland and simple brick-and-mortar houses as far as Vince could see. Utilities was presumably somewhere farther out.
Vince checked his watch for the third time in one hour and uneasily shifted his weight on the rail fence he sat on. The radio he’d brought outside wasn’t doing much to keep him from mentally replaying that conversation he’d had with Volker halfway through their journey; they’d been packing what surplus the UESC deigned to let them go through when Volker abruptly stepped away, towards the center of the room.
“Babe, you know what battleroids are, right?”
The blood in Vince’s veins ran cold. Did Volker suspect him, too? Where was that buzzing in the back of his head coming from? Doing his best to keep a neutral expression, Vince said, “I do.”
“Before we get settled, I’m gonna ask the UESC about becoming one.”
That was...not what Vince had expected to hear, but it was no less troubling. He’d dropped what he’d been holding and ran over to look his probably-not-ex in the face, and could only manage to ask, “Why?”
“The Pfhor ripped my life out from under me, and from everyone else who made it out alive,” Volker said, his expression a stoic mask. “However longer I fight them directly, I want to make damn sure I can see this conflict to its end.”
And Vince hadn’t had a good counter-argument. Oh, he had a few ideas for some now, when it was too late. So all he could do was dump their shared cargo in their house and wait a few days for Volker to return, and hope that the person walking up that hill wasn’t a UESC official bearing bad news.
He craned his neck up to stare at the sky in frustration, looked back down...and saw Volker trudging his way up the dirt path. Vince didn’t even wait for him to make it all the way up the hill’s crest before leaping off the fence and running over; Volker pulled him into a tight embrace and said, “Sorry I’m late.”
Nothing about the way Volker’s body felt immediately jumped out at Vince as different; probably something he’d have to determine by sparring, or more—intimate examinations. For the best, he figured.
“We’ve got company, by the way.”
Vince looked past Volker’s arm in confusion; he hadn’t seen or heard anyone else walking up—oh.
“Hey there, Vincent!” Lh’muria waved at him with much enthusiasm, with Mn’rhi not too far behind. “It just so happened that we were crashing on the same ship you arrived here on. Purely by coincidence. Mn’rhi certainly wasn’t tailing you out of sentimentality, no sir.”
The S’pht, as Mn’rhi promptly demonstrated, had a way of looking incredibly ‘done’ even with their blank metal visages. “Quiet, you. We hope that there will be no issue with the four of us sharing living space.”
Vince laughed. He had to admit; after everything, it might not feel entirely like home without the S’pht. “Don’t hog the covers and we’ll be fine.” To Volker, he added, “Well—what do you think lies ahead for us now, dude?”
Volker gave his shoulders one last squeeze before letting go. “With any luck? The lives we all should’ve been able to have.”