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They were gearing up for another supply run when it happened.
The ship’s safe was packed full of credits that she would exchange for weapons, medicine, and miscellaneous necessaries, as soon as she made it to the other side and got in touch with her smuggler contact. Blake was hauling crates of trade goods into the cargo hold and strapping them down tight. Jenna was seated at the helm, running a few final systems tests. Her eyes flitted between scanners and vizscreens.
The Blue Lion , the used planet-hopper they'd purchased at a cut price from a shady dealer, was basically a box with wings. A lesser pilot than Jenna would hardly be able to get the old clunker off the ground, let alone run it through the G-P blockade. Lucky for Blake, she was not a lesser pilot. And all the readings looked sound: batteries fully operational, air pressure good, hull sound and sturdy, engine temperature well within the normal range. The Lion may not have looked pretty, but it wasn't about to explode on her quite yet (probably). She could work with this. She'd flown worse. (Of course, she'd also flown much, much better.)
Jenna was about to go seek out Blake and tell him she was as ready as she’d ever be. Then, out of nowhere, pain. “What the hell?” She clutched at her forehead. A throbbing sensation seemed ready to split her head in two, worse than the worst migraine she'd ever had. It made her collapse back into her seat. For a moment, she wondered if this was what a sudden catastrophic stroke felt like. (It would almost be funny if it was— all these years of living dangerously, and then a freak medical accident is the thing to take her down.) Then came a familiar, booming voice, speaking to her from inside her own mind.
+Jenna Stannis.+
She almost gasped in disbelief. "Zen?" She felt a rush of sudden joy, even through the awful headache.
The voice was unmistakable, even as it took on a halting, sludgy tone it had never had before. He shouldn’t sound like that. Before her conscious thoughts even had the chance to catch up, her intuition recognized what was happening. Zen was reaching out to her because something was wrong.
+I have failed you. I am sorry. I—+
The voice trailed off into silence.
Zen was dying. No— knowing the time delay involved in sending a message across the expanse of space, Zen was already dead. Her mind's eye was assaulted by images of the Liberator careening into an asteroid, or blasted to bits by Federation warships, or whatever other way it might have happened. No no no no no.
A moment later, the pain was gone, and so was something else. Something dark and gentle that had been churning in the abyssal zone of her subconscious all this time had gone perfectly still. She’s left with silence— silence where she hadn’t even realized there’d been a voice before. It was like a part of her had been cut away.
The first time the ship connected to Jenna, she'd named it Liberator. It was a name that felt right to her intuition: a name that reflected Blake's grand designs for freeing the galaxy. In a way, she supposed, it was also what the ship had been to her. At one of her lowest points, when she'd had every reason to believe she'd spend the rest of her life rotting on Cygnus Alpha, open skies lost to her forever, it appeared like a miracle and gave her back her freedom. It was the fastest, most beautiful ship she’d ever flown. And now it was gone.
Maybe it would be over sentimental to describe her feelings for a destroyed spaceship, even the best ship in the world, as grief. But the Liberator had always been more than a ship; more than a computer. It had reached out to her across the galaxy just to say goodbye.
With a queasy, sinking feeling in her stomach, she realized what else this meant. If Zen and the Liberator were gone, then odds were, Avon, Vila and Cally were gone with them. It wasn't certain— maybe they’d made it to the escape pods in time— but it was probable. The people she’d fought alongside, for better or worse, through two of the most intense years of her life, blown apart. She felt like she could be sick.
Jenna was no stranger to losing friends. Death was common in her line of work. But it had never come quite like this before. She’d never felt it as it happened.
A knock on the cockpit door brought her back to the here and now. It could only be Blake.
Blake. How the hell was she supposed to tell him? The man claimed to have staked his hopes on raising a grassroots rebellion on Gauda Prime, building a coalition out of fugitives from Federation justice. That was part of the truth at best. She knew him well enough to know what he actually staked his hope on was Avon and the Liberator. If you asked Jenna, any hope that required Avon’s cooperation was a foolish one, but, well, a part of her wanted to share his faith in a reforged Liberator crew, back together and stronger than ever.
A weight is easier to bear when you share it, her mind supplied. But could she do that to him? Should she burden him with this, when he was already carrying more than anyone should? The fire behind Blake’s eyes was the last beautiful thing in her life. It had blazed so bright when they met, drawing everyone into his orbit like planets to a star, even those who’d like to pretend they were immune to the laws of gravity. It burned lower now, diminished by so many failures and disappointments. But it was still there, still burning, and it still made Jenna feel like maybe there was more to this life than surviving from one day to the next.
If he found out right now, found out that the Liberator was destroyed and with it, his closest friends, it might just snuff out all the embers at once.
Jenna heaved a heavy sigh. She pressed the button to unseal the doors (sliding doors, supposedly, though these were so old that they didn’t so much whoosh open as groan open).
“Everything good back there?” she asked as Blake stepped inside.
Blake nodded. “We should be almost ready. I’ve got all the cargo moved; now it’s just a matter of tying it down.” He looked at her intently, concern visible in his one good eye (the other had a patch over it, from when she’d had to stitch up his wound in an emergency: it would heal, but not without a scar). “Jenna, is something wrong?”
Now was the time to choose her words carefully. She rose from her seat. “With the Lion ? All the readings looked fine.”
He shook his head. “With you. For a moment, you looked as if you were in some sort of terrible pain.”
“A headache is all. I’ll feel fine as soon as the aspirin kicks in.”
His brow furrowed. “You’re certain?”
“When am I not?” She smiled, though it didn’t quite make it to her eyes. Smiles so rarely did, these days. “I’m done with the systems testing. Need any help with cargo?”
He smiled back at her. “Help would be welcome.”
Jenna could tell that Blake could tell that she was holding something back, even though what it was, he had no way of guessing. Jenna was good at swallowing her emotions, but Blake was good at seeing past people's bullshit, and the two of them had come to know each other very well. She shook her head, as if to disperse the heavy thoughts. She needed a clear mind for the mission— getting past that damn blockade was hard enough on its own when she wasn’t preoccupied with figuring out whether keeping the truth from Blake was kind or selfish of her. If she wanted to spare his heart, or just couldn't stand to be the one responsible for breaking it.
Maybe after the supply run. Maybe then, once she's had a chance to sit with her own grief, and think about how to broach the subject.
The cargo hold was stacked to the brim with crates large and small, filled with whatever they could scrape together that might be worth bartering. Jenna picked up an elastic cable. It was time to get to work.