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Tap tap tap.
Tap.
Tap tap.
Crosshair growled, rolling over in his bunk and kicking his legs out from under his blanket. “Tech,” he warned.
There was no answer. Crosshair lay on his back, scowling up at the ceiling. He reached down and rubbed his shins, wincing. They throbbed and ached.
More growing pains. He was so sick of them. Nala Se said they were normal, that pain medication wouldn’t help. Crosshair wished he could just grow up already and be done with them.
He lifted his hand, nibbling at the dry skin around his fingernails, biting at it until he tasted blood. He frowned, balling his hand into a fist and jerking it away.
Tap tap.
“Will you stop tinkering and go to sleep?” Crosshair hissed.
“Hm?” Tech asked from across the room, where he was working on a half-scuttled battle droid under the light of a single glow lamp.
What he was doing with it, Crosshair had no idea, but the nagging tapping wasn’t helping him get to sleep any faster. Especially not with the way his shins pulsed and ached.
“Put that thing away and go to sleep,” Crosshair snapped. “Haven’t you noticed it’s been lights out for hours?”
“You can usually sleep through my projects,” Tech said, adjusting his goggles. He got up, padding over to Crosshair and peering closely at him. Despite the late hour Tech looked as alert as ever, though his brownish hair was rumpled and dark grease smudged his cheeks. “Why are you still awake?”
Crosshair sat up with a scowl. “Because you’re annoying.”
Tech raised his eyebrows at him, unperturbed. “I’m no more annoying than I usually am.”
Crosshair sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. “My legs hurt,” he confessed.
“Growing pains. They’re no fun.” Tech paused, looking closely at him. He reached out and grabbed Crosshair’s hand, examining his fingers. “You should stop biting them, you know.”
“Shut up.” He yanked his hand away. “I know. I just -- I start and it’s hard to stop sometimes. Especially if something else is bugging me.”
Tech sat down beside him, sitting with him back to back. Crosshair felt some of his tension fade, and he leaned into his brother, closing his eyes. He was so tired.
But his legs twinged, as painful as ever.
“So why aren’t you asleep yet?” he asked Tech, trying to keep his mind off his legs.
“I’m trying to figure out how to reprogram this droid,” Tech said. “Make it fight for us instead. I know it’s a training droid, so it won’t really be fighting at all, but it’s good practice. Maybe it’s something I could do on the battlefield, once we get our shot.”
“Huh,” said Crosshair, impressed. “That would be good.” He was quiet for a minute, thinking. “Don’t you get tired staying up, though? You could do this stuff during the day.”
Tech fiddled with his goggles. “I could. But we have other training then. I want to learn as much as I possibly can, but since we grow so quickly, that translates into less time.” He shrugged. “And I don’t really get tired when I’m focused. It’s as if I go into my own little world.”
Crosshair stifled a snort. That was an understatement. “I’ve noticed,” he said, but considered. He thought he knew what Tech meant. “Like when I’m planning a really hard shot? Everything else goes away.”
“Yes, exactly.”
Crosshair wished he had that kind of focus now. His legs ached with another horrible set of pulses, and he rubbed at them with both hands, swearing under his breath.
“It’s particularly bad tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Crosshair admitted.
“You know what helps me?” Tech asked. “Distraction. I may have just the thing.” He trotted back to his tangles of wires and tools. Crosshair watched him, wondering if they’d wake up Wrecker and Hunter. But Hunter had buried his head under his pillow, and Wrecker could sleep through anything.
“If you want me to tear apart droids with you, thanks but no thanks,” said Crosshair. He was okay with basic datapad work, but hopeless at the intricate stuff Tech managed to do without breaking a sweat. “They don’t make any sense to me.”
“You could learn if you wanted. You’re very bright. Not at my level, but still —“
“ Tech .”
Tech finished rummaging in his pile of projects and came back to Crosshair, pressing something into his hands. “Here.”
Crosshair looked down at what appeared to be a small white blaster, but with a curious tank attached to it. He lifted it and heard it slosh. “What is it?”
“A water blaster,” said Tech. “They won’t let us have real blasters to practice with in here, of course, but I thought I’d try making something like this for practice.” He held up a little board of shiny white material with a black target drawn on it. “Where do you want this?”
Crosshair grinned. “Across the room. Give me a challenge.”
“You might find it’s more of one that you think,” said Tech. “You’ll have to account for gravity, and the minimal propulsive capabilities of this water blaster compared to the real thing.”
“Hm. I’ll be the judge of that,” said Crosshair, experimentally squirting Tech with the blaster between the eyes. Water dripped down his nose and splattered on his goggles.
“Very funny,” Tech said, mopping his forehead and lenses with his sleeve. He flashed Crosshair one of his little half-smiles. “All right, let me find a spot to stick this.”
“Try over here,” Hunter groaned. “Since you two are keeping me awake anyway.” He tapped the top of his bunk. “I think… it’ll take Crosshair four tries before he gets a bullseye.”
“Four?” Crosshair asked, offended, as Tech affixed the target above Hunter’s bunk, across the room. He took aim with the blaster, lining up his shot, figuring that the water would take a parabolic motion at that distance. He fired slightly higher than the target —
And the water splashed harmlessly onto the floor a good meter away.
Crosshair stared at the dry target, infuriated. “You didn’t tell me this thing had no power!”
“Well, look at it,” Tech chuckled. “Do you see a power source? I just put it together with some spare casing material and a simple plunger. It’s significantly limited. That’s why I had it set aside, I’m sure I could design something much more effective if I had the time.” Tech sat down again amongst his wires, resuming his fiddling.
Hunter yawned, sitting up and running a hand through his shaggy hair. “Maybe four was too generous. Maybe I should make it five tries.”
Crosshair glowered.
“What are you all blabbering about?” Wrecker mumbled. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
“Crosshair’s trying out a new weapon,” Hunter said. Which was the wrong thing to say around Wrecker.
“What!” Wrecker cried in excitement. He tried to get out of his bunk, but was so tangled in his blankets that he rolled onto the floor with a thump. From there he propped himself up on his elbows, all hint of sleepiness forgotten. “New weapon? Where’d you get it? How’d you sneak it in? What’s it do? Can’t believe you were holding out on me —“
“It’s Tech’s. It’s just a water blaster, and not a very good one,” Crosshair said, taking aim, adjusting based on the disappointing performance of his last shot. He experimented by slightly covering the barrel of the pistol with his fingernail, narrowing the opening, and shot a jet of water out the end. It sailed across the room, falling short of the target again but hitting Hunter square in the face.
He grinned. That would do nicely.
“Oh that does it, Crosshair,” Hunter grumbled, wiping his face off. “Tech! You got any more of these things?”
“Yes, I made enough for all of us,” Tech said mildly. “Though as I said before, the design could be better…”. He searched through his piles of debris and pulled out three more blasters, tossing one each to Hunter and Wrecker before whirling and squirting them both in the face with his own.
“Oh, it’s on!” Wrecker roared, rolling out of his blankets and squirting Tech three times, then training his blaster on Crosshair.
“Oh no you don’t —“
The battle was pitched and bloody. Crosshair leapt from his bunk to take cover behind the crate that held their dirty laundry, sending out jets of water that spritzed his brothers dead in the face every time. Wrecker charged him, wearing a blanket as armor, water from his blaster flying everywhere. Hunter circled around on the outskirts of the fray, catching Tech from behind, but Tech pulled out a secret fifth water blaster and squirted both Hunter and Crosshair at once.
They howled with battle cries, erupting into a mad scuffle in the center of the room, water splashing into the air, limbs a tangled frenzy.
“I’m gonna get you!”
“I’d like to see you try!”
“You’re all dead!”
“We’ll see who has the upper hand now!”
At last the battle came to a close. By the time they flopped onto their backs panting with exhaustion, Wrecker had a (self-inflicted) bloody nose, Hunter’s head was drenched, Tech’s goggles were halfway across the room and Crosshair had stolen all five of the blasters for himself.
“We should do this every night,” Wrecker snorted, pinching his nose shut.
Hunter laughed, elbowing him. “Well, it was pretty fun.”
“It was certainly a good distraction.”
Crosshair took aim with one of his blasters at the target over Hunter’s bunk. The spray drenched the bullseye perfectly. “There. Three,” he said in triumph, sticking his tongue out at Hunter.
“Haha, nice one, Cross!”
“Ahhh, I knew you had it in you. I only said four to piss you off.”
“Not that that is difficult.”
“Hey, that’s -- okay, that’s true.”
Crosshair lay on his back near his brothers, still catching his breath, his eyelids getting heavy. He put his hands under his head and stretched out on the floor. With the blankets Wrecker had managed to hurl around the room beneath him, he was pretty comfortable.
Comfortable enough to stay here, just a little longer. He yawned and his eyes fell closed.
He drifted off to sleep, and his legs didn’t hurt at all.