Tristan activated the comm, “Alex? I’m about to open the hatch.” His voice sounded tinny inside the helmet, but at least it fit him. He looked over his shoulder. Alex wore a suit of his own, but without the helmet. He gave him a thumbs up, then tapped something on the console and the door to the cockpit closed.
Tristan tapped the control, and the indicator showed the air concentration dropping in the cabin. Kathryn’s Folly didn’t have an airlock. These old troupe transports were designed with the idea that everyone in it exited under the same conditions. So the soldiers would either all be dressed for vacuum, or none of them would be.
He stretched and his side throbbed. They’d stopped at a medical clinic before getting back to the ship. It had been night, and there were only one doctor and a nurse present, which suited him. They locked them in a closet and Alex helped Tristan clean and treat his wound. The skin sealant was still stiff.
The hatch opened, and across twenty meters of void, their other ship floated. Alex had suggested naming it Justin’s Folly, but Tristan didn’t intend on renaming it. He doubted it’d keep it that long.
He activated the magnetic soles on his boots and walked up the side of the side. Kathryn’s Folly had twelve antennas he needed to disable. Alex would tell the computer not to use them, but as an extra precaution Tristan would manually disconnect all of them.
The first one was welded in place, so he cut it off, then sealed the hole. It wouldn’t do for the air to escape. The second was screwed in, but it had been there for a long time. He could just cut it too, but he wanted the work as a distraction.
“Tristan,” Alex came on the comm. “Are you too busy to talk?”
Tristan smiled. “Never for you.” He secured the wrench and pushed.
“Since you said you want to stay here, ground side, do you have any thoughts as to where we’ll live?”
He felt the nearly fused metal whine through the wrench. “I do. Do you have a preference?”
“Not really. Anywhere except one of the corporate cities. Which I guess only leaves the town. I don’t know any other ones would accept me living there.”
“They’d accept you if I told them to.” The antenna came loose all of a sudden, and if not for the magnetic grip on his glove he would have lost the wrench. “But we should make sure to have apartments in the four corporate cities. And one on the station. Each with different identities, to give us reasons to be there, if we need to.” He cut the wire and sealed the hole.
“Together?”
“Of course.” He attached the antenna to his belt and moved to the next one.
“That’s going to attract attention, a human and Samalian living together.”
“I’ll be your pet Samalian. You can dress me in a loincloth, teach me tricks.” There was silence. “Alex?”
“Sorry, I just don’t like the idea of you being treated as an animal, even if it’s just a mask. I don’t like that any of your people are treated that way.”
“My people?”
“They are, aren’t they? We’re staying here.”
“I suppose they are, it’s just strange. Not words I ever expected to say.” The next antenna came out easily. “We’ll manage something.”
“We can get apartment side by side and connect them.”
Tristan smiled at the idea of sneaking around to see Alex. “The problem with that is that anywhere you can find an apartment, I’ll attract attention, and where I can get on, you will.”
“Maybe *I* can be your pet human?”
Tristan laughed. “I’d be spoiling you too much.”
“Right. Okay, so where do you see our home being?”
“But I was thinking of my father’s cabin.”
There was a pause. “You do remember the shape it’s in, right?”
“It needs some work, I’ll grant you that, but it’ll be a project we can work on together.”
“And where will you fit your workshop?”
Instead of answering, Tristan looked up and studied the stars, feeling it watch him.
“Tristan, where will your workshop be? And if you tell me you don’t need it, I’m coming out there to smack you.”
Tristan smiled and set to work again. “I’m thinking we make a clearing build a house similar with what I had before, but set up a computer lab for you.”
“Will we be sleeping on a storage room floor?”
“I—” Tristan tried to imagine himself sleeping on a bed. He’d done it enough, but that was always on a job, or as part of a mask he wore. Floors had always been enough for him, his father had seen to that.
“We’ll need a temporary home while we built our permanent one,” Alex said. “We cone work on getting re-acclimated to comfort that way.”
Another antenna came out easily. This ship hadn’t been well maintained. “I don’t know if it’s something I can do. Comfort is something I used to get to my marks. Not something I enjoyed.” He tried not to look up. He could feel it looking down at him expectantly.
“We’ll have time,” Alex said.
Tristan set the wrench against the base of the next antenna and paused. “Alex, I’m going to turn off my comm for a few minutes.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” Tristan looked up. “I just need a few minutes alone.”
“Okay. I’m done here, so once you’re done we can get things moving.”
“I won’t be long.” He shut the comm down and stood. He looked up. Part of him didn’t want to do this. None of what he’d done had been wrong, so how could it want anything from him? But that was the old him speaking. The one who thought everything he did was justified.
“I’m sorry,” he told the universe. “I’m sorry for putting on you the paranoia my father instilled in me. I’m sorry for thinking you were set on killing me.” He paused and remembered Victor. “I’m sorry for taking the chances at happiness you gave me and destroying them.”
He looked at his feet, through the hull and imagined Alex, working the computer, twisting it around so it would do anything he wanted it to. “Thank you for Alex.” He raised his head. “I wish…” he chuckled. “I wish you’d come and told me what you intended, instead of letting me muscle my way through all the false beliefs I had, but we both know I’d have punched you if sat down in front of me.”
He crouched by the antenna. “I’m going to try not to blame you as much. To accept that sometimes things just happen.” He applied the wrench against the base and pushed. Collecting the antenna before it floated away he considered if he had anything else he needed to say. When he couldn’t come up with anything more, he turned the comm on.
“Feeling better?” Alex asked.
“Yes, I am. I only have a few more antennas to remove then I’ll be back in.”
“You want me to wait for you here?”
“If everything’s done head back to our ship. I’ll finalize things in here and join you.” In silence, Tristan finished removing the antennas.
* * * * *
The room had been an officer’s ready room at some point. Tristan could see where the desk had been welded to the floor. Now it was a bedroom. He remembered waking up here, confused, scared, angry. He wondered if Justin would feel the same when he woke up.
His brother was stretched on the mattress, within the active cryo field. He’d considered sitting him in the troupe carrying part of the ship, but had decided Justin was entitled to some comfort; he’d always enjoyed his comfort.
He made sure the skin repair equipment was stored in the cabinet before activating its cryo field. He couldn’t know what things would be like when Justin woke up, and he didn’t want him to have to go through what would be left of his life looking like he did now.
He went to the wall and activated the recorder and put on a mask. The mask of someone who didn’t care. “Hello Little Brother. We’ve always wanted for the other to be out of our lives, so now, we’re getting it. If my calculations are correct, when you hear this message, I will have been dead for three million years. I don’t see myself using Rejuv treatments unless Alex insists, and even with all the traveling we’re bound to do, I doubt I’ll live more than a few hundred objective years. So you can rejoice, you’re free of me. You don’t have to worry that I’ll come after you. You are now free to live your life however you wanted. There’s medical equipment in one of the cabinets, plenty of nutrient packs, and enough power left for about ten years, if you don’t waste it. I wish I could tell you where you are, but The ship was programmed to avoid any kind of technology, so I can’t calculate its trajectory, but even if you’re between galaxies, you should have enough power to reach civilization, whatever that’s going to look like by then. Justin, our war is over. You can consider yourself the winner, you outlived me. But please, don’t waste the time you have left. Father was wrong, family isn’t a burden. Friends can make your life better. Love… Love isn’t a weapon. Not the way we thought it was. It is power, but only when… I guess there’s no point in telling you. You won’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me before either. Well, this is the last time you’ll see me, so rejoice.”
He turned off the recorder and closed his eyes. The mask crumbled and he let the pain make him sob. This wasn’t the conclusion he’d wanted, but it was the only feasible one. Justin and him could never live together. They couldn’t mend what had been broken so long ago. So if they were both to live it would have to be at different end of the universe.
He looked up and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I know I don’t have the right to ask this, but you know me, I just don’t care. Try to help him. He’s going to take more work than I did, if you can imagine that, but try anyway? He deserves happiness, real happiness, not this illusion our Father convinced us power was.”
He set the playback to start the moment the sensors detected movement and left his brother into the arms of eternity.
