Sky gave way to bright overhead lights and Sid's impossibly warm hands on his shoulders. "Joe!"
Joe took in a shuddering breath, reveling the ease and lightness of it, and found himself with his face crushed against Sid's chest. "I'm okay," he said, the words muffled. Sid had found the time to get dressed at some point, wearing a mostly clean-smelling set of Zangyack Special Forces armor. "I can't breathe," he said, which was only partly true.
Sid pulled back, eyes searching Joe's face, and Joe was suddenly acutely aware of his nudity. The pod provided a bare minimum of modesty only. "You're sure you're okay," Sid said. Joe nodded, not trusting his voice. He'd done it, by some insane twist of fate, he'd stumbled on Sid and brought him back. "Absolutely sure," Sid repeated, smoothing the hair back from Joe's face.
"Y-yes," Joe managed, proud of how steady his voice was. "Are you okay?" It had to be a shock, finding out that what Sid had thought was life post-Zangyack was a lie. At the very least, they had some privacy; he hadn't been inside the simulation long enough for anyone to come looking, or at least not long enough for anyone to find him.
"This is not what I expected," Sid admitted. "It's all true, then."
"Every word," Joe said softly. Sid didn't seem inclined to move, so Joe added, "Sid, I should get dressed."
"In a minute," Sid said. He leaned forward, one hand still cupping Joe's face, and kissed him carefully on the lips.
Joe flinched in surprise, but when Sid made as if to break off, Joe pulled him back. It felt right. It could have been minutes or hours later that they finally separated, Joe's fingers tangled in Sid's hair. Sid rested his forehead against Joe's for a brief moment, then smiled and kissed him again, briefly, on the mouth before straightening. Joe's hands trailed downwards, and Sid caught them in his own.
"I've been wanting to do that," Sid said.
"You could have." Joe's heart was pounding, thoughts racing almost through a freefall of how Marvelous and the rest of the crew would accept this new development. Sid wasn't crew, wasn't part of the understanding the Gokaigers shared. But he was Joe's, and that should make it all right. Shouldn't it? "You could have," he repeated.
Sid shook his head. "Wouldn't have been right, before," he said. "You wouldn't have been free to say no."
Joe opened his mouth to protest that Sid wouldn't have done anything that Joe didn't want, and then closed it again, because Sid wasn't wrong. The power structure of the Zangyack military didn't allow for dissent from the lower ranks. "Now's okay," he said instead, and Sid smiled for a half second.
"You should put some clothes on," he said, letting go of Joe's hands and stepping back far enough for Joe to climb out of the pod.
"Now I don't want to," Joe grumbled. Not that there was anything going on that he did or didn't want Sid to see, but there was some definite stirrings of interest in places other than his brain that could develop very quickly under a wide range of circumstances. None of which included putting his clothes back on.
Sid laughed, the sound full of warmth and inviting Joe to share the humor with him, rather than mocking him. "You didn't come here alone," he reminded Joe. "You said something about a crew."
"Shit." Joe scrambled out of the pod, finding his neatly folded clothes exactly where he'd left them. The Mobilate was in his pocket, and he sent the last non-verbal check-in ping to the Galleon. It sent back a message informing him that his crewmates had been notified of his status. "Just in time," he said, and felt the briefest feather-light touch just above his hips.
"Sorry," Sid said, hand still outstretched. "You should really get dressed." He dropped his hand and turned to face the wall of screens. None of them were showing data; the two directly in front of the pods they'd occupied were frozen, graphs faded out under a pulsing green overlay in a script Joe couldn't read.
"Right," Joe said, although pulling on his clothes was almost the last thing he wanted to do. Not wanting to be interrupted was the only impetus that kept him going, although the fact that he'd made the check-in on time meant that they had at least an hour before anyone would be notified to come looking. Joe quashed the thought. There would be enough time later.
"So there was a copy of me," Sid said, and it was like a wave of cold water.
"Barizorg," Joe said, softly.
"And you found a partner," Sid said, without a trace of jealousy or resentment. Warmth blossomed in Joe's chest at that.
"I found a crew," he said. "It's a long story."
Sid cocked his head slightly to the side. With one eye covered by the Zangyack standard issue half-visor, it made him look almost artificial. Joe suppressed the urge to rip the thing off Sid's face. "How long?" he asked, and hearing him speak helped.
"Uh." Joe blinked.
Sid smiled the warm smile Joe remembered so well. "Let's go find them, then. At least one of them must be more talkative than you are."
"I talk," Joe said.
"You, my friend," said Sid, "never use three words when you can just use one, and you don't even use that if you think you can just stare your meaning across."
Joe glared at him indignantly. That definitely wasn't one of his habits.
"Right. Exactly," Sid had the audacity to say. "Now, where's this pirate crew of yours?" He paused. "Although, really, you're less of a pirate than an aggressive bullet salesman."
Joe gave Sid a half-hearted glare for the terrible joke while he considered. Marvelous was likely to be the easiest to find, what with the command decks having the smallest area of physical space, but Joe wanted the rest of the crew behind him when he introduced Sid to Marvelous. It wasn't that he thought he'd done something wrong, by letting Sid kiss him, he told himself. "All over," he said, finally, and pulled the Mobilate out of his pocket again.
The Mobilate had barely started to ring before Luka's voice poured through the speaker. "Joe! Where have you been?"
"Where are you?" Joe asked. He could hear sounds of fighting behind her, and Ahim's voice came through clearly in the background. He couldn't hear either Doc or Gai, but at least two of his crewmates were in trouble.
Luka told him, giving him vague directions that ended with "You'll be able to find us when you get here" before cutting communication.
"Trouble?" Sid asked.
Joe nodded, and they made for the door. The door refused to open. Of course it did, Joe thought, and lost all semblance of patience with the glitching electronics on the freighter. "Stand back," he said, and summoned the Gokai Sabre. It sliced through the door easily, and Joe kicked the pieces out of the way. His pack was blocking the door to the hall, just as he'd left it, although the hallway lights had gone from dim to overly bright while he'd been in the pod.
Sid stepped over the pack, checking the hallway in both directions. Joe tugged the pack out of the doorway and handed Sid the Sabre; he preferred it, but he also wasn't about to not acknowledge that Sid was better with a blade than he was.
"Are you sure?" Sid asked.
"For now, just take it," Joe said, and took off at a loping run. It was a pace he could have kept up for hours, and Sid fell in easily at his side.
Luka had directed Joe toward the center of the ship, somewhere between the pressurized cargo section and the engines. He could hear the sounds of combat long before they got anywhere near the fight, the distinctive crack of the Gokai Guns and the crackling hum of the Sabres. Joe rounded a corner to see a veritable tide of Gormin sailors trying to overwhelm Ahim and Luka.
"This looks familiar," Sid said, somewhat grimly.
"Makes it easier," Joe said, and started trying to break through the ranks of Gormin.
Luka had appropriated Ahim's Sabre and was fighting two-handed; it wasn't the style or skill that Joe fought with, but she kept the area directly around her clear. Ahim stood at Luka's back, or where Luka's back most often was, pistols in both hands.
Joe found himself nearly overwhelmed in the first few moments, with a less familiar weapon in hand and only one at that. Sid stood over him, Sabre moving almost too quickly for Joe to follow even if he tried, and slowly Joe found a sense of rhythm. The Gormin didn't let up, though, and it seemed as though for every one they dropped, two more swarmed out of the walls.
"Where are they all coming from?" Luka demanded, breathing heavily.
No one had an answer, but Joe and Sid had finally broken through the Gormin ranks and the four of them stood together. The Gormin fell back as soon as Joe reached his crewmates, eerily silent. Joe kept both hands on his Gokai Gun, kept it aimed at the crowd, and no one else lowered their weapons either.
"Joe," Ahim said, and he knew her eyes were flicking back and forth even if she was technically standing behind them. "I don't believe we've been introduced to your friend."
"Long story," Joe said. "This is Sid Bamick." He plowed on, not giving either Ahim or Luka a chance to react. He didn't know if Marvelous had told them about Sid and his connection to Barizorg; he certainly hadn't, although Ahim had been with him when the former Liveman member had found the data pad containing Barizorg's blueprints, and they'd all seen him freeze when he'd first seen Barizorg use Sid's signature move. "Sid, this is Ahim, and Luka. My crewmates. The Gokaigers."
"Pirates," Sid said.
"Yes." Joe would have said more, but the ranks of Gormin sailors parted in a wave to let a pair of Dogormin bodyguards through.
"That is not promising," Luka muttered, quietly enough that Joe wasn't sure if anyone else heard her.
No member of the Imperial family followed the bodyguards, though, nor did an Action Commander. Joe narrowed his eyes; the Dogormin pairs only showed up on specific Imperial business, and there was no remnant of the Empire this far out. No manned remnant of the Empire, that was.
"We can't use the Ranger Keys," Ahim said, voice low and urgent. "We can't trigger a cascade failure."
"No," Joe said slowly. "We can't trigger a cascade failure yet."
"Ah," Ahim said. "A distraction?"
"Joe," Sid said, voice just as low as Ahim's. "What are you doing?"
"Aim at the ceiling," Joe said, and Ahim nodded. Luka crossed both Sabres, and at Joe's roared signal, they brought the roof above the Dogormin crashing down.
Being buried under three decks' worth of rubble wasn't going to hold the Dogormin for long, but it didn't have to. Joe led the hectic flight away from the field toward the cargo section, and Luka sabotaged as many doors as she could along their haphazard route.
The doors between the engineering and cargo sections were harder to manipulate, but Sid stepped in and twisted a few wires around. A heavy blast door dropped down, sealing the passageway. "That's one down," he said. "So what are we doing?"
"If we can create a cascade failure, the entire freighter goes up," Luka said, enlightenment spreading over her face. "You just want to get the others first."
"Thus, the distraction," Ahim finished.
"Clever," Sid said, and Joe ducked his head to hide the smile that he couldn't stop. Luka noticed it anyway.
"Joe Gibken, you're blushing," she said, grinning delightedly.
"No, I'm not," Joe protested, but he could feel his cheeks burning.
"Ahim, he's blushing. We tell him nice things all the time, and he just stares at us. One nice word from this guy, and look." Luka's grin hadn't gone away. If anything, it had gotten wider.
"Don't we have somewhere to be?" Joe asked, stalking forward. His dramatic motion was ruined by the fact that he had no idea where Gai and Doc might be, and he came to a halt only a few steps away.
Ahim was already trying to connect to their teammates, Joe saw when he looked over his shoulder, but Luka was circling Sid like a stalking cat. "So you're Sid," he heard her say, and did not feel that this was not going to go well.
"Sid Bamick," Sid said, holding out a hand for her to shake. Luka looked at it oddly; the handshake was a Zangyack peculiarity, Joe remembered, and Luka preferred not to touch people unless she was the one to initiate physical contact. "I see a reputation precedes me."
"Luka Millfy," she said. "Joe doesn't talk much. You might have noticed. But he's mentioned you."
"I've noticed," Sid said dryly, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled. "It's one of his more endearing traits."
"Endearing. Yes." Luka looked between the two of them. "I thought you were dead," she said bluntly.
"So Joe says," Sid said. "I don't know what to tell you."
"Explanations come later," Joe interrupted. Ahim had finished her conversation, presumably with their teammates, and was looking at the rest of the expectantly. "Ahim?"
"This way." Ahim stepped daintily forward, somehow managing to give off a regal air while walking at a speed that had the rest of them half-jogging to match. "They ran into some difficulties," she added, half-turning her head for clarity. "Gai is injured."
"How badly?" Joe asked.
"Doc's not sure." Ahim picked up the pace, gliding forward, and Joe heard the sound of crashing doors coming from somewhere behind them.
"Just keeps getting better," Luka said.
"Is it always like this?" Sid wanted to know.
"Oh, you showed up on an easy day," Luka said, and Joe wasn't entirely sure she wasn't flirting with Sid. He wasn't sure whether he was more upset that she was doing it, or that she was doing it openly.
"Glad to know Joe wasn't bored after we, ah, separated," Sid said, and it was the little half-smile that made it clear he was flirting right back. Luka threw back her head and laughed, without breaking stride.
"I like this one," she said. "We'll petition Marvelous to keep him."
"Focus, please," Joe said, and Luka rolled her eyes.
Sid looked contrite, but there was an edge of something else there that Joe couldn't identify, and he suddenly felt guilty on top of everything else. Sid had just had his entire world turned upside down; the fact that it hadn't technically been a real world wouldn't have made much difference to Sid's experience of it. The guilt was swiftly followed by irritation for being guilty. Sid wasn't a delicately fragile flower who needed protecting.
"The others should be two decks above us," Ahim said, coming to an intersection. Joe had no idea how she could tell; all the half-levels and stairs and ladders made the place a confusing maze, and couldn't possibly be an efficient storage system.
"Up we go," Sid said. "I'll take point."
There was an access tunnel Joe hadn't noticed, leading straight up and down, and Sid climbed into it with Joe's Gokai Sabre firmly stuck in his belt.
"All clear," Sid called. Ahim and then Luka followed him in. Joe was about to climb in when the first Gormin sailor rounded the corner. It froze for half a second and then signaled to its comrades.
"Dammit." Joe dropped the Gormin with a single shot, but it was too late. He climbed into the access tunnel, pulling the door shut behind him.
"What happened?" Luka asked.
"Gormin," he said shortly. "Move faster. And somebody hand me a Sabre."
A Sabre was passed down, handle first; Joe had no idea whose it was, just that it wasn't his. He started slicing at the supports holding the ladder to the wall, as far down past the door as he could reach, kicking the pieces of it down the vertical tunnel into the darkness below.
"What are you doing?" Ahim asked.
"Keep going!" Joe hissed. "I'll be right behind you!"
The door started to open, and Joe stabbed the Sabre into the internal control panel. The door shuddered to a halt, a bare few centimeters open, but enough for an arm and a projectile weapon. If Joe was lucky, the door hadn't opened far enough to get the business end of a Gormin cudgel through. A rhythmic banging at the door told him that he was lucky enough that they needed to beat the door down, but not lucky enough that they weren't going to manage it.
Joe worked his way up the ladder, trying to cut it away from the wall as he went. It was slow going, but he only needed to get rid of enough that the Gormin couldn't reach the lowest rung, and he thought he was nearly there.
What Joe thought was the final piece of ladder fell below his feet and he focused on climbing just as the first shot whizzed past his shoulder. There wasn't much he could do about that except to keep going upwards, but the Gormin hadn't squeezed off more than another couple of shots – all of which missed him – before friendly fire started raining down from above.
A bullet from his crewmates' Gokai Guns wouldn't leave him any less dead than a Gormin projectile. Joe made the smallest target out of himself that he possibly could and kept going. It felt like a small eternity before he reached the open door, Ahim and Luka lying flat on the ground and firing downwards and Sid standing over them with Joe's Sabre in hand.
"Now," Sid said, and Joe heard Final Wave! scream out from the Gokai Guns as Sid bodily hauled him to safety. Ahim and Luka rolled out of the doorway as it slid shut and then ground to a halt. Superheated air hissed out of the narrow crack, and Joe heard the satisfying thunder of an explosion below them.
"That should destabilize things," Luka said with some satisfaction, but she was already moving down the hall. That hadn't been the only group of Gormin searching for them, certainly. Joe moved to catch up and hand the Sabre back to Luka. As she took it, he noticed red on his hands. Luka saw it too, and hurriedly stashed the Sabre away before grabbing at him.
Joe dodged, but Sid was right behind him. Two things registered simultaneously; Sid's attempt to stifle a grunt of pain and Luka latching onto his hands.
"Where did this come from?" Luka asked, turning his hands over and then all but flinging them aside to inspect Joe.
Joe dodged again, turning to face Sid and poking a spot on the side of his jacket that looked just a little darker than everything else. The wetness under his finger confirmed it before Sid's wince did. "Sid," he said.
"It's fine." Sid batted Joe's hands out of the way and pulled his jacket straighter. "The armor caught most of it."
"It's not fine," Joe said.
"We don't have time, and it's stopped bleeding. Mostly." Sid turned Joe around in the direction Ahim had been going. "Seriously, it's fine. Would I lie to you?"
"You mean like, We'll meet out there in space somewhere?" Joe shot back, low and furious.
"Not now," Sid said. "I promise. Later, okay? Right now your – your crewmates need help."
"Later," Joe said, staring intently at Sid. If Sid took it as agreement, he wasn't going to argue, but there was no way Joe was going to let him play rear defense now. He herded Sid right behind Ahim, letting Luka go third, and took up the final position. Not that it ended up mattering much; they found Doc only a few minutes later and no sign of Gormin sailors or the pair of Dogormin they'd escaped earlier. Doc appeared out of what looked like nowhere abruptly enough that Joe nearly shot him reflexively, and once he'd gotten over that surprise, herded them inside an empty room.
Gai was leaning against a wall, still on his feet although one look at his face made Joe question whether the only thing holding Gai up was the wall in question. His left arm was bound across his abdomen, and something about his shoulder just looked out of place. "Yo," he said, waving his right hand with a ghost of his usual grin. "Turns out this boat is less abandoned than we thought it was."
"Ship," Doc said, absently, and then appeared to see Sid for the first time. "Who's that?"
"Introductions can wait," Joe said, but his next words were cut off by Sid approaching Gai and saying something too quiet for the rest of the room to hear. Gai nodded, and Joe unbound the shoulder.
"Are you ready?" Sid asked, but before he'd gotten past the first word, he snapped Gai's shoulder back into place. Gai screamed, and then choked it off, sagging against the wall. "Easy there," Sid said, lightly touching along Gai's collarbone. He bound Gai's arm up swiftly again, tying it off so that it couldn't move. "The collarbone is broken, and he needs internal scans sooner rather than later, just in case."
Gai gave a shaky thumbs up with is right hand, a little of the color returning to his face. "Just point me in the right direction, I'm good to go," he said. It would have been more convincing if he hadn't been sliding down the wall as he said it. "In just a minute."
"Where's Marvelous?" Joe asked.
"I haven't been able to reach him," Doc said. "You haven't either?"
"He didn't pick up when either Ahim or I called," Luka said. "Joe?"
"I'm trying now," Joe said. "You two explain the plan."
The quiet murmur of Ahim and Luka explaining how they were going to explode the freighter and every Zangyack trooper on board was a counterpoint to the endless ringing on Joe's Mobilate. Marvelous not answering the others was bad enough, but when it was Joe's call not going through, it was somehow worse. "Nothing," he said finally, after listening to his Mobilate try to establish connection for far too long.
"This Marvelous is in charge?" Sid asked.
"He's our captain," Joe said, wearily. "The Gokai Galleon is his ship."
"He's the former member of the Red Pirates," Sid said, recognition dawning. "The only survivor."
"That's him." Joe slammed a fist into the wall. Getting Sid back only to lose Marvelous would be a cruel joke, he couldn't help but think, even though he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Marvelous could handle whatever a surprise Zangyack invasion would throw at him.
Sid, wisely, didn't offer any platitudes. "So what's the plan, boss?" he said.
"I – what?" Joe stared at him.
"You're next in the chain of command, right?" Sid glanced around at the rest of the crew. "It's your call."
"Right." Not that any one of them wasn't capable of making decisions, but it was Joe's job to maintain a sense of structure, and as much as he might want to fall back into the familiar habit of following Sid's lead, this wasn't Sid's crew. That was a leftover impulse that he thought he'd left behind a long time ago, and Joe set it aside. "We go up to the command deck, get Marvelous and the Galleon, and blow this thing to hell."
"There you are," Luka said, right over Ahim and Doc's near-unanimous "Understood." Gai just nodded, raising his right hand in a thumbs up.
"Before we go," Joe said, and looked at Sid.
"I told you it was fine," Sid muttered, but he peeled off the armor and jacket, and pulled up his undershirt. The Zangyack bullet had scored an ugly cut along his ribs, but the bleeding had stopped. Joe slapped a pressure bandage on it anyway; there was no point in letting the samples he'd stowed in his pack go to waste.
"Is anyone else bleeding?" he asked.
"If I am, it's on the inside," Gai said. "Where the blood is supposed to be." He was half-smiling as he said it, and then his eyes widened. "That was a joke! A joke!"
"It may not have been funny," Ahim said, offering Gai a hand up. He ignored it, taking it only when his initial attempt to stand failed.
"Super Sentai laugh in the face of danger," Gai said. "Ow." Joe resolved to keep a closer eye on Gai.
"Can you use the spear?" he asked.
Gai concentrated for a moment and then shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "It won't budge unless I transform."
"Okay." Joe nodded, and turned to Sid. "Standard formation, Gai in the middle. You stay on his left. Doc, you're right behind them."
"Would you prefer Luka or me to take the rear?" Ahim asked.
"Ahim, if you would. Luka, on Gai's right."
Gai looked as though he wanted to protest, but something in Joe's face made him back off. Weapons were redistributed, at Ahim's suggestion; Joe got his Sabre back, along with Doc's, while Gai held onto Joe's Gun with his good hand. Doc kept his own Gokai Gun, flashing Joe a nervous smile as he handed his Sabre over. Sid borrowed Ahim's Sabre, Luka kept her own, and Ahim held both remaining pistols in her position as rear guard.
"Try not to die," Joe said, finally, as they were all staring at him waiting for him to say something before moving out.
"Right," Luka said, drawing out the vowel, but she followed readily enough.
The hall was more or less empty as they started through it, which was enough to make Joe more nervous than he had been to begin with. The freighter was nearly silent, and he found himself straining to hear every sound, evaluate it for the presence of a potential threat. It didn't help that the sounds his crewmates made were louder than anything else in the immediate vicinity, for all that they were actually trying to be quiet.
The first real hitch came when trying to move as far upwards as possible before moving laterally across to the command decks; there was no way Gai could climb a ladder through one of the access shafts, which meant a nightmarish trip up and down more staircases than Joe could count. Gai didn't handle those particularly well, either, but he gritted his teeth and persevered.
Gormin sailors found them twice before they got out of the cargo hold, moving in groups of four in each case, and both times the groups were swiftly dispatched. Joe wasn't sure in either case whether any of the Gormin had managed to get off a call to the Dogormin he assumed were in charge, but they weren't swarmed after either encounter. That means nothing, he reminded himself. Dogormin weren't above lulling opponents into a false sense of security and then setting traps.
The door out of the top deck of the cargo sector stood open when they reached it, and that made Joe instantly suspicious. The freighter had demonstrated glitches in its internal workings, but those had tended more towards making doors harder to open instead of easier. He didn't trust it.
"Let me go check," Sid said. Joe had paused their group off to the side, around a corner from the invitingly open door and just barely out of sight.
"No." Joe shook his head. "We're not splitting up."
"This isn't splitting up. This is reconnaissance."
"This is how we got into trouble the first time," Joe snapped. He'd had Sid trying to contact Marvelous as they made their way up and across the freighter, but none of the attempts to connect had been answered, and the pit in Joe's stomach just kept twisting.
"With all due respect, I don't think you're looking at the situation entirely clearly," Sid said.
Joe had forgotten how stubborn Sid was, but he wasn't about to back down. He wasn't about to risk Sid. "All of you stay here until I give you the signal."
"You know, I'm actually the one of us with the most practice at being sneaky," Luka said, on top of Doc insisting that his being the quickest out of all of them meant that he was the best choice for a lookout while Ahim made a case for being a trained observer. Even Gai insisted that his injury would give them the element of surprise, if there actually turned out to be a trap on the other side of the door.
"All of you be quiet," Joe snapped again, and that was when the Dogormin started firing. The crew scattered, Luka pulling Gai out of the line of fire by his good arm. Sid ran straight towards them, brandishing his borrowed blade, and Joe had no choice but to follow.
In retrospect, the fact that the Dogormin had split up – something Joe had never seen them do before – was the only reason neither of them were killed or even maimed during the all-but-suicidal charge. Sid batted away the blasts from the single Dogormin's staff as it fired, leaving Joe clear to launch an all-out assault. Behind the Dogormin were swarms of Gormin sailors, but Joe couldn't afford to take his eyes off the Dogormin for a microsecond. He heard the distinctive sound of the Gokai Guns from behind him, and had to trust that his crew would keep the Gormin out of the way.
"Sid," Joe called, not looking at the other man. "Technique." He hoped Sid would interpret that the way Joe had meant it – a few seconds of breathing room for Joe to set up the technique he'd learned from Sid – and tossed Doc's Sabre over to Sid.
"Gotcha," Sid called back, and since Joe hadn't heard the Sabre hit the floor, he assumed Sid had it. A quick glance a bare second later proved him right, when Sid started pressing hard and the Dogormin diverted most of its attention to the new threat.
Joe stepped back, form and position perfect, and pushed energy through his Sabre the way Sid had taught him. The air glowed in an arc, and Sid leapt clear just before Joe brought the Sabre across the inscribed arc and sent the whole mess rocketing toward the Dogormin.
The bodyguard was unprepared, taking the blast full on the chest. Joe tried to duck under the resulting explosion, but the edge of the shockwave still knocked him into the wall. Sid pulled him back out of it, limping a little and wincing.
"Where's everyone else?" Joe asked. His voice sounded muffled in his own ears, barely audible over the ringing.
"Fine," Sid said, apparently having the same trouble.
The other four had managed to reach something resembling cover, and no one was in any worse shape than they had been before Joe nearly blew a hole in the freighter. As though the thought had been an omen, the bulkhead above them cracked. Joe cursed, and his crewmates looked up almost in unison to see the crack widen as air started to vent.
"Move it!" Sid shouted, in the tone he'd used on new recruits back when he and Joe had been assigned to the same unit, and the six of them bolted for the open door. Joe felt the tug of rushing air growing stronger, swiftly reaching almost hurricane-like speed, and he crossed the threshold.
"The door," Ahim said, but Doc was already bent over the panel. Luka stood between him and the door, sheltering him as best she could from the gale-force winds while the rest of them clung to the wall. The heavy blast door finally rolled shut, cutting off the sound of the wind. Joe's ears hurt, feeling both raw and as though they were full of cotton, and he couldn't shake the sense that the room was revolving slowly around him.
"This may complicate matters," Sid said.
"I don't know how many doors are open," Doc said, taking the statement at face value. "But it'll take time for the air to entirely leak out." He paused. "We'd die way before that, though."
"Then we should move quickly." Joe had caught the gist of what Doc had said only by watching his lips closely; he could barely hear anything out of his left ear and the right wasn't much better. He reached toward his ear, with the intent of cleaning it out, but Ahim caught his hand. He frowned at her, and she touched her finger lightly to the skin just below his ear. It came away bloody. Joe stifled a groan.
There was little to no point in trying to maintain a formation at this point; Joe just made sure Gai was in the middle of the group and set Luka in front for the simple reason that she'd been through at least part of the engineering section and had the best shot of leading them toward the command decks. That Luka also wasn't struggling with a lingering sense of vertigo also helped.
No part of it was going to be that easy, Joe discovered when they found the other Dogormin. It was guarding what Ahim thought was the most direct route of access to the bridge, and by some miracle of either luck or appropriately attentive crew members, it didn't see them before they saw it. Joe was fairly sure it hadn't seen them at all, given the lack of assault happening as they skulked around a corner.
"Go around?" he said. Ahim shook her head.
"We have to move past that point no matter what route we take," she said. "Unless we wanted to move through the walls." She didn't have to say that Gai wasn't going to be able to do the climbing and crawling necessary for the maintenance tunnel route, or that Sid's limp had gotten worse enough to probably take him out of the running as well.
"No," Joe said. "We need a distraction." He thought for a moment. "What can we make explode?"
The answer to that question turned out to be a lot. The answer to what they could blow up without cracking the ship's hull again was a much shorter list, and the hastily-laid plan eventually involved leaving Joe to wait with Gai and Sid while Doc took Luka and Ahim off to break something in the most flamboyant manner possible while not actually being in its immediate vicinity. Joe stiffened when the question of splitting up came up again, but Gai wasn't going to move quickly enough, and neither was Sid. Joe himself wasn't at a hundred percent; he had to finally admit that the vertigo wasn't improving.
The plan went off with barely a hitch, the Dogormin sending Gormin sailors and then following itself when not one but a series of explosions sounded from somewhere below the deck. Joe felt them more than heard them, and wasn't sure that it wasn't all in his head until he saw both Sid and Gai reacting to the vibration. It had barely faded when the door the Dogormin had been guarding squeaked open and Doc wriggled out. Luka and Ahim followed, Ahim somehow managing to keep her skirts straight while climbing through a hole barely larger than she was.
"Now," Luka hissed, and Joe saw an actual lift descending. It stopped, level with the floor, and Sid pulled both him and Gai forward. Ahim tugged Gai's good arm over her shoulder, guiding him onto the lift, and Sid yanked Joe upright when he staggered. The lift doors closed on a corridor almost entirely free of Gormin sailors and rocketed upwards.
The sense of motion made the dizziness worse, and Joe stumbled sideways into Sid with a groan that he couldn't suppress. Pain he could handle; not knowing which way was up was pure hell. Sid kept him grounded until the lift slowed, and Joe kept his eyes fixed on the hole in Sid's jacket, which at least wasn't visibly moving. The lift coming to a halt nearly sent him to the ground again, but once it wasn't moving, he felt remarkably steady.
The bridge was as overly bright as the rest of the hallways had been, and as Joe belatedly noticed the lift had not been, light spilling through the door as it slid open. Nothing hostile came through the open doors. After a few seconds, Doc and Luka went out, cautiously, and Luka beckoned for the rest of them to follow. Gai was leaning on Ahim, but his eyes were alert and he held his borrowed weapon steadily. Joe stepped away from Sid, and gravity played no tricks on him.
"No Zangyack," Don reported unnecessarily.
Joe nodded; now that they were on the bridge, he could see that it was entirely empty. There was no Zangyack ambush, but there was also no Marvelous. He pushed down the tightening knot in his guts; just because Marvelous wasn't on the bridge didn't mean that something was wrong, but Marvelous' failure to answer the Mobilate was making it hard for him to convince himself of it. "Is the Galleon docked?" he asked; the plan had been for Marvelous to tether the Galleon to the bridge, initially.
"Present and accounted for," Don reported. "No sign of any Zangyack ships, either."
That had been Joe's second question; whether the Zangyack had been already aboard or if they'd come later. No sooner had it been answered than he was trying to reach Marvelous' Mobilate again. This time, the distinctive ring came from both the speaker in Joe's own Mobilate and from a corner, almost underneath a console. Ahim fished out the ringing Mobilate, and Joe slowly lowered his own and shut it off. Marvelous wouldn't have left his Mobilate behind of his own volition.
There was no further sign of Marvelous on the bridge; no scraps of clothing or bodily fluids, no dents or scorch marks in the walls, no signs of a fight at all. Marvelous' weapons were also nowhere to be seen, and Joe didn't know if that was comforting or not.
"We make sure the Galleon is secure," he said. "Then we find Marvelous."
No one was happy about that, but Joe needed to make sure his injured teammates were safe. Luka and Ahim accompanied him onto the Galleon, which was as empty as they'd left it. Navi was nowhere to be seen, but Joe filed that under Problems To Be Solved Later. A vague sense of disappointment crept over him as Joe determined that Marvelous hadn't gone over to the Galleon for some reason, either.
Convincing Gai to stay on the Galleon required verbal footwork that Joe had no talent for; it ended up being Ahim who told Gai that keeping the Galleon safe was his responsibility. From Gai's expression, he knew perfectly well that she was only saying that to save face, and accepted it with ill grace. Joe tried the same on Sid, whose limp hadn't improved during the Galleon reconnaissance trip. Most of the hearing had returned to Joe's right ear, at least, which he felt was more than enough reason for him to ignore the fact that his left ear still felt stuffed with cotton.
"I'm coming with you," Sid said. "You're going to need all the help you can get."
"I'm not trying to sideline you," Joe said, frustrated, although that was exactly what he was trying to do. He wanted Sid on the Galleon, safe, where the Zangyack couldn't take him away again. That staying out of any sort of confrontation ran counter to Sid's nature was irrelevant, at least until they'd gotten away from this nightmare of a freighter and blown it to smithereens.
"Yes, you are." Sid was implacable, if calm. "If any part of this is going to work, Joe, you need to use the resources you have. That includes me."
Joe could see the rest of his crew over Sid's shoulder, studiously pretending not to pay attention to the no doubt at least partially audible conversation. Doc was running some sort of check on Gai, and Luka and Ahim were nominally watching, but they kept glancing over toward Joe. "I don't think you can keep up," Joe said, bluntly. "I know you're trying to hide another injury."
"Straight to the point, as always," Sid said. The fact that he'd shifted most of his weight off the injured leg was not lost on Joe. "I'm not going to slow you down."
"Please, Sid." There were more words that wanted to tumble out, and Joe snapped his mouth shut before he could tell Sid how badly it had hurt when he'd died. "Please stay here."
Sid blinked, the tension draining out of his posture, and he made an aborted movement toward Joe. "Okay," he said, finally. "You want me to make sure no one comes aboard, right?"
"Yes," Joe said, and was surprised to find moisture spilling down one cheek. He rubbed his eyes, hastily, averting his face from everyone.
"I'm not going anywhere," Sid said. "So, me and the kid from – where, now? Earth? We'll stay here. The rest of you go find your captain."
"You, Gai, and Doc," Joe said. "I need him to keep an eye on ship's systems. And on Gai."
"Gai's going to need actual medical attention, sooner rather than later," Sid said. "I don't count, and I don't think Doc there does either. How do you not have a trained medic on your team?"
Joe blinked, and then shrugged. "It never came up?" he offered, although his memory threw several instances in which having someone with more than basic first aid training would have been useful at him.
"Right." Sid snorted a laugh. "Go find your captain, Joe."
Doc argued much less about being told to stay behind; something about wanting to make sure the Galleon's systems hadn't been compromised and also search for Navi. Sid took up a guard position on the Galleon's top deck, making it perfectly clear that he wasn't about to go anywhere until Joe and the others returned. Joe waved, just slightly, as they returned to the freighter.
The three of them went in wearing armor, this time; they knew there was at least one Dogormin bodyguard waiting, and an unknown number of Gormin sailors. Transforming aboard the Galleon shouldn't affect the freighter, Doc thought. The familiar blue gave Joe a sense of steadiness as they re-entered the freighter's airlock, although it felt weirdly like something was missing. He checked for his weapons, but they were present and accounted for, and he pushed the feeling aside.
The airlock hissed open.
Despite Joe's expectations, the airlock was not full of Gormin sailors. He led the other two through it, trying to maintain some modicum of stealth. Then again, given the bright yellow, pink, and blue of their various suits, stealth was more or less off the table. The bridge was still bright and empty, Marvelous not hiding in any the few shadows. The few small rooms off to the side of the bridge were empty as well, if just as brightly lit.
The lift sat as they'd left it, door propped wide open. Joe ignored it entirely; there was the confidence that came with wearing armor that made them all more resistant to injury, and then there was blatant stupidity. He opted to avoid the latter, particularly when Luka found the hatch to a maintenance tunnel or an air vent or something that led them downwards without being a giant red flag for the hunting Zangyack.
Narrow maintenance tunnels notwithstanding, the bright lights were starting to bother Joe. He distinctly remembered the lighting being poor when they'd first boarded. There had been spaces completely without illumination, and he knew the corridors had been partially lit at best. At some point, the freighter had flipped a switch from dim to a star's corona, and he wasn't sure exactly when it had happened.
"Second level," Ahim whispered from behind him, and Joe eyed the access hatch. There was no way of telling if there were Zangyack behind it without alerting said Zangyack to their presence if they were there.
The clear solution was to roll out, metaphorical guns blazing, as soon as the hatch slid open enough for him to fit. Joe fetched up against the far wall of the corridor, in a crouch, Gokai Gun aimed at precisely nothing. Behind him was also nothing, which made him feel slightly ridiculous. Ridiculous, he thought, was still better than dead.
Ahim exited with much more dignity, followed by Luka's enthusiastic boots on the corridor floor. "How many?" Joe asked.
"Four, including the bridge," Ahim returned, which meant another three decks' worth of rooms and corridors to search. Joe was beginning to hate this freighter with every fiber of his being.
The first of the three decks turned up empty rooms with no purpose that Joe could see or wanted to expend mental energy on figuring out. He almost wanted to run into a Gormin patrol, just so he could ask it what it had done with Marvelous.
The second deck granted him his wish, with the first hint that the Gormin had found them being the staff that skated across Joe's chest and sent him half a step backwards. He grinned behind the visor of his helmet and returned the favor. The single Gormin went down, but there was a corridor's worth of its comrades behind it.
Joe barely saw Luka and Ahim exchanging weapons before the sound of Ahim's pistols rang in his one good ear and he joined Luka in rushing forward. The narrow confines of the corridor worked to their advantage; the Gormin couldn't surround them, as long as they could hold their ground, and Ahim was a good enough shot to thin the herd from behind them. Joe appreciated her marksmanship almost as much as he appreciated not being hit with friendly fire every time a Gormin flinched back without being struck by a Gokai Sabre.
The supply of Gormin ran out, after a while, and Joe thought they'd managed to handle the squad until he saw that they were just falling back to allow a trio of Dogormin to advance. His first thought was that the surviving member of the pair that had been hunting them earlier should have had the decency to approach them on its own to avenge its partner, and his second was pain as all three Dogormin fired their lances simultaneously and he didn't dodge quite fast enough.
Blood trickled over his tongue from where he'd bitten it when he fell. Joe swallowed instinctively as he stood; the only chance they had was to rush the three Dogormin. There was no way they were used to fighting as a trio, and if they could take advantage of the odd man out, they might have a shot. The plan seemed to be working, up until the remaining two Dogormin stepped over the body of the third in unison and Joe realized that removing metaphorical odd man out had only given them a pair of Dogormin perfectly suited to working together. Ahim was on his left, Luka on his right, and the three of them fell slowly back as the pair of Dogormin advanced.
"Ready?" Joe asked, and felt rather than heard an affirmative from both of his teammates.
Before they could move to attack, both Dogormin stiffened and fell, the resulting explosion knocking the armor right off of Joe but somehow not cracking the hull of the freighter. Blinking smoke out of his eyes, Joe looked to Luka and Ahim. Luka gave him a shaky smile and Ahim nodded that she was all right, and the three of them turned their attention to whoever was standing behind the burning remnants of the Dogormin bodyguards.
"Did you miss me?" The words, drawled out in a familiarly sharp voice, sent a frisson of relief crackling through Joe's chest. Marvelous stepped forward, his Gokai Gun spinning on one hand and his Sabre propped up over his other shoulder.
"Marvelous!" Joe couldn't say anything else. His captain stepped forward, boots crunching the ash of the Dogormin into the deck.
"You don't happen to have my Mobilate?" Marvelous asked, holstering the Gokai Gun, and Joe couldn't answer. His throat seemed to have closed itself off.
Luka produced it with a flourish, and Marvelous all but snatched it out of her hands. It took him several seconds to acknowledge Luka's almost-irate "Where have you been?"
"I ran into a little trouble," Marvelous said finally, swinging the Sabre down. He stuck the point in the deck and leaned on it nonchalantly, but Joe could see the bloodstains in his white shirt. The coat hid a lot, but not everything. "Nothing I couldn't handle." His gaze sharpened. "Where are the others?"
"On the Galleon," Joe finally got out. "Gai's hurt," he added, and Marvelous' gaze sharpened even more.
"How badly?"
"We should find a hospital," Ahim said tactfully, and Marvelous' lips thinned.
"Everyone back to the Galleon," he said.
The lift wasn't working, which meant yet another ladder. Vertigo slid through Joe as he stepped out onto the first rung, and Marvelous' face tightened even more.
"I'm fine," Joe said, trying to reassure him. Marvelous did not look placated, and Joe couldn't blame him. From Marvelous' point of view, an attempted rescue had led them all into a Zangyack trap and gotten multiple crew members hurt with no tangible gain to show for it. Then again, maybe cleaning up a Zangyack patrol unit was enough of a tangible gain in Marvelous' eyes.
"Then climb," Marvelous said. He'd insisted on going last, and Joe knew he wasn't going to win that argument. Making it would have insulted Marvelous, so Joe hadn't even tried. Instead, he tried to keep a wary eye on both Luka and Ahim above him and Marvelous below, and the tightness in his chest didn't loosen until they'd all reached the top deck and the airlock.
"Didn't we plan a cascade failure?" Luka asked, and from the glint in his eyes, Marvelous got it immediately.
The four of them stood as far apart as the airlock allowed, and initiated the Gokai Change. Disappointingly, nothing happened. The lights continued to shine overly brightly, and the freighter showed precisely zero signs of premature explosion.
"Cannons," Marvelous said, after several anti-climactically quiet moments. "We have cannons."
"Before we –" Joe started, and Marvelous' head swung around to face him. It was a little eerie, seeing the helmet's visor and not being able to read Marvelous' expression. Joe pressed ahead. "There's someone on board the Galleon I think you should meet."
"Who did you bring on board my ship?" Marvelous asked, and Joe was suddenly glad he couldn't see Marvelous' face.
"I found Sid," he said, trying and failing to keep the note of pleading out of his voice. "He was – he was hooked up to some sort of machine." Joe's voice cracked halfway through, but he pushed the words out. "I couldn't leave him in there."
"You found Sid," Marvelous said flatly.
Joe nodded.
"And then you left him on my ship, with an injured crewmate," Marvelous continued.
"He's hurt, too," Joe said. "I couldn't let him come back out here. I just got him back, Marvelous."
"Everyone back to the Galleon," Marvelous said, and Joe remembered that Ahim and Luka were right there in the airlock with them.
Sid was exactly where Joe had left him, on the deck. He stood to attention when Marvelous swung on board, looking straight ahead. "Captain," he said.
Marvelous stalked around him, eerily reminiscent of the motions Luka had been making only a few hours before, but where Luka's predatory movements had had a playful edge, Marvelous looked nothing but dangerous. He circled Sid once, looking him up and down, gaze lingering on the drying stain on Sid's jacket. "Sid Bamick," he said.
"Yes, sir." Sid was acting as though Marvelous was his superior officer, and Joe didn't think Marvelous was going to react well to that. "Formerly Zangyack Special Forces, current status, uh, unknown."
"You were Barizorg," Marvelous said.
"So Sid tells me, sir."
"Knock that off." There was a definite growl in Marvelous' voice. "I'm not your commanding officer, so you can just stow it."
"Yes, uh, okay." Sid's posture didn't change, no matter what he said verbally.
"Joe found you in a machine." Marvelous had apparently decided that Sid wasn't an immediate threat; he let the transformation go and waved Ahim and Luka inside with a "Don't forget the cannons!" He waved at Joe to go inside as well, but Joe was having none of it.
"He did."
"What sort of machine?" Marvelous' question was underscored by the roar of the Galleon's cannons firing round after round into the freighter. As the Galleon slowly drifted away from the wreck, it exploded into a briefly flashing fireball and then crumpled in on itself.
"Um." Sid looked nonplussed, a first since the conversation with Marvelous had started. "It was a virtual reality simulator, I think. I thought… I thought the Empire had – it doesn't matter what it showed me. Joe pulled me out of it."
"A simulator," Marvelous said flatly, skepticism pouring off him in waves. "You were in this –" he waved a hand dismissively "- this simulator for who knows how long, just waiting for Joe to stumble across you, while the Zangyack went to all the trouble of making a copy of your mind and putting it into Barizorg. Why? Why wouldn't they just use you to begin with?"
"I can't really – I'm not privy to the command decisions," Sid said. "I was a soldier. I just went where I was told. But I can speculate," he added, when Marvelous opened his mouth again. Marvelous gestured for him to continue. "If my skills were valuable enough to copy onto the cyborg, Barizorg, it's possible that they wanted to be able to recreate it in case the first one was destroyed."
Marvelous looked thoughtful. "I see. And yet, when Joe killed Barizorg, we didn't get another one."
"Marvelous," Joe said, and Marvelous looked at him as though he hadn't realized Joe was still there. "We killed Zaien," Joe said. "It's possible that no one else could have done what he did."
"So why not just let Sid die?" Marvelous eyed the two of them. "Drain on resources to keep him alive and locked in a dream."
Sid shrugged. "I have no idea," he said. "I'm glad they didn't, but I have no idea what their end game was."
"Uh huh." Marvelous looked him up and down once more, slowly. "Well, come on, then, we're jumping to light speed in a few seconds, and it won't be pretty out here when we do."
Joe blinked; how could Marvelous even tell, he thought. Sid limped through the door after Joe, and Marvelous pulled it shut behind them.
"You can engage the engines," Marvelous called, and Joe felt the ship leap out of normal space. He followed Marvelous into the common area, where Gai was sprawled shirtless across half the couch while Ahim fussed over his side. Luka and Doc were nowhere to be seen, and Joe assumed they were on the bridge. Luka emerged from one of the doors leading to that direction a few minutes later and nodded.
"Doc's steering us toward the nearest G.U.P. outpost," she said. Marvelous made a face. Luka steamrolled right over it before any matching words could be said. "They have medical facilities," she said. "Which we need right now."
"Fine." Marvelous flung himself into his customary chair, trying to pretend he wasn't sulking.
"How long?" Joe asked.
Luka shrugged. "Depends on how much speed Doc can get out of the engines," she said. "He wants to give the Galleon a full overhaul, or at least the electric components. He still thinks something was sabotaged."
"Joe, a word." Marvelous bounded to his feet again and made for the stairs. Joe followed, Sid taking a hesitant step after them. "Not you," Marvelous said. "You stay here. All of you, stay here." He paused. "Where's the bird?"
"Navi's, uh, we found him on the bridge, but he's out of order," Luka said. "Doc's working on him, too."
"Is Doc the only one around here who does anything?" Marvelous asked, but he didn't seem to be looking for an answer. "Joe. Come on."
Marvelous led him to one of the corridors in the lower sections of the ship, below the living quarters, but above the storage for the rest of the mecha, when it transformed. He leaned against a wall, arms crossed, one foot planted firmly on the ground and one resting on the wall behind him.
"So," he said. "Your friend."
"Yes," Joe said.
"Seems awfully convenient," Marvelous said. "For him to show up like that, out of nowhere."
"Sometimes luck works for us," Joe said.
"Do you think…" Marvelous hesitated for a moment, which was so unlike him that Joe wanted to say anything at all to make it stop. "Do you think he's still human?" Marvelous asked. "That this is his original body?"
Joe hadn't considered that possibility. "He bleeds," he offered, although that wasn't entirely proof. "We can have the G.U.P. run a full check on him, see if anything turns up."
"Yeah," Marvelous said. "We'll do that." He paused again, chewing at a thumbnail. Something had really rattled him, and Joe didn't think it was that a former friend had appeared out of the blue. "Was the Empire really capable of subconscious brainwashing?" he asked, finally.
"You mean, is he a sleeper agent?" Joe hadn't considered that either. "I think," he said, after a moment, "that those were just rumors. Everything the Zangyack did to brainwash their subjects was out in the open. They didn't try to hide what they were doing."
"No need for it," Marvelous agreed. "And we weren't enough on their radar, then."
"No," Joe said. "No, we weren't." Creating Sid as a sleeper agent would have been far too high a commitment of resources for far too little a reward, when Sid had first been reprogrammed – no, copied. Whatever was bothering Marvelous was still there, and Joe frowned at him. "Spit it out," he said.
"What?" Marvelous yanked his thumb away from his mouth. "You're still mine," he said, but the words lacked conviction. "Even if he's come back. You're still mine."
Joe leaned forward and kissed him lightly. "Sid coming back doesn't mean I'm not yours," he said.
"Good." Marvelous pinned him to the wall in one smooth movement, his face full of something Joe later identified as relief, and demonstrated exactly what he thought of that sentiment. Eventually, he pulled away, smug, and Joe leaned into him.
"I have to talk to you about Sid," he said into Marvelous' shoulder, and Marvelous froze.
"I told you," he said carefully, "that you could bring your own crew on board when you joined. Is that what you want with Sid?"
"It used to be," Joe said, straightening. He was too close to the wall to back away far enough. "But now, I don't know."
"Joe," Marvelous said, searching his face. "If you want your own crew, that's fine." He paused. "Of course, they'd also have to be my crew. You might want to have a talk with him."
"He already kissed me," Joe blurted out. "I didn't stop him."
Marvelous sighed. "Stop waffling and go figure out what you want so you can come back and tell me," he said, with an air of infinite patience, as if he'd repeated the same thing over, and over. Come to think of it, he'd made the same offer to each of them when they'd come aboard. The man was unreal.
"However it works out, I'm still – I'm still part of your crew," Joe said, hating that he wanted the reassurance enough to ask for it, but unable not to.
"Joe Gibken," Marvelous said. "You're mine until the minute you tell me no." He peeled Joe off the wall and shoved him toward the stairs. "And now we have other things to take care of."
The rest of the crew and Sid were perched in an uncomfortable silence when Marvelous and Joe re-emerged; Ahim had made tea at some point and Gai had put his shirt back on, but as far as Joe could tell, Luka hadn't actually moved away from the console at any point. Doc was fiddling with Navi, and was the only one not to look up at the sound of footsteps.
Joe laid a hand on Sid's shoulder. "Everything's fine," he said quietly.
"You know he doesn't get a Mobilate," Marvelous said, spinning on one heel and pointing at Sid.
"You don't have another Mobilate," Joe said.
"Hn." Marvelous looked at them both for a long moment, and Joe felt Sid start to squirm just slightly, although his face remained impassive. Marvelous grinned, and turned his attention to Doc. "Are we there yet?"
"We should be coming up on the outpost in a few minutes," Doc said. "I called ahead. Gavan's not there, but they're expecting us."
"That's too bad," Marvelous said, and he actually sounded if he meant it. "I would have liked to catch up with the old man. Show off the new prize."
"Prize?" Sid said, stumbling over the word, until he realized Marvelous was poking fun at him. "I'll show you prize," he said.
Marvelous laughed. "I can see why Joe likes you," he said. "Don't think you're getting out of going to medical, though, if you're where Joe learned that little trick."
"You're one to talk," Joe retorted.
"I actually heal quickly," Marvelous said, loftily. "Unlike some people I could name."
"You also stabbed your Gokai Sabre through your own foot, just to make a point," Joe said.
Marvelous wiggled the foot in question, which had healed cleanly and without lasting aftereffects. "And look at it now."
"Might I suggest the captain also undergo an examination," Sid said, absolutely deadpan. "You're bleeding again. Under the jacket."
"Dammit." Marvelous looked down and pulled his coat aside to reveal a fresh stain slowly spreading over his white shirt. "You've got good eyes," he said with grudging respect.
"Ah, no," Sid said, and gestured to Joe. "It's on his shirt."
"I think I like him," Marvelous said, leaning forward. "Can he cook, too?"
"He can't even boil water," Joe said blandly.
Sid shrugged apologetically. "I can bake," he offered. "But so can Joe, and he's better at it."
"Bah." Marvelous twisted to stare out the window, just in time for the G.U.P. outpost to come into view. "Okay, everyone off. Everyone. I let you lot out of my sight for five minutes, and I come back to broken bones and concussions."
"But I'm –" Luka started.
"Everyone," Marvelous said, staring her down.
Joe hid a smile. Even if the freighter had been a bust in terms of its crew or cargo, he was deeply glad they'd found it; it had given him a chance at more happiness than he would have thought possible, and he wasn't going to let that go.