"Um, Skat?"
"Yes?"
Nuala fiddles with the hem of her shirt. "Can I talk to you?"
"Sure coz. Sit down. You can give me a hand."
She obediently picks up a screwdriver, but doesn't move to use it. He pauses, looking up at her from the mess of wires tangled across the bench.
"What's the problem?"
"I'm . . . worried about Raven."
"Why?"
"I took him to see Tristan, like you suggested."
"Did Tristan freak him? It's hardly a rare occurrence."
"He did more than freak him. It's like . . . " she reaches for a half finished component and begins to reattach the casing. "He went all woozy. Tristan asked him about the plant, then was asking if he knew the name of the 'dream'. And then Raven said, the Matrix."
Skat wrinkles his nose. "The Matrix? What did he mean?"
"I don't know."
"Hm," Skat teases one strand of copper from the rest of the tangle as he thinks. "We don't have any runs to do for the next few weeks, so it might be best to just keep an eye on him here. Show him around."
"What if he goes funny again?"
"Get Luther to check him out. But I guess there's no knowing exactly what may happen."
~~~
Trying to find someone to talk to the next morning, the first person Raven comes across is Bluey. The redhead is alone at the table in the mess hall, methodically eating breakfast.
"Uh, hi."
She looks up briefly, nods, and then goes back to eating.
"Can I sit here?"
Another look up, another nod.
"Thanks."
He slides onto the bench beside her. She passes him a glance, then after a pause, a hard biscuit. "You haven't eaten have you?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"I'm not really hungry."
"Doesn't matter. I'm never hungry. This stuff would kill any appetite. But I still eat it."
He shrugs, taking a hunk out of the hard brown biscuit. He tries not to grimace, and asks through a mouthful; "These aren't stale are they?"
"They don't go stale. It's much the same recipe as the stuff they fed the soldiers in World War One."
"They had some of those biscuits in the war memorial. They were eighty something years old and still in perfect condition."
"So make sure you chew those properly."
Raven looks back to the biscuit with a worried expression. "Right."
Bluey turns her head to him for a moment, as if weighing him up. Then she smiles and goes back to eating.
"When is the ship going out again?"
"Not for a while. There's no work that's not being done already. Why?"
"I wanted to go back to the plant," he says it all in one breath, staring at the dented tabletop.
"Why?"
"I, I want to see if I get back in."
"You've had your holiday and now you want to go home?"
"No," he shakes his head, glancing around him. No one else is in earshot. "It's what Tristan did, he asked if I could do whatever I wanted to in the Ma - the dream. I told him I never tried."
"What makes you think you can get back in, even if you can make it back to the plant itself?"
"I woke up didn't I? Maybe I can just go back to sleep."
She turns her shoulder, scraping the bottom of her bowl for the last dregs of gruel. "So if you get in, what are you going to do?"
He smiles before answering, "Fly."
~~~
"He wants to do what?"
Bluey calmly repeats herself. "He wants to go back to the plant."
Skat frowns at his second in command from behind his tiny desk. "Is the boy crazy?"
"I don't believe so."
"Maybe whatever Tristan has is contagious."
"Raven isn't crazy. I've never seen anyone so dead serious before in my life."
"Why does he want to go back?"
"He wants to see if he can get back into the plant, into a pod. He said he wants to see if he can dream again."
"In the Matrix."
"Did he call the dream that?"
"According to Nuala, yeah."
Bluey says nothing, just waits as Skat rakes fingers through dark hair. After a pause he looks up at her again.
"What outpost is closest to where we found them?"
"Echo."
"What outpost that's still inhabited."
"Opera. Why?"
Skat ducks his head, leaning elbows on the metal table. "They'd be in need of a supply run, wouldn't they? Or a change in crew?"
"Last time we ran through Mirror mentioned something about more blankets. They're the closest settlement to the surface now, and it's freezing up there."
"That'll do."
Bluey places her hands on the desk, shifting her weight forward. "You mean to let him go back to the plant?"
"What's your opinion then, if mine's so stupid?" Skat flicks hair out of his eyes and glares at her.
"It's not my place to have an opinion, captain. All I'm saying is that this could either be a momentous leap forward in our chances of winning the war, or suicide."
He stands up, folding his arms. "Blue. I know the dangers involved in any supply run are doubled by going up to Opera. But this might just be worth it, even if the kid is insane."
"Raven is not crazy," she insists quietly, stepping around his desk. "I think he knows exactly what he's doing with going back to the plant."
Skat relaxes a little, smiles when he says, "I thought you didn't have an opinion on this?"
She shrugs. "You need my opinion right now."
A short lil filler chapter. Sorry.