The captain stopped by the cargo bay every time she got back from a mission. She'd chat with Parvati, listen with endless patience to her rambling about a certain engineer on the Groundbreaker (which she was doing a little less of, now), and drop a compliment or two that would brighten her day.
Once, she'd even pitched in with Nyoka to try to hone her gunmanship. It went like this:
"You're adjusting before you pull. You're anticipating it," Nyoka was saying, patient but firm, as the captain walked in.
Parvati was feeling a little less collected than her tutor. "'Course I'm anticipating it!" she'd cried. "What if I shoot a friend on accident?"
"That's on account of your stance," Nyoka said, gesturing to the stiff, awkward way she was standing. "You want to lean into it. Embrace it. Work with it. You're in control here, Parvati. Not the gun." She sounded much more sure of that than Parvati felt. "Don't let a hunk of metal jerk you around. You've been around powerful machinery all your life, and you're always in control, right?"
Parvati nodded tentatively, thinking, "I guess that's kind of like when the filler's shooting six hundred cans of near molten saltuna cans down the conveyor when I'm trying to tune a belt." And she'd managed that okay. So why was this such a hurdle?
The hunter motioned for her attention and then pointed to her own feet. "Here. Stand like me—just so. Hips square. Lean forward a little." She nodded along as Parvati tried to echo her motions. "It's just equipment and you're just an engineer using it."
Right. Just equipment. Just an engineer. Her words made perfect sense, and Parvati swore she was standing exactly like Nyoka was, but when she pulled the trigger again, the jerk of the gun in her hand still made her yelp. Her bullet went whizzing past the target and struck the bay door with a ping! and Parvati's fear of shooting a friend greatly intensified. She slumped, ashamed of the way her heart pounded and her hands shook. Maybe she wasn't as good an engineer as she'd thought.
Nyoka patted her shoulder comfortingly as she took the pistol back. "We'll try again later. You'll get it. I promise."
Parvati was in the midst of smiling weakly and trying to think of a way to let her down gently when the captain intervened.
"How about one more try?" Captain Danika's voice broke into her thoughts not unpleasantly.
The tall woman drifted over from the doorway, dulled-gold hair catching the ugly cargo bay lighting and making it lovely, and Parvati swallowed dry, thinking of lists and private looks.
"I'll take over if you're in need of a break," the captain offered with a wink at Nyoka that suggested an inside joke of some sort.
"A woman after my own heart," replied the hunter, already swaggering off in the direction of the mess. And, oh. Right. Alcoholism.
Parvati tried not to squirm as she and the captain were left alone together. The shooting practice by itself made her nervous, but having Danika stand so close was doubly nerve-wracking. Especially now that she knew exactly why the captain got her nerves in such a tizzy. "I don't know, Captain," she floundered, "I just—it's real scary, having this sort of power just sittin' in my hand. I know it's basically the same as any machine, but—"
"It's different when it could hurt someone besides yourself," said the captain, as if she could somehow read Parvati's thoughts easier than Parvati could.
"I—yeah. You hit the nail on the head, Cap'n. How'd you know?"
"I worked in a factory, before—" Danika stopped herself. "Well, before. Got pretty good at working on machines that could take my head off if I so much as breathed wrong near 'em." She pulled her favorite pistol from her belt, a pretty thing with a long, carved barrel, and regarded it thoughtfully. "Not so different from one of these, once you think about it. Except the part where you have to use it on other people."
"I don't want to hurt people," Parvati said in a rush, hoping the captain would understand that, too. Hoping she might give her a pass, tell her, that's okay, you won't have to.
But it wouldn't have been the truth. And she liked to think the captain always told her the truth. "I know," the woman said instead, giving her a gentle smile (one she recognized, now), "but in this mean old world there are mean old people, and sometimes only one of you gets to walk away alive. And I'd like it to be you. So," she spun her pistol around her finger and offered it to Parvati, grip first. "What do you say? Ready to try again?"
"Y-yeah. Okay." Despite her assent, she hesitated before taking the captain's pistol. What if she messed it up somehow? That's silly, she reminded herself, you could just fix it again.
Fixing people, however, was another matter entirely. Which was why Parvati took a deep, steadying breath and faced down the target again exactly the way she'd been shown, because she was not going to shoot any friends today.
Danika sidled up behind her elbow, close enough to give instructions but far enough to avoid any accidental bullet wounds. And, incidentally, close enough to make Parvati's heart start trying to leave her chest. She stubbornly ignored it as Danika began to guide:
"All right, remember what Nyoka said. Hips square. Lean in." She echoed the position Parvati was in, except a hundred times more graceful. "Use your free hand to steady your aim, like this." She displayed the correct placement. Parvati tried to match it, but apparently fell short, because the captain reached over and adjusted her hands a little. The motion was offhand, innocent, but the brush of their fingers was electric.
If the captain felt anything, she didn't show it. "Keep a firm grip and look down the sights," she continued. Her touch slid to Parvati's elbow, gently guiding her aim—and making her flush to the tips of her ears. "Got it?"
Parvati cut a brief glance at the captain, trying to detect any hint that she was flustered, too, but Danika's attention was wholly on the target. Parvati looked ahead again quickly. Focus. She didn't mean anything by it. "Yeah."
Danika stepped back behind her again, removing her face from view. It was easier to focus that way. Her voice was still close by as she said, "Try to loosen up a little, Parvati. You'll absorb the recoil better."
"Never been very good at that, Captain," the engineer chuckled nervously, but she made an effort to force the tension out of her shoulders. Who could blame her for being wound a little tight at a time like this?
Danika laughed, too, and it wasn't unkind. "It's okay. We'll work on it," she said, and dang it if Parvati didn't want to see her expression right then; see whether she was wearing that look because her voice sounded awfully warm and— "Now, eyes on your target," the captain jerked her attention back to the task at hand.
Parvati obeyed, staring down the sights of Danika's delicate pistol, trying to line them up with the target. Trying to remember how she was supposed to hold her hips and shoulders and arms and hands. Trying to breathe under the pressure of her captain's gaze.
"Steady," Danika murmured as if she could read her thoughts, "…and pull."
Bang! The pistol lurched in Parvati's hands, and a bullet hole appeared in the dummy across the room. The shot was wide, only clipping the mannequin's shoulder, but at least she hadn't punched a hole in the bulkhead. Or a person.
Parvati let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She loosened her grip on the pistol, finding her fingers sore from holding so tight, and laughed shakily. She'd done it! She'd successfully fired a pistol on a spaceship without hurting anyone!
On the other hand, she'd hardly even hit the target.
She looked tentatively toward the captain. "How was that?"
"That was great. I'm proud of you," said Danika, genuinely beaming, and Parvati's heart warmed.
"All thanks to you," she said shyly, about to rub her burning neck until she remembered the pistol in her hand. Lamely, she offered it back.
Danika shook her head. "You hold onto it."
"But—" Parvati gaped, "it's yours! It's your favorite!"
"I have another," replied Danika, waving a dismissive hand as she turned toward the door to leave. Just before she crossed the threshold, she stopped and looked over her shoulder, and—there it was. That look. Soft and warm and only ever aimed at her. It only intensified as Danika grinned her crooked grin and added, "Plus, you're my favorite, too."
Parvati was left standing in the middle of the cargo bay like an idiot, the captain's pistol in her limp hand, feeling like she'd been shot through the chest after all.
…
