To Leonardo's relief, the warning klaxon fell silent halfway through the airlock cycle. Fifty percent gravity flashed up on the screen. By the time the airlock had cycled through, their headsets announced full gravity in one minute.
It was a relief to walk across the hangar to the suit cupboard, a relief to shrug off the sweaty coveralls and hang them up in the cleaner.
"Man, I need a shower," said Mikey, holding his arms away from his body.
He wasn't the only one, thought Leo, catching the sour smell coming off his body, a combination of sweat and fear and the suit's disinfectants. "You first. I want to get a status report from Donnie."
Mikey held up his hands as if warding off trouble. "Ooh, you need backup, bro?"
"I'm good." Leo forced himself to smile, wishing Mikey hadn't said that. He knew why he had; humour was Mikey's way of defusing tension, his defense against this whole drama, but Donnie was on comms like the rest of them, and Leo didn't think Donnie would find it funny. Once it would have been funny. Not so much, these days. "Raph, are you okay?"
"Yeah. Mikey can take over when he gets out of the shower."
The lights came on as Leo made his way to the engine room. The little light pets still pulsed in clusters on the hull. He passed through the door to the engine room. Donnie sat on the floor, surrounded by wires, reading something off a handpad.
"We up and running again?"
Donnie didn't glance up. "Yeah. Reactor's stable. We've got power."
"Life support?" He could hear the ventilators working, but wanted to confirm.
"You know there's a screen behind you. You can look all this up."
Leo bit back an angry retort. "I wanted to check in with you and make sure there weren't any issues."
Donnie shuffled his shoulders, an irritable gesture that meant go away, Leo.
Normally he would. But today, today something had broken. Today he wanted to push. Maybe it was the residual adrenaline, maybe he was just fucking tired. "So? Any issues?"
Donnie slammed down the pliers he was holding. "Well the engine is now dead, and I don't know why. And we're lost. How are you going with that, anyway?"
"I left the nav comp running a search-"
"Well maybe you should go check on that." Donnie turned his back and picked up the pliers again in a tacit dismissal.
Leo left, swallowing bitter resentment. It's not easy for me, either, he wanted to say. But they'd gone past fighting. He'd tried to explain his reasons, tried to make Donnie understand. But Donnie, who was normally so logical, was blind to every argument except the one that mattered to him. Twelve hundred dead civilians.
Leo stopped and leaned on the wall of the cargo bay, the weight of twelve hundred lives crushing the breath from him. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was imagining the screams. The faces. That hadn't really happened. Nothing had come over comms when the torpedo swarm had destroyed the Featherlight. It was only after, in the dark, that he imagined their deaths.
Leo waited until he could breathe again and pushed off the wall. In the tiny shower he used his full day's water quota, scrubbing his skin clean and then standing under the hot water, just letting it fall, watching it swirl down the drain, trying not to think. Find out where they were. Get the engine running. Go home. He repeated the three phrases over and over in his head, like a mantra, using them to focus his mind away from regrets and unforgiving brothers.
Out in the tiny room that served as kitchen, dining room and living area for the four of them, Raphael worked up a sweat with a set of hand weights, paranoid about losing muscle and bone mass in the ship's low gravity environment.
Leo reached into their store and pulled out an energy drink with shaking hands. He hated the fake taste, but he needed sugar badly.
Raphael leaned his elbow on his thigh, bending forward to get full extension on his bicep curls. "Rough walk?"
"Yeah." Leo dropped into a seat, tired in shell and bone.
Grunt. "Thought that thing was going to attack." Grunt. "Glad it didn't."
"Me, too." Leo's fingers trembled. He squeezed them into a fist to mask the shaking. "Did the nav comp find out where we are?"
"Not yet." Raphael paused mid-curl, his voice pitched low. "Do you want me to talk to Donnie?"
"No." Raphael charging into their conflict, verbal guns cocked and ready to fire, was the last thing he wanted. "No, it's my fault, I'll deal with it." What would it take? How much more could the bonds of brotherhood stretch before they broke completely?
Raphael shifted the weight to his other hand. "Jacquie from the Salvation came to see me before we left the base. Said she'd heard a rumour that Donnie was looking for a new ship."
Leo's heart sank. "What did you say?"
"I told her Donnie wasn't going anywhere."
Leo drained the last of the energy drink and shoved the empty container in the trash. "Maybe he is looking for a new ship."
"He can't leave."
"I can't stop him."
"You fucking have to stop him." Raphael dug into his curls. "He's our brother, he's not fucking leaving."
An sharp cry came over comms. Leo and Raph leaped to their feet. "Mikey?" Leo asked.
"Wasn't me!"
"Donnie," said Raph. He took off, Leo at his heels.
"We've got a problem!" Donnie's voice through the speakers was hoarse and gasping. "Look out! Watch-"
"Donnie?"
Silence.
