The ship is a dark, shuddering shell, held together by outdated parts and duratape and willpower. Despite their location on the edge of civilization, she has never felt so vulnerable, so trapped. Malfunctions mount soon after the course is set and their efforts to maintain a defensive posture in the event of an attack prevent them from breaking for a decent meal.
They spread out from each other, trading commands and responses from a distance. She wonders if the entire trip will be like this, separated out of sight despite sharing a cramped space; then wonders if that scenario is preferable to the alternative.
-000-
The first night she sleeps for ten hours and wakes up exhausted.
-000-
The task she has set out to do, an overhaul of the auxiliary power array, is not insignificant. She tries to break it into steps, first this, then that, then the next. She works more slowly than she thought possible, to the point where she has made little progress over the course of several hours.
She discovers that in her current state her fingers are clumsy and frequently ignore the commands from her brain. Turn the nut to the right – the right – and then clamp the cable at a ninety-degree angle. Not that way, the other way. Or maybe the first way was correct.
Her muscles protest at the new exertions required of them. Frustration with her situation boils over and she takes it out on a misbehaving ion converter. She wrenches the unit from its casing and slams her palm into the wall with a curse.
"That's not gonna work." He comes up behind her. "Believe me, I've tried."
"Well, what does work?"
"Here." He holds out his hand and she grudgingly places the unit in it. He helps himself to the flathead turnscrew she was using and pries open a compartment. After slipping a thread of wire under a rigid sleeve, the sleeping converter blinks to life.
She inspects the unit. The idea they are being propelled through deep space due to the interactions between flimsy pieces of metal is both hilarious and terrifying.
"We've got enough things to fix." He turns to go back to his perch under the navigation console. "No sense in breaking anything else."
-000-
The control panel of the power array shorts while she is tending to it. She yelps, shakes her hand, and retreats from the sparking conductor.
"Need a soldering gun?" He materializes in the doorway like the ghost of voyages past.
"What I need," she grits her teeth, "is for something on this ship to work properly."
"Should have made that clear earlier," he says mildly. "After all, the trick to getting things to work is to complain really loudly about them."
"Do you happen to have a soldering gun or was that an empty offer?"
"I got one with your name on it." He reaches into his back pocket and hands her the tool. She inspects it carefully. Worn electrical tape lines the handle but the tip is shiny and well-cared for.
Assuming an air of competence she's not sure she possesses, she fingers the wires from the frayed tips to their housing.
"It's that one." He leans in and points to a strand of yellow. "But I expect they'll all take their turns."
"I'll consider this a practice run, then, for the next time it breaks."
"There you go." He pats the top of control panel affectionately. "After the third time or so, she'll start to grow on you."
-000-
Worn out by the onslaught of faulty machinery, she retires to his cabin with a datapad she found abandoned on a shelf. There are a few texts stored on it that could qualify as light reading and she skims them propped up against a pillow in the dark.
He enters the cabin, pauses, and then ambles over to the bunk.
"Find anything good?"
She doesn't lower the datapad. "Not really."
He seems unsure how to interpret her response or the fact that she's made herself at home on his bunk without asking permission. Feigning tiredness, he lowers himself next to her. She thinks he might embrace her but instead he settles onto his back, hands folded on his stomach. She puts down her reading material, turns to her side facing him, the back of her hand resting near his elbow, and closes her eyes.
The last thing she remembers before falling asleep is the sound of his boots tapping gently together like a restless lullaby.
-000-
Back in the engine room she continues her work on the secondary release valve. Its behavior fluctuates from one extreme to the other, either completely blocking the runoff exhaust or wildly spewing fumes. Make up your mind, she thinks. Pick one or the other.
She starts at the T-junction, cleaning out the layers of soot that have hardened there. The astringent makes her eyes sting and she learns to use it sparingly. After scrubbing out the ducts, she tackles the connections around the valve. Twisting and turning and wrenching, she tries to make each fitting as airtight as possible. The effort wears her out and she shakes out her arms before pushing through the last few interlocking pieces. Finally, a gleaming metallic puzzle sits before her.
Holding her breath, she flips the switch and yanks the lever. A clang, then a purr, and a gentle stream of stale air wafts in her face.
-000-
She works to distract herself from images of collapsing bunkers and pilots in midflight panic. She takes out her anger and regret and helplessness on the ship and thinks with a grim satisfaction that there is no more deserving target. The aft deflector shields, finicky for as long as she can remember, are tuned to quiet obedience. Other systems rouse themselves to submission: backup navigational sensors; environmental auto-circulators; forward gun targeters. She can't do everything on her own, but apportionment of tasks between the four of them comes naturally after the first day or two.
"When you re-wire those arrays, you gotta test them individually before running the current through the junction."
"I know."
The more repairs she tackles the more stubbornly the grime and grease cling to her hands and face and neck. His old cast-off clothes she puts on each morning are tossed in the autovalet at the conclusion of the workday, a time mutually arrived at by the three sentient beings. Hurried water-preserving showers are only partially effective at removing the stains; after a few days, he gives her a solvent for the toughest ones. She dabs the pungent liquid onto a rag and rubs it on her skin, watching as the dark smudges slowly fade.
-000-
He is there when she falls asleep and there when she wakes up but in the heavy, dreamless state she occupies between those points, she is alone. She pictures him restless, drifting through the shadowy corridor fiddling with this or that, catching a few hours of rest on the accelerator couch or in the med bunk.
When he lies next to her, they are close enough to feel the heat from each other's breath but rarely touch beyond outstretched fingers. That restraint is easier than she would have predicted due to exhaustion from the day's work. It is difficult to imagine how a single vessel could generate so much labor and she is at once resentful and grateful for the never-ending list of chores that keeps them from falling into a dangerous idleness.
-000-
During a pause in the ringing of metal on metal, a thread of melody finds its way to her. She follows it to its source, a speaker propped up on an overturned toolbox. He is patiently twisting cables around a floor-to-ceiling pipe duct.
The sound is languid and sensuous, unfamiliar words stretched long in the singer's mouth.
"What is she saying?"
"Hmm?" He glances up from the bundle of co-ax. "Oh, that. She is lamenting the loss of her lover."
"Lamenting," she echoes. It is the last word she expects him to use. "Is this a well-known song?"
He shrugs, swipes grit off his forehead. "Not sure about well-known. It's old, I think. Twenty years, maybe? Might be considered a minor classic."
"But you like it?"
"Yeah." He looks at her again. "It's sexy." And his grin erases the lingering image in her mind of one person lamenting another.
-000-
The peace she longs for is trapped under chirps and whirrs and fussy droidal nattering. On breaks between tasks, she slips into cluttered holds and dusty nooks searching for a space insulated from any trace of noise. One that reproduces the silence on the other side of the hull, where star systems crawl by at a leisurely pace.
One morning out of frustration with a stuck regulator valve, she escapes to the rear cargo hold and times how long it takes for a pinprick of light to traverse from one side of the porthole to the other. Ninety-seven minutes.
-000-
He kisses her next to the engineering console. It is a question, a trial, a negotiation. Even though she has been reliving their first kiss like a holo scene on repeat, she finds herself surprised by the softness of his lips, the warm tautness of his body pressed against hers. She melts into his arms before recovering her irritation that this second one didn't happen sooner, and then scolds herself for not taking charge, for not being the one to make a move. He senses the shift in her, the conflict, and breaks away, a question in his eyes. Why would you doubt me, she imagines him asking.
An exasperated rumble from down the hall stops his words before they can form.
-000-
At dinner all the obvious topics are avoided and frivolity is the only acceptable subject. A debate begins over the latest gossip from the holo-entertainment industry, a galactic starlet who is weighing whether to run away with her lover or stay in what the tabloids insist is a lackluster marriage.
"Who do you think she should choose?" he asks her innocently.
The way he is looking at her makes her nervous. As if he can read her thoughts, buried under layers of duty and reserve and the remnants of fury.
"Neither," she lies. "She should leave and go off on her own."
-000-
One night she wakes in a throbbing heat, her face a sweaty mess, her shirt clammy on her skin. Desire and indignation flare in her. She sits up, determined to march out of the cabin, to find him and claim what is hers, but something restrains her and she flops back onto the mattress instead. Desperate for relief, she buries her hand between her legs and swirls the wetness that has gathered there. It has been so long since she has done this – weeks, perhaps – that her climax arrives quickly and the sudden, sharp pleasure nearly winds her.
-000-
She decides to take matters into her own hands.
They break in unison and refill their mugs silently. She admires his lean figure, the angle of his hips against the counter, the line of his jaw as he takes a sip.
"Why don't we -" and tilts her head coquettishly toward the cabin. She tries to act flirty, relaxed. She doesn't recognize her own voice.
He studies her seriously.
"You're not ready."
She doesn't speak to him for the rest of the day-cycle.
-000-
Despite the tediousness of the work, she finds her body loosening in response to the physical demands. The soreness from the first few days has abated and she feels more capable of the tasks at hand. No longer hunched over command stations or sitting through hours of briefings, her limbs are liberated from a confinement she hadn't realized they were subjected to. The liberation spreads slowly, minute by minute, hour by hour, to her mental state and she experiences a dissipation in tension, a lifting of the pressure ounce by ounce. Memories she hasn't thought about in years, hazy visions from childhood, float by like scudding clouds against an egg-blue sky. Crucial events from recent weeks fade to the background, their urgency and relevance long expired.
He stops by and holds out a square of sweetbread, a rare treat they are hoarding. She thinks maybe he feels badly about the previous day. She accepts his offering, meets his eyes briefly, and goes back to her work.
-000-
The central heating unit, the latest victim of her urge to repair, looks out of place in its current grime-free state. The filters and ducts leading from the boiler are nearly reflective, having been scrubbed and polished to a shine. It's ridiculous, she knows, but there's no denying this kind of labor brings a visceral satisfaction lacking in other areas of her life.
The next time he stops by he takes in the transformation. "I suppose this means I'm gonna have to clean all the vents throughout the ship," he muses. "Otherwise your efforts here will have been wasted."
"Just be careful," she warns. "Your lungs won't be accustomed to the clean air."
He nods silently, lost in thought.
"We should have done this a lot sooner," he says. And then he leaves.
-000-
The three of them come to a mutual decision to take a day off. The most urgent repairs have been completed as well as can be expected under the circumstances and even she has begun to consider there is no logic in wearing themselves out unnecessarily.
Her explorations of the ship's contents over the past week have turned up an old workout mat. She drags it to the rear hold and lays it out. She lies on her back and raises her arms and legs in coordinated stretches, recalling the correct form from when she learned it years ago. She closes her eyes and imagines her neck, her shoulders, her back, lengthening slowly along an axis.
It isn't long before she hears him come down the corridor and pause at the hatchway. She senses him watching her curiously. She doesn't hurry her motions and only stops when her muscles are relaxed and tender. Pulling her knees to her chest, she twists her head up at him.
"I can't remember where I picked that up," he comments. His arms are crossed and his body reclines against the frame as if he's the first person to ever assume the position. "Though that probably applies to half the items on the ship."
Keeping her knees to her chest, she stretches her hands over her head. "It must be one happy surprise after another, finding things you didn't know you had."
"Sometimes." He saunters over and lowers himself next to her. "Until you open a crate of spoiled meat carcasses and have to deal with the mess."
She rolls on her side to face him. "That can't be the worst thing you've unboxed."
"It's not," he agrees. She waits in vain for him to elaborate.
He extends an arm across the mat and squeezes her shoulder gently. "Didn't know you did stuff like this. Exercises." He starts to work his hand down her arm, massaging as he goes.
"I do." She is reluctant to explain the history of the routine, how she learned it imitating her mother at home, carrying the movements with her to hotel suites and base quarters, forcing herself to keep the commitment at the end of long days when she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. "It helps keep me sane."
His hand is on hers, rubbing her palm, working his fingers between her own. "I knew someone once," he says, "who insisted that life is just a collection of habits designed to keep us from going crazy." His thumb traces over the pulse point of her wrist. "Sound familiar?"
"No," she says softly. She leans into his touch as he smooths up her arm. "No. It's too -" her breath catches, "pessimistic, somehow."
He nods and fits his hand on the back of her neck and closes the distance between them. The kiss is soft and exploratory before deepening. She fans her hand on his face and maps the terrain with her thumb.
"This is," he pulls away, then returns, then pulls away again and frowns at the mat, "not that comfortable, actually."
"That's on you," she reminds him. "A less-than-happy surprise."
"I guess it is." This time she is the one to close her eyes first. Their mouths move languidly and she thinks she could probably do this forever.
"Do you want to go somewhere else?" he murmurs.
There are hidden meanings in his question she doesn't want to broach. "No," she says, leaning close again. "I like it right here."