Adrift (20 page)

Self-Reliance

Tron knew he was surprising Kivi and Whitman both, and he could admit to himself that he took a little bit of satisfaction from that. Mostly, though, he just wanted to learn everything he needed to know to keep Lucy flying. To get her wherever it was the old man had them going. So his dedication to Whitman’s lessons, despite the exhaustion that clung to him for days and Kivi’s obvious boredom, had a lot less to do with shocking them than it did survival.

He knew they didn’t understand his motivations. He’d thought Kivi would, but she kept dropping comments about how the old man wasn’t really a ‘bad guy’ that made it pretty sure she believed he was still thinking about tossing Whitman out the airlock. Tron probably would’ve, and felt perfectly justified in doing so, if it weren’t for a comment the old man had made. It had been after Kivi took off her helmet and started her insane flight across the ship to the engine room, and it had changed everything. He considered telling Kivi about it every time they settled down into their beds, down in his room. He also considered how alone they were and how easy it would be to finish what they hadn’t quite started that day in the engine room. He never acted on either one.

Honestly, he was relieved they’d been interrupted before he could kiss her. He’d wanted to, wanted her, so bad he couldn’t breathe for the smell of her. She’d invaded his whole mind
, and the idea of her as a kid was banished forever. But the second that com had clicked on, Tron had realized what he’d been about to do. Kissing her, doing anything with her, would change everything between them. They’d never be family again. Or never just family. They’d be something else. Something better, maybe, for a while. Maybe forever. But maybe not. She was three years younger than him, and that was huge. They had Lucy, what they’d been through, and everything that had come from that.

And it was wrong. Not the age difference. Not completely the age difference. The idea that other people would think he was sick for the way he was thinking about her did bother him. But the fact that there was only the two of them and Whitman made that concern hard to keep a hold on. It was the loss that made it really wrong. Like he was putting a tarp over the chasm all the dead had left inside his soul and pretending it wasn’t there.

All of which meant kissing her was a really, really stupid thing to do. He still wanted to. He could feel her behind him, feel her eyes resting somewhere between his shoulders. But if it was just a tarp over that loss, if it was only Lucy holding them together, he would lose her. Not just as what he was wanting right now, but as family. Tron was not going to lose that. Not for his hormones, not for anything.

Not unless she asked him to. Tron knew he wasn’t strong enough to
say no. He didn’t think he’d be able to hold back if she ever gave the hint she wanted him as bad as he wanted her. He was lucky that Kivi didn’t ever mention what had almost happened. So he threw himself into his lessons, at least partially to distract himself from the thoughts that kept trying to undo his resolve.

She wasn’t the only reason he devoted himself to the work.
The truth was, he was trying to get ready to replace Whitman. Not because he wanted to be rid of him. Not anymore. Tron didn’t know if he’d ever be particularly fond of the old man, but the guy was ok. When Tron had finally given up screaming for Kivi, Whit had spoken very quietly. “I gave up the best pair of gloves I’ve ever owned. Don’t let it be a waste.” It wasn’t some grand sweeping gesture, or some great statement about his morality. Tron wouldn’t have believed it if it was. It was just a simple admission of a sacrifice Whit hadn’t needed to make, one made solely to help Kivi. He still wasn’t sure Whitman hadn’t wanted to lock him out of navigation, but he was positive that the old man did his best to keep Kivi alive. That was good enough.

But Whitman was sick. It was more obvious every day, though Whit was clearly trying to hide it.
It had taken Tron a day or two to sort it out. The old man was pretty convincing at first, and it wasn’t like they all didn’t have a good reason to look and act half dead. But the coughing fits didn’t diminish, the way his exhaustion and sore throat did. Tron was also pretty sure he’d seen blood on the old man’s hand a couple of times after one of those. And instead of recovering, Whit just got pastier. He also spent a lot of time wearing the jacket he’d lent to Kivi, despite how warm they all liked to keep the ship now. The man was definitely sick.

Tron didn’t know how sick, but he knew blood was a bad sign.
They couldn’t be down a pilot long. Not with the mystery ship still out there somewhere. They’d gone two weeks without a sighting, but not one of them was dumb enough to think that meant they were clear. It wasn’t something they talked about. Well, he and Kivi did some, while they were alone. But there was a tenseness every time one of them took a turn recalibrating the sensors. So he absorbed as much information as he could, and brought his data pad with him to bed every night so that he could study his notes until he fell asleep.

It was actually a pretty decent distraction. Didn’t work quite as well when Kivi was using his shower, but no system could be perfect.

He was finally starting to feel like he had a handle on the whole flight thing. There was a lot more math involved than he’d ever realized, and that had been the most challenging part. Kivi was brilliant at it, but math had never been Tron’s friend. Whit kept telling him that he would ‘get the feel for it’ and not have to do so many figures on his pad after a while, and Tron had thought that was a load of shit for a long time, but the last two course adjustments he’d made he’d done with only a little bit of work. So maybe there was something to it.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re headed?”

It was a question he’d been thinking about for a week. Longer, really, but he’d actually been thinking about asking instead of demanding. Ever since he’d noticed Whitman staring blankly into the black for several minutes at a time. It was a little like looking at one of the corpses, and each time sent a shot of fear right down to Tron’s core. He couldn’t wait for the old man to decide to open up and tell them about how sick he really was. Every day Tron put off asking made it more likely that they’d come into navigation and find him past being able to tell.

Whit shifted in his chair, staring at him from across the pathway. The old man was drenched in sweat, despite being huddled in his jacket so tightly it made him look a little like the hunchbacks in the vids. For a second, Tron was sure the old man was going to snap at him. That kind of reaction had been increasing just as much as the coughing. Sometimes it was hard to keep his own temper in check in response.

But Whit didn’t snap. He tapped out something on his console, and a second later a red blip appeared on Tron’s. Tron tapped it twice and the small screen opened up to show a star map with a circle around a point that didn’t mean anything to him.

“This doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It’s Vah,” he grumbled. Whit was always grumbling now. Tron was pretty sure it was all the sound the man’s throat could manage.

Tron pursed his lips and tapp
ed the screen again to zoom in on the circle. He was looking at a solar system with a small yellow line dissecting it, though the only proof Tron had that it was the one they were in was Whitman’s word. Stellar studies weren’t part of the curriculum on Lucy. No one there was ever supposed to be going into space. Not after the ship landed. So his understanding of what he was looking at was limited to what Whit had taught him over the last two weeks. That wasn’t much, with all the other aspects of piloting that he had to learn as well, but it was enough to pick out the most likely trajectory of the yellow line.

It was a test, of course. There were always tests. Whit never gave anything for free. It was always a bargain. Want an answer to this question? Give an answer to another in exchange.
Explain what was wrong with the example he gave five minutes ago. Want him to open the door to navigation so you can get dinner? Recite the ten worst mistakes a pilot could make and how to avoid them. If Tron wanted to know what Vah was and why they were going there, he was going to have to figure out where ‘there’ was.

The problem was, with the way they had to
navigate around so much of the debris field, it wasn’t as easy as following the line. There were three likely points. Two were planets and the third was a moon orbiting the second planet. There was no particular reason to pick that one, except that it was different than the other two. So he circled the moon and sent it back over.

Whit’s face twisted into a small smile. “Not bad.”

That was the best praise Tron had gotten in days. He wasn’t about to admit it was just luck. “So? What’s the big deal with this tiny little rock?”

“Vah’s a medical base.” The old man shot a glance back at Kivi, who was busy working on something on her pad. She didn’t look like she was listening, but Tron knew she was. Kivi was always listening, always waiting for some new scrap of information that might interest her. “I’m, ah, not doing so well.”

“You don’t say. Kivi, did you hear that? Our friend Whit is not doing so well! Are you as surprised by this news as I am?”

Kivi gave him a ghost of a smile then shook her head. “Don’t be mean.”

“But it’s fun,” Tron protested. He wasn’t really trying to be mean. She knew it too, or else she wouldn’t have smiled.

“You knew.”

“Of course we knew. You look like shit,” Tron answered. He softened his tone, but just a little. They weren’t friends, and he wasn’t going to act like it just because the man was in bad shape. “How long can you keep this up?”

Whitman sighed and sagged in his chair, as if the act for the two of them was the only thing that had kept him upright. Maybe it was. “
Long as I have to,” the old man answered.

“Don’t lie,” Kivi murmured from her spot. It was Tron’s turn to flash her a smile. She beat him to it. “You are too sick for this.”

Whit grimaced and acted like he was going to argue. Before he could, Tron jumped in. “You’ve had me doing all the course corrections for days now. You just told me where we’re going. What is it, exactly, that you have left to do worth putting yourself through this?”

Whitman hesitated. Then he sighed and slumped down even further into his jacket, until he was just a face amid all the brown leather. “Make sure you’ll go,” he answered in little more than a whisper. “Make sure you won’t change course as soon as you know you’re self-reliant.”

Tron wanted to tease and reassure, but he didn’t do either one. The truth was, he’d had every intention of doing that when he first struck this deal with Whitman. He had still been thinking about it right up until Whit told him why they were going to Vah. Not that he would’ve. Not anymore. Tron understood that it wasn’t his world out there. It was populated by strangers and enemies, and he didn’t have the ability to tell the difference. Not yet. Just like he didn’t know how to find any of those people without some guidance. The black was just too big to go wandering around and hoping for the best. “We’ll go,” he said instead. Not that Whitman had any reason to believe him. So he gave him the other reason going to a medical station had instantly struck him as the best idea possible. “Kivi needs her leg fixed. I’m not going to let her deal with a limp the rest of her life if I can help it.”

It was true. Kivi’s leg hadn’t healed right. Tron didn’t know if it was because she’d hurt it again so soon after her fall down the stairs, or if it was because he did something wrong when he wrapped it. He suspected it was the latter. He didn’t know how to set broken bones. He wasn’t even sure her ankle had been broken. It hadn’t been sticking out at an obvious angle. But the pain was still with her, and she still had a hard time walking around on her own, so he figured it must be. That meant that she needed someone who could do it right.

Whitman nodded and tapped on his console again. He was at it longer than when he’d been drawing a circle on a map. This time it was a green dot that appeared on the left hand side. Tron double tapped it and a list of instructions streamed past on the small screen.

“This is how you send out a hail. You’ll need to once you get to Vah. Tell ‘
em that most of the crew is dead and your pilot is sick. Exactly that and nothing else. They’re good people but no one is going to take in refugees from a Gray attack. Make sure they know you don’t know what you’re doing and they’ll walk you through a dock.” Whit paused again and then turned around to face Tron. “Don’t hail anyone else. Not even if they’re your long lost cousins who followed you all the way from Earth just to give back your favorite teddy bear. No one but the base.”

Tron rolled his eyes. “No one but the base. I think I can manage that.”

“Damn well better.” He stood up so slowly it took Tron a minute or two to realize that was what he was trying to do. His whole body shook and he started shuffling to the mattress they’d set up for him in the far corner of navigation with the speed of an ancient.

Tron swore and left his seat, scooping the old man up almost as easily as he did Kivi. That was a bad sign. A real bad sign. He remembered what it felt like, rolling around on the ground and wrestling Whitman when the old man first got on Lucy. He’d been big then, fit. Not a match for Tron, but close enough to cause trouble. He hadn’t been old, then. His sickness had made him ancient and frail.

He didn’t carry Whitman the way he did Kivi. The old man wouldn’t tolerate it, even if Tron was willing to try. Instead he looped the other man’s arms around his shoulders. Whit grumbled a bit about it, but didn’t put up a fight. Not until Tron turned them both away from the man’s cot. “Where the hell are you taking me?”