Written In The Stars (part two)
Part One
It took Ryan two days to work up to contacting the base. Talking to Pete always made Ryan edgy. In the informal ranks of the resistance hierarchy, Pete Wentz was one of the few recognized leaders. As the head of recon he was Ryan’s direct superior, even if the young fighter had managed to secure a few owed favors from him. There was a reason why Ryan had never called in on those favors, though, and Ryan remembered it now as he stared at the view screen displaying the familiar face.
Pete was intimidating as fuck. He shouldn’t have been, he was short, probably shorter then Ryan himself, small in stature and rather clumsily built. He had a look about him though, that showed itself in the set of his shoulders and the darkness around his eyes, that suggested he’s seen far too much. He was dangerous and Ryan knew it. He was often struck by a surge of gratefulness, when he talked to Pete, that they were on the same side.
“What can I do for you, Ross?” came the smooth voice over the sub space transmitter. Pete’s voice was as carefully composed as his face, a mask of neutrality and disinterest.
Taking a deep breath, Ryan stared straight into the monitor and said, “I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”
Pete’s eyebrows went up, the only display of a reaction on his face, but it spoke clearly of curiosity. “Oh?”
“I have a friend, Spencer Smith. He’s an intelligence operative and he’s been supplying information through me for quite some time, but his cover’s been compromised. I don’t know if you’re aware of the Ashanti attack on the Dalton IV colony?” Pete nodded but didn’t comment, and Ryan continued. “He found a survivor.”
This drew a reaction from Pete. The older man blinked, obviously surprised. “There haven’t been survivors from these attacks in years. You were one of the last.”
Ryan nodded, fingers drumming absently on the console in front of him. The front cabin of the ship hummed with life around him and he could feel the thrum of it under his hands. “I know. The house was radiation shielded and the survivor, his name’s Brendon, was hidden in an underground level.”
Pete nodded again. “I assume you’ll be filling out a full report on this?”
“Of course.” Ryan knew the procedure; he’d filled hundreds of reports. He’d mostly brought it up to get Pete in a good mood. “Spencer and Brendon need a place to go that’s remote and resistance protected where they can lay low for a while. I sent them your way.”
Pete’s eyes narrowed, and Ryan knew this was the tricky bit. Pete didn’t usually take kindly to people revealing his location without his knowledge. “That was bold of you. I’m not sure I owe you that much of a favor.”
“For saving your wife?” Ryan said coolly. “I think you protecting my friends until I can get to them is a pretty fair trade for getting her out of an Ashanti prison camp. It’s not like I’m freeloading them off onto you. Spencer’s been living on an Ashanti ship for the past five years. I’m sure he knows things that would be valuable.”
Dark eyes, eyes that held countless untold secrets, stared back at Ryan across the lightyears bridged by the subspace link up. The young fighter did his best to hold his own against them and eventually Pete nodded, seeming to deflate a little. “How far off are they?”
The pressure that had been building up in Ryan’s chest since he first opened the channel with Pete suddenly released. He felt light. “Two days, assuming everything goes well. We’re about three days away. But we’re all going to have to stay with you until we can determine how the Ashanti will react. If they just think Spencer deserted that’s one thing, but if they figure out there was a survivor, they may come looking for him.”
Pete grimaced, but nodded none the less. “How about we make them your responsibility once you show up, eh, Ross?” he said with a wry, sardonic smile.
“Not a problem,” Ryan shrugged, trying to appear at ease. In actuality, the idea sort of scared him; he wasn’t used to having to look out for anyone but himself and Jon. It was Spencer through, and Spencer was worth any amount of misgivings or unease.
Pete nodded again, clearly signaling that the transmission was over. They went through the niceties of saying goodbye quickly, and then Ryan was left sitting in an empty cabin devoid of sound. The silence of the ship pressed in on him then, like the deadly vacuum just on the other side of the ship’s composite metal walls had stolen all sound. Drawing in a depth breath, Ryan made himself focus on the whirs of machinery and the soft beeps of the computers around him until he calmed down. Too often those sounds faded into the background, became a part of his consciousness.
Scrubbing his hands over his eyes and up into his hair, Ryan acknowledge the fact that he really needed to sleep. He’d been awake for more than forty eight hours, with only a few hours sleep before that stretch. Jon had already made his way to bed and Ryan ached to join him, to give in to sleep and not think for a while.
With a thoroughness that bordered on compulsion Ryan did a routine check of all the ship’s functions, running through the atmospheric and navigation systems, sensors and shields until he was sure the autopilot would function without failure while he slept. Only then did he make his way out of the cabin, walking through the ship and back to their quarters where Jon slept.
The older man didn’t stir as Ryan moved about the room, shucking off his clothes and scrubbing his face down with a ‘fresher cloth. He quietly checked to make sure the computer would wake him in case of an emergency, and set the mess hall replicator to give forth hot, strong coffee at a set time the next morning.
Only when Ryan slid onto the bed did Jon move, and even then he didn’t wake entirely. He curled an arm out over Ryan’s waist as the younger man curled in next to him, and Ryan allowed himself to relax into it. It was all too easy to let exhaustion take him, falling into a deep sleep.
-----
Time passed differently in deep space. There wasn’t much to do; the autopilot took care of the running of the ship well enough on its own. Really, all Spencer needed to do was check it occasionally to make sure they weren’t drifting off their heading, and let the ship take care of the rest.
Fortunately, by the second day of travel, Brendon seemed to be coming out of his shell a little. Spencer spent most of the first day going through all the resistance reports he could find, hoping to gain a better picture of how the war was shaping up. As a field operative, he hadn’t had to know much about the resistance side of the war, only what the Ashanti were up to. It was too risky to receive that kind of information, too likely to attract attention when the strongest thing Spencer had going for him was in anonymity.
By the second day though, Spencer thought he might actually go crazy if he had to decode another report. He looked up gratefully when Brendon walked over to him, smiling at the other man. Brendon responded with a small smile of his own. “Would you mind if I sat with you?” he asked, oddly formal and distant, but Spencer got the distinct impression that Brendon was doing his best and Spencer appreciated the effort.
“Please do,” Spencer said, gesturing to the other bench at the mess all table. “I could use the company. These reports get kind of monotonous and depressing after a while.”
Brendon smiled shyly, sitting and pulling his legs up his chest. He rested his head on his knees, making himself seem even smaller then he usually did. “I would have thought it’d be exciting.”
Spencer shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. “A lot of it’s boring stuff like communication frequencies you need special comm codes to be able to read. There’s a lot of nonsense to weed through. My friend Ryan does this shit as his job, but it’s mostly gibberish to me. I’m more of a fighter then a thinker, I guess.”
“I lived on a farm my whole life,” Brendon said quietly, his eyes looking distant all of a sudden, far away. “I hated it. But there wasn’t much else to do, everyone needed solar power, and it’s not like I could go off planet, not like they would let us leave...” Brendon trailed off, looking up at Spencer guiltily. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t care about that.”
“Why wouldn’t I care?” Spencer asked, tilting his head.
Brendon shrugged. “Why would you? You don’t know me.”
“I want to,” Spencer said quietly, before he’d even realized he’d thought the words. “I mean, like I said before, I don’t have many friends. And I haven’t heard from my family since I was drafted so... It can get kind of lonely.”
Brendon nodded but he didn’t say anything. He was staring into the middle distance, eyes cast towards the table. Spencer took a moment to look at him properly. He had dark circles under his eyes, making him look drawn and pale. “I’m scared of being alone,” Brendon said, suddenly, quietly. “I don’t know if I can handle it. I’m used to having a whole colony, and now...” He paused for a second or two. “Does it get easier?”
The pain on the boy’s face was all too evident, and it made Spencer ache. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I didn’t lose my family the same way... they’re still alive, as far as I know. And when you’re drafted, you don’t get a lot of extra time to think or feel.”
“I just can’t believe I’ll never see my parents again. Or... my sister is - or… was I guess, turning twelve in two weeks. The entire colony was planning a celebration. I can’t believe...”
Spencer reached out, hesitating for a moment before taking Brendon’s hand. The other boy smiled at him a little, seeming appreciative. “I don’t know what I’m going to do either now.” Spencer admitted. “I’ll have to find a new job. Something else to do for the resistance, most likely. No one’s going to make you hang around by any means, but if you want to, we can try to stick together.”
Brendon looked at Spencer quietly for a moment. “I keep trying to figure out why you’re being so nice to me, and I can’t,” he confessed. “Wanting friends is one thing, but you risked your life for me, and you keep - It’s just… I’m really no one special.”
“You’re a person. That makes you special, and worth being nice to,” Spencer insisted. Brendon still looked skeptical, and Spencer squeezed his hand. “I don’t know, Brendon. From what I know of you, I like you. What more do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” Brendon said with a small, but real, smile, looking at Spencer. For the first time he didn’t look shy or withdrawn. “How about you just talk and I’ll let you know?”
So Spencer did talk, and Brendon did too. They traded stories, Spencer talking about what he remembered of his family, and Brendon talking about his. They talked about the resistance and the Ashanti, about Ryan and Jon, and about Brendon’s friends from the colony. The entire discussion seemed painful for Brendon, but he seemed lighter after, like he was breathing easier.
Through the entire conversation they didn’t disconnect their hands, and when Spencer had to in order to call up something to show Brendon on his data pad, Brendon took his hand again once it was free. The boy looked shy for a moment, but Spencer just smiled at him.
All in all, Spencer found he liked Brendon’s company as much as he expected to, or at least hoped he would. The other boy came alive when he got excited about something, and Spencer got glimpses of what he suspected an unbroken Brendon might be like. Though the boy’s shoulders retained the protective curl and he sobered quietly, when he laughed his entire body changed. Spencer really just wanted to devote hours on end finding ways to make Brendon laugh.
Brendon still seemed cold though, and after hours holding hands without scaring Brendon away, Spencer resolved to do something about it. When he returned from grabbing coffee, he slid onto the bench next Brendon rather than going to sit on his own. It didn’t seem to faze Brendon, who took the coffee eagerly and then slumped companionably into Spencer’s side. Spencer relaxed, listening as Brendon recalled some of the speeder games he’d played with his friends as a teenager.
It was easy to lose track of time talking to Brendon, easy to get wrapped up in the process of interacting with another human after so long. Spencer found himself smiling more then he had in weeks - probably months, leaning into Brendon’s side just as much as Brendon leaned into his. In fact, he mostly forgot about their situation and surroundings until a klaxon blared in the front of the ship, calling him up to cabin.
Dread settling in his stomach, Spencer rushed towards the ship’s cabin with Brendon on his heels, internally cursing himself for getting distracted. The alarm continued to sound as Spencer burst into the control room, immediately checking the sensors for approaching ships coming in for an attack. There were none.
Confused, Spencer scanned the cabin of the source of the alarm. A red light was flashing on the fuel indicator, which kept are read out of the remaining the amount of Krylatine ore, which was used to power the subspace hyper drive. The ship, which had never been intend to do more then make a trip to the planet’s surface and back, hadn’t been equipped with much of the hyperspace fuel.
“We have to drop out of hyperspace, or we’re going to fall out and tear ourselves apart,” Spencer said to Brendon, moving quickly to the pilot’s seat. “Strap yourself in, this is going to be rough.”
The other boy complied, but Spencer barely took note of him, fingers flying deftly over the controls. Dropping out of hyperspace before a given destination was always dangerous, given that you didn’t know who or what you’d be dropping out in front of. Spencer could do his best to make sure they didn’t drop out on a collision course with a planet or sun, but star ships and other space going vehicles were completely out of his control. The drop itself would be dangerous as well because he didn’t have time to run through all the normal drop out procedures. Essentially he had to pull the ship out of hyperspace before she ran out of fuel and dropped out, and just pray the she didn’t tear herself apart in the process.
“Hold on tight,” Spencer said grimly, and disengaged the hyper drive.
The ship rocked at the monumental shock wave of dropping into regular space, the walls around them buckling and groaning. Spencer had a moment to wonder if the ship’s hull integrity was strong enough to stand up to the crushing force, then he felt his own flimsy seat restraints give out and he was thrown from his chair.
Spencer Smith hit the wall of the ship hard, and knew only blackness.
-----
The attack came out of nowhere. The Camisado rocked violently from the force of the plasma canons hitting them, throwing Ryan clear across the small ships living space where he’d been curled up reading reports. He lay slumped, in a daze, as klaxons sounded around him and alarms shrieked from the front of the ship.
Ryan’s head throbbed from its hard impact with the bulkhead but he struggled to his feet nonetheless. They were less than a day away from reaching Pete’s base and it had been smooth sailing the entire way, without so much as a sensor ghost to indicate trouble. Taken in by the obviously false sense of security, Ryan had allowed himself to relax a little. Clearly they were going to pay for that.
Staggering across the room, Ryan stuck his head into the engine bay. “Jon?” he called, trying not to panic.
To his relief, the older man called back almost immediately. “I’m here. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan called back, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the throbbing in his head. “I’m going up to find out.” He took a moment to be grateful that their ship was small, and that it didn’t take long to get to the cabin. Ryan flipped the intercom so he could talk to Jon and set about scanning the various blaring sensor read outs.
“Someone’s tailing us,” Ryan told Jon via the intercom, “hanging about three kilometers behind. That hit wasn’t meant to cause much damage, just get our attention.”
“Well they got our attention alright,” came the disgruntled reply. “Our aft shields are down to sixty percent. We don’t want to fight with these guys, Ry. They’ll crush us flat.”
Mild panic flared up in Ryan’s chest, but he suppressed it. “They’re sending a transmission, hang on.” Deftly, Ryan flipped at the controls until he activated the one way audio receiver. The computerized message that filled the speakers was one Ryan had heard before.
“Unidentified vessel, drop out of hyperspace immediately,” instructed the automaton voice. “Prepare to be bored. Disobedience is unwise.”
“You bet your ass it’s unwise,” Ryan muttered, flipping off the repeating message. “Jon, what are our chances of outrunning an Ashanti patrol ship?”
“Slim,” Jon called back over the loud speaker. “Over large distances anyway. We’d have to push our own hyper speed barrier, which would burn the fuck out of our engines. Basically, once they did catch us, we’d have no way of fighting.” Ryan grimaced. He’d expected as much. “But, if we can push our engines to get us to Mengyna, then maybe Pete’s guys will fend them off for us.”
Pete would hate that; he would be so fucking pissed at Ryan for bring an Ashanti patrol right to his door step. “We don’t have many other options, do we?” he asked, already setting the controls to accelerate past the recommended safety barrier for their small ship.
“None,” Jon said grimly. “Unless you feel like explaining our situation to a dozen Ashanti patrol guards.” There was almost nothing Ryan wanted less.
“Then hold on tight to something,” Ryan advised. “Our baby’s gonna try to tear herself apart doing this.”
“I’ll do what I can to keep the engines cool,” came Jon’s response, calm and collected like always. God, Ryan loved him.
“Here we go.”
There were many reasons why pushing a ship past her hyperspace barrier was a bad idea, not the least of which being that the ship’s structural integrity began to fail. Ships were built to go up to a certain speed and no more, and once it was pushed beyond that point the stress on the hull could begin to buckle it. Along with that, pushing the barrier burnt up the engine of the ship, making it work harder than it was designed to.
All of this, however, was preferable to a night spent in Ashanti interrogation. Ryan had been through that before, and had the scars to prove it. It wasn’t an experience he particularly wanted to repeat. Eyes glued to the sensor panel, Ryan watched the distances between the two ships grow. The walls around Ryan emitted a low groan, and Ryan bit his lip. “How long can the hull integrity last?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said honestly, and Ryan could hear the clanking and groaning of the engine even over the comm line, trying to push them even faster through hyperspace. “If we’re lucky it’ll last until the engine gives out. If not, then I’d guess maybe another twenty five minutes.” Ryan groaned. Even maintaining this speed, it would still take them twenty minutes to reach Mengyna.
Diverting his eyes from the sensor read out, Ryan punched up a standard resistance distress call and sent it off in the direction of Pete’s intelligence base. If they were lucky then Pete would intercept it and be waiting to help them. If they weren’t than they’d be bringing a hostile craft into one of the resistance’s best kept secret ports without any kind of warning.
The distance between the two ships had evened when Ryan looked at the sensor read out again, which was not a very encouraging thought. “I think they might gain on us,” Ryan said into the intercom pick up. Jon just hummed back in affirmation, clearly busy trying to keep the engines from burning out.
It was a nerve-racking run, watching pursuing ship draw incrementally closer as the tiny Camisado flew through hyperspace. The hull of the ship groaned loudly, protesting the strain, and the engines began to smoke regardless of Jon’s efforts to keep them cool.
Pushing aside the fear trying to claw its way out of his throat, Ryan began the preparations to drop out of hyperspace. They could only hope, pray, that the base on Mengyna had gotten their distress call. Dropping out of hyperspace would probably fry their engines, if it didn’t blow them up, leaving them defenseless.
“Gods protect us,” Ryan said quietly, his voice shaking as adrenaline pumped through him. Then they were dropping out of hyperspace, the ship practically shrieking as inertia and gravity fought for control of the tiny craft. Ryan was again thrown from his chair, left shoulder hitting the bulkhead with a sickening crunch.
Pain splintered through Ryan’s consciousness, and his vision went temporarily white from it. Ryan cried out, swimming through the fog of pain to try and get to his feet. Left arm curled protectively in against his body, Ryan managed to drag himself over to the pilots station. The light for an incoming transmission was blinking a Ryan flipped the audio. “Looks like you could use some help, kid,” came Pete’s gruff voice, broken by static.
Ryan breathed out a sigh of relief, the pain in his shoulder making it catch on the inhale. “Ashanti patrol, a minute or so behind us,” he panted out, already working his way over to the intercom. He needed to make sure Jon was alright.
“Just get your ship down to the base, we’ll hold them off,” Pete replied, cutting the transmission short as the Ashanti ship neared the hyperspace drop point. Working through the pain, Ryan set the autopilot to get them to the base. It might not be the smoothest of landings, but they’d get their in one piece, which was more than Ryan could guarantee with only one functional arm.
He collapsed onto the floor, reaching up to hit the intercom switch. “Jon!” Ryan called out, clutching the nearest access panel as the turbulence from the upper atmosphere knocked his shoulder into the wall. “Jon, are you alright?”
After a couple seconds of gut-wrenching silence, the older man’s voice came back over the intercom. “I’m fine.” Jon sounded wrecked, exhausted, and Ryan bit back a sob of relief, because he was okay. Jon was okay. “What about you?” The ship shook again, jarring Ryan’s shoulder and he cried out involuntarily. “Ry?”
“Shoulder,” Ryan gritted, closing his eyes as a wave of nausea swept through him.
“I’ll be right up.”
Ryan collapsed back against the wall, barely able to regulate his breathing. He could feel the sickening sensation of blood soaking into his shirt, he didn’t even want to look to see how badly his shoulder was broken. He concentrated on breathing, on staying conscious, as he waited for Jon to get to him. Jon would make it okay.
The smell of engine smoke preceded Jon into the cabin, and when the older man did appear he was looking a bit singed at the edges. Ryan tried to smile at him, just because he was alright, Jon was fine, perfectly fine, which was really all that matter to Ryan. His smile turned into a grimace, though, as trying to sit up shot a fresh wave of pain through his body.
“Holy sweet gods above,” Jon whispered, dropped down on his knees next to where Ryan was slumped on the floor. “Ryan...”
“Looks worse than it is,” Ryan gritted, even though he really had no idea how it looked. But he could guess from Jon’s expression, and really, Ryan had worse than a broken shoulder before.
“Bullshit,” Jon growled, pulling Ryan towards as gently him as he could. Ryan went easily, curling into Jon so his broken shoulder was out into the room, not touching anything. Jon held him close, away from anything that could jar him, and Ryan concentrated on breathing. “We’re almost there,” Jon whispered soothingly into Ryan’s hair. “We’ll land, and find someone to set your shoulder, and then we’ll find Spencer, and everything will be alright.”
Closing his eyes, Ryan let himself believe, just for a little while, that everything would be alright.
-----
Spencer woke up to the feeling of cool fingers on his face and a frantic voice in his ear. “Spencer? Spencer!”
The young ex-guard, now pilot, pried his eyes open, looking up at the worried face hovering above him. The ship was dark; illuminated only by the flashing warning lights on the panels, even the emergency systems seemed to be glitching. But they were alive.
“You okay?” Spencer asked Brendon groggily, pushing his way up into a sitting position.
Brendon looked at him warily. “I'm fine. But you're sort of... bleeding everywhere.” Only then did Spencer notice the pounding in his head and the sticky wet feeling of blood on his face. He swore, reaching up to touch the gash on his forehead.
“Head wounds always look worse than they are,” he tried to reassure Brendon, who was beginning to look kind of panicky. “We've got med kits in the back, just need to stop the bleeding.”
Brendon nodded nervously, reaching out to touch Spencer's shoulder. His touch was light, reluctant, but when Spencer leaned into him, he became surer. “I'll help,” he said quietly, and Spencer allowed himself to be guided to his feet.
The trip through the body of the ship seemed disproportionately long compared to its size. Dizziness overtook Spencer every couple of meters, forcing him to lean heavily on Brendon for support. The dark haired man was smaller than Spencer in stature, but he was sturdy, and luckily he held Spencer's weight well enough.
By the time Brendon deposited him in a chair in the lounge, Spencer could hardly see straight. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, hoping it would make the throbbing go away. “I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to sleep after you've hit your head,” Brendon said cautiously, fishing around in a cabinet for a med pack.
“Yeah,” Spencer sighed, prying his eyes open to look at the other man. He knew Brendon was right. “What happened?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the pain in his head.
Brendon shrugged, coming to sit next to Spencer. “I don't really know,” he said, fiddling with the supplies in his hands. “I've never ridden in a ship like this, only ground speeders back home. Best I can tell, we dropped out of hyperspace and blew some of the environmental systems. Auto pilot put us back on course, but I can't really tell what's working and what's not.”
Spencer nodded then winced as the movement sent another spike of pain through his head. That was about as much as they could have hoped for. “Is life support still working?” he asked as Brendon began to clean the cut on his forehead.
“The computer said it is,” Brendon replied. “I can't tell you much more.”
Spencer hummed, thinking. If they were back on the right course, then they'd arrive at the base in about two days going sub-light. Chances were their communication systems were also blown, and those would be hard to fix without setting down to port. They'd have no way of contacting Ryan to let him know they'd be late. They were on their own.
“We need to make sure sensors and shields are working” Spencer muttered, and Brendon nodded, setting aside a blood soaked cloth. Spencer winced when he saw it, wondered just how bad he looked. “We can't be caught off-guard like this.”
“I would have checked,” Brendon fretted, “but like I said, I don't really know much about ships, and you were lying there bleeding and-”
“Hey,” Spencer said softly, placing a hand on Brendon's shoulder. “Hey calm down. You're doing just fine.” Brendon nodded, looking down into his lap. “I'm serious. Thank you. You're doing a really good job keeping it together, considering everything.”
Brendon smiled softly and went back to bandaging Spencer's head. “Do you think we'll make it?” Brendon asked after a couple of minutes. He sounded lost and scared, for the first time seeming like a boy who'd lost everything he knew in the world.
“I'll be damned if we don't,” Spencer said fiercely, meeting Brendon's eyes. “We haven't come this far to give up, no way.”
“Is it making a difference? I mean, there is all this fighting and still my family... people are still being slaughtered.”
“I don't know,” Spencer said softly. He reached out and touched Brendon's shoulder again. “We've got to believe it makes a difference.”
Brendon smiled again, a ghost of an expression. “I wish I had your faith,” he said quietly.
“It's what kept me fighting,” Spencer shrugged. “Every day, it could have cost me my life. But if we give up hope, hope that we can change the world or just hope that we can make it through another day, if we gave that up we'd be nothing. We'd lose our humanity.”
They lapsed into silence, Spencer letting his mind wander as Brendon finished the bandages on his head. Finally, Brendon withdrew his hands, smiling sheepishly. “I think that's the best I can do.”
Reaching up, Spencer ran his fingers over the gauze on his forehead. “Good enough. Thank you.”
Brendon nodded, handing him some pain pills. “Here, you might want some of these.” Spencer smiled gratefully, swallowing a couple of the white capsules.
“I'm going to head to the engine room and try to fix up our systems as best I can,” he said, pushing himself up from the chair. “Would you mind heading to the cabin? You can tell me if things are working or not.”
The other man nodded, fidgeting with his shirt sleeves. He looked reluctant, like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. “When we land...” he began, but trailed off. “I know you've got Ryan and Jon, but... I mean, I've got no one else. Do you think? I mean, would you mind if I... tagged along with you for a while?”
Spencer smiled a little, reaching out to squeeze Brendon's hand. “I already told you that you could.”
“You might have just said it to be nice,” Brendon mumbled.
“I don't do that,” Spencer said seriously. “Look... Ryan probably won't trust you at first, but he trusts me. I learned to trust Jon for him, he'll do the same.”
Brendon nodded, looking more confident now. He squeezed Spencer's hand again then released it. “So, sensors?” he asked awkwardly.
Spencer laughed. “Yup. If you head up to the cabin I'll let you know what I need you to tell me.” He didn't think they'd be able to get much done from the inside of the ship, but they had two days until port and little else to occupy their time with. He just hoped Ryan wouldn't freak out too much when they missed the rendezvous.
-----
The falling sun cast a pinkish glow across the sky, flaring up through the trees. Barely twelve hours had passed since they'd landed on the planet, and Ryan already felt overwhelmed by how much had happened. Pete's small fleet of resistance ships had made short work of the Ashanti patrol, disabling and destroying it before it could even get a message off to the rest of its fleet. The Camisado had barely survived the landing, and they weren't sure they'd ever be able to get it running again.
Ryan spent more of the five hours following their landing unconscious than he'd care to admit, from a mix of blood loss, pain and exhaustion. The medics had taken advantage of it, doing most of the surgery that fixing his shoulder required while he was unconscious. It hadn't taken very long though, once he was awake to figure out that Spencer and Brendon weren't on the base, even though they'd been meant to arrive first.
From his perch by the window, Ryan squinted up into the sky, searching for any signs of a ship. The radar sensors should go off before any ship got close enough to be seen from the surface, but equipment could go wrong, mechanical things could break...
A soft shuffling noise drew Ryan's attention back to the interior of the base. Jon was leaning in the doorway to the sleeping quarters Pete had given them, his face tired, hair rumpled. His sleep pants hung low on his hips, and at another time Ryan would have appreciated the view. He was too distracted now, too filled with worry and dread.
“Couldn't sleep?” Jon asked softly, padding over to sink down on the window seat behind Ryan. He relaxed back against Jon's chest, letting the older man move him around until they fit snugly together, bare back to bare chest. Jon rested his chin on Ryan's good shoulder, the coarse hairs of his beard tickling Ryan's skin. It was comforting; familiar, normal.
“They should have arrived by now,” Ryan muttered, eyes still fixed on the coral pink sky. “They left Dalton IV five days ago, that's twice as long as it takes to make the journey, even with a malfunctioning ship.”
Jon hummed comfortingly, his thumb brushing over the thin skin stretched over Ryan's hip bone. “Spencer's a good pilot, Ryan. He'll make it here.”
“Spencer's a good pilot, yes, but he's not used to flying on his own without support. I should be out there looking for him, I should be--” Panic rose in Ryan's voice, laced with hysteria, but Jon cut him off firmly.
“But you can't be. By the gods, Ryan, we almost got blown apart!” Jon's fingers came up to brush softly against the bandage wrapped around Ryan's left shoulder. The injury still throbbed a little, even though the medics had done a fine job of setting and patching up the broken joint. “You need rest.”
“I hate being grounded. I hate not being able to fight,” Ryan whispered softly, dropping his eyes from the sky to fix on where Jon's hand was resting on his stomach.
“I know you do. But I'd hate you being dead.”
Ryan sighed, tipping his head back onto Jon's shoulder. The sky was the same coral pink it always was. Soon it would fade to a dusky gray, then black, black with stars that were always stationary, always the same. Ryan knew some people found the consistency of the stars soothing. To him they were just a reminder of how stationary he was. How easy he would be to find.
It took a couple of minutes for Ryan to notice that Jon had begun to sing, soft words and melody breathed right into Ryan's ear. Ryan melted back against the older man's chest, letting himself be calmed by warm skin and gentle music. The words were in a language that Ryan didn't know, but the melody was hauntingly beautiful. It reminded Ryan of the old Earth novels they used to teach in the Terra Luna schools, before the Ashanti closed them down; stories of adventure and love, sorrow and heartbreak, that always left a sweet taste behind when they were finished, no matter if they ended in tragedy.
“I miss reading Terran books,” Ryan whispered, because saying such things aloud in the wrong company could get you shot. Ryan trusted Jon, and he trusted even Pete, but he wasn't that quick to trust Pete's friends. He hadn't been at the base long enough to feel safe there, not like he did on their ship. “I miss reading about how life used to be on Earth, before the Ashanti came.”
Jon's song trailed off, and he pressed a kiss to the skin behind Ryan's ear, whispering “I know,” softly. Of course Jon knew. Jon knew him better than anyone, even Spencer.
Spencer... Worry wound itself hot and fast in Ryan's stomach, and he twisted away from the window abruptly, turning in Jon's arms to bury his face in the older man's shoulder.
“They should have been here two days ago,” he whispered. Jon just sighed, wrapping Ryan in his arms as tightly as he could, given Ryan’s injury. Ryan could feel Jon's lips brushing kisses against his forehead, and he tried to lose himself in the embrace.
-----
Spencer was on edge for the remainder of the journey. They were crawling - limping through space in a ship with minimal shielding and a dodgy atmospheric system. The sheer number of things that could go wrong rattled around in his head; making him feel slightly crazy. He had no idea how Ryan managed to function with this level of paranoia constantly eating away at him.
Still, it could have been worse. Spencer could have been by himself in this. He took every opportunity he could to be thankful for Brendon, for his quiet support and constant presence. Brendon wasn't much of a mechanic, actually had a tendency to leave things in worse shape than he'd found them in when he tried to help, but he was good company.
He was also good at reminding Spencer to do things like change the bandage on his head, and eat. Spencer was secretly afraid he might be turning into Ryan, but Brendon didn't seem to mind keeping him grounded as he kept their ship running.
It was a nerve wrecking experience in every imaginable way, but as much as Spencer spent every second waiting for an Ashanti ship to appear out of nowhere and blow them out of the sky, he found excitement rising in his throat. The prospect of seeing Ryan, of maybe being able to join him after nearly seven years, was enough to have Spencer buzzing.
He found himself telling Brendon stories about Ryan over the intercom of their ship as he labored in the engine bay, Brendon listening to him talk from the cabin. As talkative as Brendon could be, he was a good listener too. Spencer found himself increasingly drawn to the other boy, to his smile and his laugher.
Even with Brendon to keep him distracted, it felt like half a life time had passed before their little ship reached the Palascar system.
“We're here,” he called into the comm pick up. “We've made it; you might want to come up now.”
Brendon looked tired, Spencer observed, as he flopped down into the co-pilot's chair. The third thing Spencer was going to do, after hugging Ryan for an hour and a half and taking a hot shower, was make sure Brendon got some sleep. Though, as he'd probably have to give reports, it might end up being the fourth thing he did. Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his face. He himself needed to sleep; his own thoughts were getting hard to follow.
Spencer sent out a standard resistance greeting as soon as they were within comm range of the planet. The ship was barely holding together at that point; it was all Spencer could do to keep the air breathable and make sure they kept moving forward. But that didn't matter now, they'd made it.
Still, Spencer would be lying if he said he wasn't expecting Ryan to be the one to respond to their hail. He frowned at the display screen telling him that the ship soaring out of the upper atmosphere toward them wasn't The Camisado. Instead it was The Brobeck, a stealth ship in the same class as Ryan's Camisado, which was used frequently by the resistance. The Brobeck was captained by a Dallon Weekes, if Spencer remembered rightly, and he opened the incoming transmission with some trepidation.
“Smith.” Weekes nodded in greeting across the short range comm system, luckily undamaged by the accident. “Looks like you could use a hand.”
“Yeah, we're sort of in rough shape,” Spencer said distractedly. “I was expecting to meet up with The Camisado...”
Weekes nodded again. “Yeah, Wentz said you probably would be. That ship's out of commission, we're bringing you in for her.”
Spencer's blood ran cold, dread aching through his limbs. “Is her crew alright?”
“Yeah,” Weekes shrugged. “I don't know the details; we just came in to port last night. The crew's fine, but I don't know what happened. I'm sure someone will explain it to you.”
Spencer just nodded, knowing a dismissal when he heard one. Nervously, he glanced over at Brendon, who offered him an encouraging smile. Spencer appreciated the gesture.
Refusing to let himself consider the possibilities of why Ryan and Jon were grounded, Spencer focused on the task at hand. He had to lock the ship's nav computer on to that of The Brobeck, so the fully functional ship could guide them down to the surface without having to rely on their damaged guidance system.
Spencer watched out the front view port as they followed The Brobeck down onto the planet's surface. A small, twenty meter square clearing had been hacked out of the forest near the scattering of resistance buildings. Varying in size and construction material, the builds served as a makeshift base of operations for Pete's little recon station. Though all the constructions where only one story high, the little settlement sprawled out into the forest, making it hard to determine the number of buildings.
Letting out a breath as the ship set down into the clearing, Spencer leaned back in his chair. He looked over at Brendon, to find the younger man wearing an expression of relief mixed with disbelief. “I didn't really think we'd make it,” Brendon admitted.
Spencer laughed, exhausted. “I don't blame you.” He stood up, offering Brendon his hand as he nodded towards the exit. “Come on. Let's go find Ryan and Jon.”
The two weary passengers disembarked, Brendon hanging back a bit behind Spencer, who stepped forward to shake hands with Captain Weekes. He'd been pleasant enough, it wasn't his fault Spencer was expecting his best friend.
He felt a little off balance with all the resistance fighters milling around. He'd never had much to do with the rest of the resistance, typically communicating directly through Ryan. “Do you know where I can find Ry- Captain Ross or his crewman?”
“Ross is grounded to the base on medical probation, but Walker's supposed to be coming out to meet you,” Weekes shrugged apologetically, nodding one last time before turning away to see to his ship.
Spencer turned to look at Brendon, no longer able to ignore his nerves. “Medical probation,” he pondered.
The dark haired man opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by a cry from just out of the clearing. “Spencer!”
The young pilot spun around, a smile breaking across his face as he saw the man rushing across to him. “Jon,” he said happily, letting the older man fold him into a hug.
“Gods, Spencer, you scared the shit out of us,” Jon joked, punching Spencer in the arm.
“We ran out of fuel,” Spencer said distractedly. “Where's Ryan, what happened? Why's he on medical probation?”
“We had a bit of a run in with a patrol ship,” Jon explained. “Ryan busted up his shoulder pretty bad; he was in surgery for a while. They don't want him leaving the housing building because if they did, he'd have stolen a ship and gone to look for you. You know Ryan.”
Spencer laughed softly, feeling the knot in his heart release. Ryan had been in worse shape than a busted shoulder before. “I'm sure he's been going crazy.”
“You have no idea,” Jon said affectionately, then turned to smile at Brendon. “Is this your refugee?”
“Yeah, this is Brendon,” Spencer also smiled at the boy hovering behind his shoulder, who in turn smiled timidly at Jon.
“Nice to meet you, finally,” Jon nodded, offering Brendon his hand. “I'm sorry for all you've been through.”
“I'm alive,” Brendon said softly. “I'll just be thankful for that.”
Affection and relief swelled inside Spencer as he looked on. He reached out, squeezing Brendon's hand. Now everything would be okay.
It became a crazy whirlwind after that. Spencer barely had time to drop in and say hello to Ryan and make sure that he was, in fact, all in one piece, before he was swept away to debrief. He sat and talked to officer after officer, recounting the escape and the weeks leading up to it for people from different fields. He had to describe machinery to technicians, report information to recon teams, and describe every detail of the attack so that maybe, someday, some good could come from it.
There was barely any light filtering down onto the encampment by the time they let Spencer out. He had to navigate his way back to the small housing unit they'd be sharing with Ryan and Jon in the dark. Still, he didn't mind. Being on a planet and not being on duty was something of a novelty for him. He allowed himself the luxury of taking his time.
Once he was close enough to the building though, he could make out a solitary figure sitting on a crate outside the door, staring up at the stars.
“They didn't kick you out, did they?” he asked Brendon once he was within speaking distance.
Brendon looked down to him, smiling tiredly. “No, not at all. They were very nice, much more than they needed to be, seeing as they don't know me.”
“They will,” Spencer said firmly, dropping to sit close to Brendon on the crate.
“I believe you,” Brendon said softly. “And I want that. I just think they need some time alone. They've been really worried, and I think Ryan's shoulder hurts more than he lets on.”
Spencer nodded. “That sounds like Ryan.” He smiled a little, curling his arm around Brendon's shoulder. Brendon leaned into him, humming softly.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes, before Brendon spoke up hesitantly. “Ryan was saying... he was thinking maybe, since his ship was destroyed and they'll need a new one, maybe this time getting a four man ship? Because you're a good pilot, and Jon's a good engineer, and he says he gets too lost in his head to do things sometimes, so maybe I can just do whatever comes up... he said,” Brendon finished lamely.
Spencer smiled, feeling suddenly giddy. “You're pretty good at taking care of people. You fixed my head up and everything. If you haven't noticed, resistance life is a bit rough. So we could probably justify you on a payroll as a medical officer. Sounds better than 'do whatever man'.”
Brendon laughed softly, sitting up to meet Spencer's eyes. “You think?”
“Yeah,” Spencer said gently, leaning his head back against the wall.
The other man bit his lip, looking nervous. “If I'm wrong about this, we'll just pretend it never happened, yeah?” he said quietly. Spencer made a confused sound, but didn't have time to voice a question before Brendon was leaning forward and kissing him softly, shyly.
Happily surprised, Spencer raised a hand to cradle Brendon's jaw. The kiss was chaste, just lips pressed together softly, but it still sent sparks bouncing down Spencer's spine. “Definitely not wrong about this,” he whispered when they pulled apart for air, and Brendon's laughter dusted across his lips.
They came together again, touches of lips gradually giving way to the exploration of tongues, and Brendon hummed softly when Spencer's hand ran down his spine. This kind of intimacy wasn't something Spencer was used to, and he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing. That was okay though, he was fine with that, as long as he got to have Brendon close he could deal with any potential awkwardness.
It wasn't until Brendon tried to maneuver onto Spencer's lap and fell off the crate instead, that Spencer really remembered where they were. He laughed, grinning at Brendon on the ground. Lips tingling pleasantly, he held out a hand to pull Brendon up off the ground. “Come on. Let's go talk to Ryan and Jon. We've got plans to make.”
It took Ryan two days to work up to contacting the base. Talking to Pete always made Ryan edgy. In the informal ranks of the resistance hierarchy, Pete Wentz was one of the few recognized leaders. As the head of recon he was Ryan’s direct superior, even if the young fighter had managed to secure a few owed favors from him. There was a reason why Ryan had never called in on those favors, though, and Ryan remembered it now as he stared at the view screen displaying the familiar face.
Pete was intimidating as fuck. He shouldn’t have been, he was short, probably shorter then Ryan himself, small in stature and rather clumsily built. He had a look about him though, that showed itself in the set of his shoulders and the darkness around his eyes, that suggested he’s seen far too much. He was dangerous and Ryan knew it. He was often struck by a surge of gratefulness, when he talked to Pete, that they were on the same side.
“What can I do for you, Ross?” came the smooth voice over the sub space transmitter. Pete’s voice was as carefully composed as his face, a mask of neutrality and disinterest.
Taking a deep breath, Ryan stared straight into the monitor and said, “I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”
Pete’s eyebrows went up, the only display of a reaction on his face, but it spoke clearly of curiosity. “Oh?”
“I have a friend, Spencer Smith. He’s an intelligence operative and he’s been supplying information through me for quite some time, but his cover’s been compromised. I don’t know if you’re aware of the Ashanti attack on the Dalton IV colony?” Pete nodded but didn’t comment, and Ryan continued. “He found a survivor.”
This drew a reaction from Pete. The older man blinked, obviously surprised. “There haven’t been survivors from these attacks in years. You were one of the last.”
Ryan nodded, fingers drumming absently on the console in front of him. The front cabin of the ship hummed with life around him and he could feel the thrum of it under his hands. “I know. The house was radiation shielded and the survivor, his name’s Brendon, was hidden in an underground level.”
Pete nodded again. “I assume you’ll be filling out a full report on this?”
“Of course.” Ryan knew the procedure; he’d filled hundreds of reports. He’d mostly brought it up to get Pete in a good mood. “Spencer and Brendon need a place to go that’s remote and resistance protected where they can lay low for a while. I sent them your way.”
Pete’s eyes narrowed, and Ryan knew this was the tricky bit. Pete didn’t usually take kindly to people revealing his location without his knowledge. “That was bold of you. I’m not sure I owe you that much of a favor.”
“For saving your wife?” Ryan said coolly. “I think you protecting my friends until I can get to them is a pretty fair trade for getting her out of an Ashanti prison camp. It’s not like I’m freeloading them off onto you. Spencer’s been living on an Ashanti ship for the past five years. I’m sure he knows things that would be valuable.”
Dark eyes, eyes that held countless untold secrets, stared back at Ryan across the lightyears bridged by the subspace link up. The young fighter did his best to hold his own against them and eventually Pete nodded, seeming to deflate a little. “How far off are they?”
The pressure that had been building up in Ryan’s chest since he first opened the channel with Pete suddenly released. He felt light. “Two days, assuming everything goes well. We’re about three days away. But we’re all going to have to stay with you until we can determine how the Ashanti will react. If they just think Spencer deserted that’s one thing, but if they figure out there was a survivor, they may come looking for him.”
Pete grimaced, but nodded none the less. “How about we make them your responsibility once you show up, eh, Ross?” he said with a wry, sardonic smile.
“Not a problem,” Ryan shrugged, trying to appear at ease. In actuality, the idea sort of scared him; he wasn’t used to having to look out for anyone but himself and Jon. It was Spencer through, and Spencer was worth any amount of misgivings or unease.
Pete nodded again, clearly signaling that the transmission was over. They went through the niceties of saying goodbye quickly, and then Ryan was left sitting in an empty cabin devoid of sound. The silence of the ship pressed in on him then, like the deadly vacuum just on the other side of the ship’s composite metal walls had stolen all sound. Drawing in a depth breath, Ryan made himself focus on the whirs of machinery and the soft beeps of the computers around him until he calmed down. Too often those sounds faded into the background, became a part of his consciousness.
Scrubbing his hands over his eyes and up into his hair, Ryan acknowledge the fact that he really needed to sleep. He’d been awake for more than forty eight hours, with only a few hours sleep before that stretch. Jon had already made his way to bed and Ryan ached to join him, to give in to sleep and not think for a while.
With a thoroughness that bordered on compulsion Ryan did a routine check of all the ship’s functions, running through the atmospheric and navigation systems, sensors and shields until he was sure the autopilot would function without failure while he slept. Only then did he make his way out of the cabin, walking through the ship and back to their quarters where Jon slept.
The older man didn’t stir as Ryan moved about the room, shucking off his clothes and scrubbing his face down with a ‘fresher cloth. He quietly checked to make sure the computer would wake him in case of an emergency, and set the mess hall replicator to give forth hot, strong coffee at a set time the next morning.
Only when Ryan slid onto the bed did Jon move, and even then he didn’t wake entirely. He curled an arm out over Ryan’s waist as the younger man curled in next to him, and Ryan allowed himself to relax into it. It was all too easy to let exhaustion take him, falling into a deep sleep.
-----
Time passed differently in deep space. There wasn’t much to do; the autopilot took care of the running of the ship well enough on its own. Really, all Spencer needed to do was check it occasionally to make sure they weren’t drifting off their heading, and let the ship take care of the rest.
Fortunately, by the second day of travel, Brendon seemed to be coming out of his shell a little. Spencer spent most of the first day going through all the resistance reports he could find, hoping to gain a better picture of how the war was shaping up. As a field operative, he hadn’t had to know much about the resistance side of the war, only what the Ashanti were up to. It was too risky to receive that kind of information, too likely to attract attention when the strongest thing Spencer had going for him was in anonymity.
By the second day though, Spencer thought he might actually go crazy if he had to decode another report. He looked up gratefully when Brendon walked over to him, smiling at the other man. Brendon responded with a small smile of his own. “Would you mind if I sat with you?” he asked, oddly formal and distant, but Spencer got the distinct impression that Brendon was doing his best and Spencer appreciated the effort.
“Please do,” Spencer said, gesturing to the other bench at the mess all table. “I could use the company. These reports get kind of monotonous and depressing after a while.”
Brendon smiled shyly, sitting and pulling his legs up his chest. He rested his head on his knees, making himself seem even smaller then he usually did. “I would have thought it’d be exciting.”
Spencer shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. “A lot of it’s boring stuff like communication frequencies you need special comm codes to be able to read. There’s a lot of nonsense to weed through. My friend Ryan does this shit as his job, but it’s mostly gibberish to me. I’m more of a fighter then a thinker, I guess.”
“I lived on a farm my whole life,” Brendon said quietly, his eyes looking distant all of a sudden, far away. “I hated it. But there wasn’t much else to do, everyone needed solar power, and it’s not like I could go off planet, not like they would let us leave...” Brendon trailed off, looking up at Spencer guiltily. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t care about that.”
“Why wouldn’t I care?” Spencer asked, tilting his head.
Brendon shrugged. “Why would you? You don’t know me.”
“I want to,” Spencer said quietly, before he’d even realized he’d thought the words. “I mean, like I said before, I don’t have many friends. And I haven’t heard from my family since I was drafted so... It can get kind of lonely.”
Brendon nodded but he didn’t say anything. He was staring into the middle distance, eyes cast towards the table. Spencer took a moment to look at him properly. He had dark circles under his eyes, making him look drawn and pale. “I’m scared of being alone,” Brendon said, suddenly, quietly. “I don’t know if I can handle it. I’m used to having a whole colony, and now...” He paused for a second or two. “Does it get easier?”
The pain on the boy’s face was all too evident, and it made Spencer ache. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I didn’t lose my family the same way... they’re still alive, as far as I know. And when you’re drafted, you don’t get a lot of extra time to think or feel.”
“I just can’t believe I’ll never see my parents again. Or... my sister is - or… was I guess, turning twelve in two weeks. The entire colony was planning a celebration. I can’t believe...”
Spencer reached out, hesitating for a moment before taking Brendon’s hand. The other boy smiled at him a little, seeming appreciative. “I don’t know what I’m going to do either now.” Spencer admitted. “I’ll have to find a new job. Something else to do for the resistance, most likely. No one’s going to make you hang around by any means, but if you want to, we can try to stick together.”
Brendon looked at Spencer quietly for a moment. “I keep trying to figure out why you’re being so nice to me, and I can’t,” he confessed. “Wanting friends is one thing, but you risked your life for me, and you keep - It’s just… I’m really no one special.”
“You’re a person. That makes you special, and worth being nice to,” Spencer insisted. Brendon still looked skeptical, and Spencer squeezed his hand. “I don’t know, Brendon. From what I know of you, I like you. What more do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” Brendon said with a small, but real, smile, looking at Spencer. For the first time he didn’t look shy or withdrawn. “How about you just talk and I’ll let you know?”
So Spencer did talk, and Brendon did too. They traded stories, Spencer talking about what he remembered of his family, and Brendon talking about his. They talked about the resistance and the Ashanti, about Ryan and Jon, and about Brendon’s friends from the colony. The entire discussion seemed painful for Brendon, but he seemed lighter after, like he was breathing easier.
Through the entire conversation they didn’t disconnect their hands, and when Spencer had to in order to call up something to show Brendon on his data pad, Brendon took his hand again once it was free. The boy looked shy for a moment, but Spencer just smiled at him.
All in all, Spencer found he liked Brendon’s company as much as he expected to, or at least hoped he would. The other boy came alive when he got excited about something, and Spencer got glimpses of what he suspected an unbroken Brendon might be like. Though the boy’s shoulders retained the protective curl and he sobered quietly, when he laughed his entire body changed. Spencer really just wanted to devote hours on end finding ways to make Brendon laugh.
Brendon still seemed cold though, and after hours holding hands without scaring Brendon away, Spencer resolved to do something about it. When he returned from grabbing coffee, he slid onto the bench next Brendon rather than going to sit on his own. It didn’t seem to faze Brendon, who took the coffee eagerly and then slumped companionably into Spencer’s side. Spencer relaxed, listening as Brendon recalled some of the speeder games he’d played with his friends as a teenager.
It was easy to lose track of time talking to Brendon, easy to get wrapped up in the process of interacting with another human after so long. Spencer found himself smiling more then he had in weeks - probably months, leaning into Brendon’s side just as much as Brendon leaned into his. In fact, he mostly forgot about their situation and surroundings until a klaxon blared in the front of the ship, calling him up to cabin.
Dread settling in his stomach, Spencer rushed towards the ship’s cabin with Brendon on his heels, internally cursing himself for getting distracted. The alarm continued to sound as Spencer burst into the control room, immediately checking the sensors for approaching ships coming in for an attack. There were none.
Confused, Spencer scanned the cabin of the source of the alarm. A red light was flashing on the fuel indicator, which kept are read out of the remaining the amount of Krylatine ore, which was used to power the subspace hyper drive. The ship, which had never been intend to do more then make a trip to the planet’s surface and back, hadn’t been equipped with much of the hyperspace fuel.
“We have to drop out of hyperspace, or we’re going to fall out and tear ourselves apart,” Spencer said to Brendon, moving quickly to the pilot’s seat. “Strap yourself in, this is going to be rough.”
The other boy complied, but Spencer barely took note of him, fingers flying deftly over the controls. Dropping out of hyperspace before a given destination was always dangerous, given that you didn’t know who or what you’d be dropping out in front of. Spencer could do his best to make sure they didn’t drop out on a collision course with a planet or sun, but star ships and other space going vehicles were completely out of his control. The drop itself would be dangerous as well because he didn’t have time to run through all the normal drop out procedures. Essentially he had to pull the ship out of hyperspace before she ran out of fuel and dropped out, and just pray the she didn’t tear herself apart in the process.
“Hold on tight,” Spencer said grimly, and disengaged the hyper drive.
The ship rocked at the monumental shock wave of dropping into regular space, the walls around them buckling and groaning. Spencer had a moment to wonder if the ship’s hull integrity was strong enough to stand up to the crushing force, then he felt his own flimsy seat restraints give out and he was thrown from his chair.
Spencer Smith hit the wall of the ship hard, and knew only blackness.
-----
The attack came out of nowhere. The Camisado rocked violently from the force of the plasma canons hitting them, throwing Ryan clear across the small ships living space where he’d been curled up reading reports. He lay slumped, in a daze, as klaxons sounded around him and alarms shrieked from the front of the ship.
Ryan’s head throbbed from its hard impact with the bulkhead but he struggled to his feet nonetheless. They were less than a day away from reaching Pete’s base and it had been smooth sailing the entire way, without so much as a sensor ghost to indicate trouble. Taken in by the obviously false sense of security, Ryan had allowed himself to relax a little. Clearly they were going to pay for that.
Staggering across the room, Ryan stuck his head into the engine bay. “Jon?” he called, trying not to panic.
To his relief, the older man called back almost immediately. “I’m here. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan called back, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the throbbing in his head. “I’m going up to find out.” He took a moment to be grateful that their ship was small, and that it didn’t take long to get to the cabin. Ryan flipped the intercom so he could talk to Jon and set about scanning the various blaring sensor read outs.
“Someone’s tailing us,” Ryan told Jon via the intercom, “hanging about three kilometers behind. That hit wasn’t meant to cause much damage, just get our attention.”
“Well they got our attention alright,” came the disgruntled reply. “Our aft shields are down to sixty percent. We don’t want to fight with these guys, Ry. They’ll crush us flat.”
Mild panic flared up in Ryan’s chest, but he suppressed it. “They’re sending a transmission, hang on.” Deftly, Ryan flipped at the controls until he activated the one way audio receiver. The computerized message that filled the speakers was one Ryan had heard before.
“Unidentified vessel, drop out of hyperspace immediately,” instructed the automaton voice. “Prepare to be bored. Disobedience is unwise.”
“You bet your ass it’s unwise,” Ryan muttered, flipping off the repeating message. “Jon, what are our chances of outrunning an Ashanti patrol ship?”
“Slim,” Jon called back over the loud speaker. “Over large distances anyway. We’d have to push our own hyper speed barrier, which would burn the fuck out of our engines. Basically, once they did catch us, we’d have no way of fighting.” Ryan grimaced. He’d expected as much. “But, if we can push our engines to get us to Mengyna, then maybe Pete’s guys will fend them off for us.”
Pete would hate that; he would be so fucking pissed at Ryan for bring an Ashanti patrol right to his door step. “We don’t have many other options, do we?” he asked, already setting the controls to accelerate past the recommended safety barrier for their small ship.
“None,” Jon said grimly. “Unless you feel like explaining our situation to a dozen Ashanti patrol guards.” There was almost nothing Ryan wanted less.
“Then hold on tight to something,” Ryan advised. “Our baby’s gonna try to tear herself apart doing this.”
“I’ll do what I can to keep the engines cool,” came Jon’s response, calm and collected like always. God, Ryan loved him.
“Here we go.”
There were many reasons why pushing a ship past her hyperspace barrier was a bad idea, not the least of which being that the ship’s structural integrity began to fail. Ships were built to go up to a certain speed and no more, and once it was pushed beyond that point the stress on the hull could begin to buckle it. Along with that, pushing the barrier burnt up the engine of the ship, making it work harder than it was designed to.
All of this, however, was preferable to a night spent in Ashanti interrogation. Ryan had been through that before, and had the scars to prove it. It wasn’t an experience he particularly wanted to repeat. Eyes glued to the sensor panel, Ryan watched the distances between the two ships grow. The walls around Ryan emitted a low groan, and Ryan bit his lip. “How long can the hull integrity last?”
“I don’t know,” Jon said honestly, and Ryan could hear the clanking and groaning of the engine even over the comm line, trying to push them even faster through hyperspace. “If we’re lucky it’ll last until the engine gives out. If not, then I’d guess maybe another twenty five minutes.” Ryan groaned. Even maintaining this speed, it would still take them twenty minutes to reach Mengyna.
Diverting his eyes from the sensor read out, Ryan punched up a standard resistance distress call and sent it off in the direction of Pete’s intelligence base. If they were lucky then Pete would intercept it and be waiting to help them. If they weren’t than they’d be bringing a hostile craft into one of the resistance’s best kept secret ports without any kind of warning.
The distance between the two ships had evened when Ryan looked at the sensor read out again, which was not a very encouraging thought. “I think they might gain on us,” Ryan said into the intercom pick up. Jon just hummed back in affirmation, clearly busy trying to keep the engines from burning out.
It was a nerve-racking run, watching pursuing ship draw incrementally closer as the tiny Camisado flew through hyperspace. The hull of the ship groaned loudly, protesting the strain, and the engines began to smoke regardless of Jon’s efforts to keep them cool.
Pushing aside the fear trying to claw its way out of his throat, Ryan began the preparations to drop out of hyperspace. They could only hope, pray, that the base on Mengyna had gotten their distress call. Dropping out of hyperspace would probably fry their engines, if it didn’t blow them up, leaving them defenseless.
“Gods protect us,” Ryan said quietly, his voice shaking as adrenaline pumped through him. Then they were dropping out of hyperspace, the ship practically shrieking as inertia and gravity fought for control of the tiny craft. Ryan was again thrown from his chair, left shoulder hitting the bulkhead with a sickening crunch.
Pain splintered through Ryan’s consciousness, and his vision went temporarily white from it. Ryan cried out, swimming through the fog of pain to try and get to his feet. Left arm curled protectively in against his body, Ryan managed to drag himself over to the pilots station. The light for an incoming transmission was blinking a Ryan flipped the audio. “Looks like you could use some help, kid,” came Pete’s gruff voice, broken by static.
Ryan breathed out a sigh of relief, the pain in his shoulder making it catch on the inhale. “Ashanti patrol, a minute or so behind us,” he panted out, already working his way over to the intercom. He needed to make sure Jon was alright.
“Just get your ship down to the base, we’ll hold them off,” Pete replied, cutting the transmission short as the Ashanti ship neared the hyperspace drop point. Working through the pain, Ryan set the autopilot to get them to the base. It might not be the smoothest of landings, but they’d get their in one piece, which was more than Ryan could guarantee with only one functional arm.
He collapsed onto the floor, reaching up to hit the intercom switch. “Jon!” Ryan called out, clutching the nearest access panel as the turbulence from the upper atmosphere knocked his shoulder into the wall. “Jon, are you alright?”
After a couple seconds of gut-wrenching silence, the older man’s voice came back over the intercom. “I’m fine.” Jon sounded wrecked, exhausted, and Ryan bit back a sob of relief, because he was okay. Jon was okay. “What about you?” The ship shook again, jarring Ryan’s shoulder and he cried out involuntarily. “Ry?”
“Shoulder,” Ryan gritted, closing his eyes as a wave of nausea swept through him.
“I’ll be right up.”
Ryan collapsed back against the wall, barely able to regulate his breathing. He could feel the sickening sensation of blood soaking into his shirt, he didn’t even want to look to see how badly his shoulder was broken. He concentrated on breathing, on staying conscious, as he waited for Jon to get to him. Jon would make it okay.
The smell of engine smoke preceded Jon into the cabin, and when the older man did appear he was looking a bit singed at the edges. Ryan tried to smile at him, just because he was alright, Jon was fine, perfectly fine, which was really all that matter to Ryan. His smile turned into a grimace, though, as trying to sit up shot a fresh wave of pain through his body.
“Holy sweet gods above,” Jon whispered, dropped down on his knees next to where Ryan was slumped on the floor. “Ryan...”
“Looks worse than it is,” Ryan gritted, even though he really had no idea how it looked. But he could guess from Jon’s expression, and really, Ryan had worse than a broken shoulder before.
“Bullshit,” Jon growled, pulling Ryan towards as gently him as he could. Ryan went easily, curling into Jon so his broken shoulder was out into the room, not touching anything. Jon held him close, away from anything that could jar him, and Ryan concentrated on breathing. “We’re almost there,” Jon whispered soothingly into Ryan’s hair. “We’ll land, and find someone to set your shoulder, and then we’ll find Spencer, and everything will be alright.”
Closing his eyes, Ryan let himself believe, just for a little while, that everything would be alright.
-----
Spencer woke up to the feeling of cool fingers on his face and a frantic voice in his ear. “Spencer? Spencer!”
The young ex-guard, now pilot, pried his eyes open, looking up at the worried face hovering above him. The ship was dark; illuminated only by the flashing warning lights on the panels, even the emergency systems seemed to be glitching. But they were alive.
“You okay?” Spencer asked Brendon groggily, pushing his way up into a sitting position.
Brendon looked at him warily. “I'm fine. But you're sort of... bleeding everywhere.” Only then did Spencer notice the pounding in his head and the sticky wet feeling of blood on his face. He swore, reaching up to touch the gash on his forehead.
“Head wounds always look worse than they are,” he tried to reassure Brendon, who was beginning to look kind of panicky. “We've got med kits in the back, just need to stop the bleeding.”
Brendon nodded nervously, reaching out to touch Spencer's shoulder. His touch was light, reluctant, but when Spencer leaned into him, he became surer. “I'll help,” he said quietly, and Spencer allowed himself to be guided to his feet.
The trip through the body of the ship seemed disproportionately long compared to its size. Dizziness overtook Spencer every couple of meters, forcing him to lean heavily on Brendon for support. The dark haired man was smaller than Spencer in stature, but he was sturdy, and luckily he held Spencer's weight well enough.
By the time Brendon deposited him in a chair in the lounge, Spencer could hardly see straight. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, hoping it would make the throbbing go away. “I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to sleep after you've hit your head,” Brendon said cautiously, fishing around in a cabinet for a med pack.
“Yeah,” Spencer sighed, prying his eyes open to look at the other man. He knew Brendon was right. “What happened?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the pain in his head.
Brendon shrugged, coming to sit next to Spencer. “I don't really know,” he said, fiddling with the supplies in his hands. “I've never ridden in a ship like this, only ground speeders back home. Best I can tell, we dropped out of hyperspace and blew some of the environmental systems. Auto pilot put us back on course, but I can't really tell what's working and what's not.”
Spencer nodded then winced as the movement sent another spike of pain through his head. That was about as much as they could have hoped for. “Is life support still working?” he asked as Brendon began to clean the cut on his forehead.
“The computer said it is,” Brendon replied. “I can't tell you much more.”
Spencer hummed, thinking. If they were back on the right course, then they'd arrive at the base in about two days going sub-light. Chances were their communication systems were also blown, and those would be hard to fix without setting down to port. They'd have no way of contacting Ryan to let him know they'd be late. They were on their own.
“We need to make sure sensors and shields are working” Spencer muttered, and Brendon nodded, setting aside a blood soaked cloth. Spencer winced when he saw it, wondered just how bad he looked. “We can't be caught off-guard like this.”
“I would have checked,” Brendon fretted, “but like I said, I don't really know much about ships, and you were lying there bleeding and-”
“Hey,” Spencer said softly, placing a hand on Brendon's shoulder. “Hey calm down. You're doing just fine.” Brendon nodded, looking down into his lap. “I'm serious. Thank you. You're doing a really good job keeping it together, considering everything.”
Brendon smiled softly and went back to bandaging Spencer's head. “Do you think we'll make it?” Brendon asked after a couple of minutes. He sounded lost and scared, for the first time seeming like a boy who'd lost everything he knew in the world.
“I'll be damned if we don't,” Spencer said fiercely, meeting Brendon's eyes. “We haven't come this far to give up, no way.”
“Is it making a difference? I mean, there is all this fighting and still my family... people are still being slaughtered.”
“I don't know,” Spencer said softly. He reached out and touched Brendon's shoulder again. “We've got to believe it makes a difference.”
Brendon smiled again, a ghost of an expression. “I wish I had your faith,” he said quietly.
“It's what kept me fighting,” Spencer shrugged. “Every day, it could have cost me my life. But if we give up hope, hope that we can change the world or just hope that we can make it through another day, if we gave that up we'd be nothing. We'd lose our humanity.”
They lapsed into silence, Spencer letting his mind wander as Brendon finished the bandages on his head. Finally, Brendon withdrew his hands, smiling sheepishly. “I think that's the best I can do.”
Reaching up, Spencer ran his fingers over the gauze on his forehead. “Good enough. Thank you.”
Brendon nodded, handing him some pain pills. “Here, you might want some of these.” Spencer smiled gratefully, swallowing a couple of the white capsules.
“I'm going to head to the engine room and try to fix up our systems as best I can,” he said, pushing himself up from the chair. “Would you mind heading to the cabin? You can tell me if things are working or not.”
The other man nodded, fidgeting with his shirt sleeves. He looked reluctant, like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. “When we land...” he began, but trailed off. “I know you've got Ryan and Jon, but... I mean, I've got no one else. Do you think? I mean, would you mind if I... tagged along with you for a while?”
Spencer smiled a little, reaching out to squeeze Brendon's hand. “I already told you that you could.”
“You might have just said it to be nice,” Brendon mumbled.
“I don't do that,” Spencer said seriously. “Look... Ryan probably won't trust you at first, but he trusts me. I learned to trust Jon for him, he'll do the same.”
Brendon nodded, looking more confident now. He squeezed Spencer's hand again then released it. “So, sensors?” he asked awkwardly.
Spencer laughed. “Yup. If you head up to the cabin I'll let you know what I need you to tell me.” He didn't think they'd be able to get much done from the inside of the ship, but they had two days until port and little else to occupy their time with. He just hoped Ryan wouldn't freak out too much when they missed the rendezvous.
-----
The falling sun cast a pinkish glow across the sky, flaring up through the trees. Barely twelve hours had passed since they'd landed on the planet, and Ryan already felt overwhelmed by how much had happened. Pete's small fleet of resistance ships had made short work of the Ashanti patrol, disabling and destroying it before it could even get a message off to the rest of its fleet. The Camisado had barely survived the landing, and they weren't sure they'd ever be able to get it running again.
Ryan spent more of the five hours following their landing unconscious than he'd care to admit, from a mix of blood loss, pain and exhaustion. The medics had taken advantage of it, doing most of the surgery that fixing his shoulder required while he was unconscious. It hadn't taken very long though, once he was awake to figure out that Spencer and Brendon weren't on the base, even though they'd been meant to arrive first.
From his perch by the window, Ryan squinted up into the sky, searching for any signs of a ship. The radar sensors should go off before any ship got close enough to be seen from the surface, but equipment could go wrong, mechanical things could break...
A soft shuffling noise drew Ryan's attention back to the interior of the base. Jon was leaning in the doorway to the sleeping quarters Pete had given them, his face tired, hair rumpled. His sleep pants hung low on his hips, and at another time Ryan would have appreciated the view. He was too distracted now, too filled with worry and dread.
“Couldn't sleep?” Jon asked softly, padding over to sink down on the window seat behind Ryan. He relaxed back against Jon's chest, letting the older man move him around until they fit snugly together, bare back to bare chest. Jon rested his chin on Ryan's good shoulder, the coarse hairs of his beard tickling Ryan's skin. It was comforting; familiar, normal.
“They should have arrived by now,” Ryan muttered, eyes still fixed on the coral pink sky. “They left Dalton IV five days ago, that's twice as long as it takes to make the journey, even with a malfunctioning ship.”
Jon hummed comfortingly, his thumb brushing over the thin skin stretched over Ryan's hip bone. “Spencer's a good pilot, Ryan. He'll make it here.”
“Spencer's a good pilot, yes, but he's not used to flying on his own without support. I should be out there looking for him, I should be--” Panic rose in Ryan's voice, laced with hysteria, but Jon cut him off firmly.
“But you can't be. By the gods, Ryan, we almost got blown apart!” Jon's fingers came up to brush softly against the bandage wrapped around Ryan's left shoulder. The injury still throbbed a little, even though the medics had done a fine job of setting and patching up the broken joint. “You need rest.”
“I hate being grounded. I hate not being able to fight,” Ryan whispered softly, dropping his eyes from the sky to fix on where Jon's hand was resting on his stomach.
“I know you do. But I'd hate you being dead.”
Ryan sighed, tipping his head back onto Jon's shoulder. The sky was the same coral pink it always was. Soon it would fade to a dusky gray, then black, black with stars that were always stationary, always the same. Ryan knew some people found the consistency of the stars soothing. To him they were just a reminder of how stationary he was. How easy he would be to find.
It took a couple of minutes for Ryan to notice that Jon had begun to sing, soft words and melody breathed right into Ryan's ear. Ryan melted back against the older man's chest, letting himself be calmed by warm skin and gentle music. The words were in a language that Ryan didn't know, but the melody was hauntingly beautiful. It reminded Ryan of the old Earth novels they used to teach in the Terra Luna schools, before the Ashanti closed them down; stories of adventure and love, sorrow and heartbreak, that always left a sweet taste behind when they were finished, no matter if they ended in tragedy.
“I miss reading Terran books,” Ryan whispered, because saying such things aloud in the wrong company could get you shot. Ryan trusted Jon, and he trusted even Pete, but he wasn't that quick to trust Pete's friends. He hadn't been at the base long enough to feel safe there, not like he did on their ship. “I miss reading about how life used to be on Earth, before the Ashanti came.”
Jon's song trailed off, and he pressed a kiss to the skin behind Ryan's ear, whispering “I know,” softly. Of course Jon knew. Jon knew him better than anyone, even Spencer.
Spencer... Worry wound itself hot and fast in Ryan's stomach, and he twisted away from the window abruptly, turning in Jon's arms to bury his face in the older man's shoulder.
“They should have been here two days ago,” he whispered. Jon just sighed, wrapping Ryan in his arms as tightly as he could, given Ryan’s injury. Ryan could feel Jon's lips brushing kisses against his forehead, and he tried to lose himself in the embrace.
-----
Spencer was on edge for the remainder of the journey. They were crawling - limping through space in a ship with minimal shielding and a dodgy atmospheric system. The sheer number of things that could go wrong rattled around in his head; making him feel slightly crazy. He had no idea how Ryan managed to function with this level of paranoia constantly eating away at him.
Still, it could have been worse. Spencer could have been by himself in this. He took every opportunity he could to be thankful for Brendon, for his quiet support and constant presence. Brendon wasn't much of a mechanic, actually had a tendency to leave things in worse shape than he'd found them in when he tried to help, but he was good company.
He was also good at reminding Spencer to do things like change the bandage on his head, and eat. Spencer was secretly afraid he might be turning into Ryan, but Brendon didn't seem to mind keeping him grounded as he kept their ship running.
It was a nerve wrecking experience in every imaginable way, but as much as Spencer spent every second waiting for an Ashanti ship to appear out of nowhere and blow them out of the sky, he found excitement rising in his throat. The prospect of seeing Ryan, of maybe being able to join him after nearly seven years, was enough to have Spencer buzzing.
He found himself telling Brendon stories about Ryan over the intercom of their ship as he labored in the engine bay, Brendon listening to him talk from the cabin. As talkative as Brendon could be, he was a good listener too. Spencer found himself increasingly drawn to the other boy, to his smile and his laugher.
Even with Brendon to keep him distracted, it felt like half a life time had passed before their little ship reached the Palascar system.
“We're here,” he called into the comm pick up. “We've made it; you might want to come up now.”
Brendon looked tired, Spencer observed, as he flopped down into the co-pilot's chair. The third thing Spencer was going to do, after hugging Ryan for an hour and a half and taking a hot shower, was make sure Brendon got some sleep. Though, as he'd probably have to give reports, it might end up being the fourth thing he did. Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his face. He himself needed to sleep; his own thoughts were getting hard to follow.
Spencer sent out a standard resistance greeting as soon as they were within comm range of the planet. The ship was barely holding together at that point; it was all Spencer could do to keep the air breathable and make sure they kept moving forward. But that didn't matter now, they'd made it.
Still, Spencer would be lying if he said he wasn't expecting Ryan to be the one to respond to their hail. He frowned at the display screen telling him that the ship soaring out of the upper atmosphere toward them wasn't The Camisado. Instead it was The Brobeck, a stealth ship in the same class as Ryan's Camisado, which was used frequently by the resistance. The Brobeck was captained by a Dallon Weekes, if Spencer remembered rightly, and he opened the incoming transmission with some trepidation.
“Smith.” Weekes nodded in greeting across the short range comm system, luckily undamaged by the accident. “Looks like you could use a hand.”
“Yeah, we're sort of in rough shape,” Spencer said distractedly. “I was expecting to meet up with The Camisado...”
Weekes nodded again. “Yeah, Wentz said you probably would be. That ship's out of commission, we're bringing you in for her.”
Spencer's blood ran cold, dread aching through his limbs. “Is her crew alright?”
“Yeah,” Weekes shrugged. “I don't know the details; we just came in to port last night. The crew's fine, but I don't know what happened. I'm sure someone will explain it to you.”
Spencer just nodded, knowing a dismissal when he heard one. Nervously, he glanced over at Brendon, who offered him an encouraging smile. Spencer appreciated the gesture.
Refusing to let himself consider the possibilities of why Ryan and Jon were grounded, Spencer focused on the task at hand. He had to lock the ship's nav computer on to that of The Brobeck, so the fully functional ship could guide them down to the surface without having to rely on their damaged guidance system.
Spencer watched out the front view port as they followed The Brobeck down onto the planet's surface. A small, twenty meter square clearing had been hacked out of the forest near the scattering of resistance buildings. Varying in size and construction material, the builds served as a makeshift base of operations for Pete's little recon station. Though all the constructions where only one story high, the little settlement sprawled out into the forest, making it hard to determine the number of buildings.
Letting out a breath as the ship set down into the clearing, Spencer leaned back in his chair. He looked over at Brendon, to find the younger man wearing an expression of relief mixed with disbelief. “I didn't really think we'd make it,” Brendon admitted.
Spencer laughed, exhausted. “I don't blame you.” He stood up, offering Brendon his hand as he nodded towards the exit. “Come on. Let's go find Ryan and Jon.”
The two weary passengers disembarked, Brendon hanging back a bit behind Spencer, who stepped forward to shake hands with Captain Weekes. He'd been pleasant enough, it wasn't his fault Spencer was expecting his best friend.
He felt a little off balance with all the resistance fighters milling around. He'd never had much to do with the rest of the resistance, typically communicating directly through Ryan. “Do you know where I can find Ry- Captain Ross or his crewman?”
“Ross is grounded to the base on medical probation, but Walker's supposed to be coming out to meet you,” Weekes shrugged apologetically, nodding one last time before turning away to see to his ship.
Spencer turned to look at Brendon, no longer able to ignore his nerves. “Medical probation,” he pondered.
The dark haired man opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by a cry from just out of the clearing. “Spencer!”
The young pilot spun around, a smile breaking across his face as he saw the man rushing across to him. “Jon,” he said happily, letting the older man fold him into a hug.
“Gods, Spencer, you scared the shit out of us,” Jon joked, punching Spencer in the arm.
“We ran out of fuel,” Spencer said distractedly. “Where's Ryan, what happened? Why's he on medical probation?”
“We had a bit of a run in with a patrol ship,” Jon explained. “Ryan busted up his shoulder pretty bad; he was in surgery for a while. They don't want him leaving the housing building because if they did, he'd have stolen a ship and gone to look for you. You know Ryan.”
Spencer laughed softly, feeling the knot in his heart release. Ryan had been in worse shape than a busted shoulder before. “I'm sure he's been going crazy.”
“You have no idea,” Jon said affectionately, then turned to smile at Brendon. “Is this your refugee?”
“Yeah, this is Brendon,” Spencer also smiled at the boy hovering behind his shoulder, who in turn smiled timidly at Jon.
“Nice to meet you, finally,” Jon nodded, offering Brendon his hand. “I'm sorry for all you've been through.”
“I'm alive,” Brendon said softly. “I'll just be thankful for that.”
Affection and relief swelled inside Spencer as he looked on. He reached out, squeezing Brendon's hand. Now everything would be okay.
It became a crazy whirlwind after that. Spencer barely had time to drop in and say hello to Ryan and make sure that he was, in fact, all in one piece, before he was swept away to debrief. He sat and talked to officer after officer, recounting the escape and the weeks leading up to it for people from different fields. He had to describe machinery to technicians, report information to recon teams, and describe every detail of the attack so that maybe, someday, some good could come from it.
There was barely any light filtering down onto the encampment by the time they let Spencer out. He had to navigate his way back to the small housing unit they'd be sharing with Ryan and Jon in the dark. Still, he didn't mind. Being on a planet and not being on duty was something of a novelty for him. He allowed himself the luxury of taking his time.
Once he was close enough to the building though, he could make out a solitary figure sitting on a crate outside the door, staring up at the stars.
“They didn't kick you out, did they?” he asked Brendon once he was within speaking distance.
Brendon looked down to him, smiling tiredly. “No, not at all. They were very nice, much more than they needed to be, seeing as they don't know me.”
“They will,” Spencer said firmly, dropping to sit close to Brendon on the crate.
“I believe you,” Brendon said softly. “And I want that. I just think they need some time alone. They've been really worried, and I think Ryan's shoulder hurts more than he lets on.”
Spencer nodded. “That sounds like Ryan.” He smiled a little, curling his arm around Brendon's shoulder. Brendon leaned into him, humming softly.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes, before Brendon spoke up hesitantly. “Ryan was saying... he was thinking maybe, since his ship was destroyed and they'll need a new one, maybe this time getting a four man ship? Because you're a good pilot, and Jon's a good engineer, and he says he gets too lost in his head to do things sometimes, so maybe I can just do whatever comes up... he said,” Brendon finished lamely.
Spencer smiled, feeling suddenly giddy. “You're pretty good at taking care of people. You fixed my head up and everything. If you haven't noticed, resistance life is a bit rough. So we could probably justify you on a payroll as a medical officer. Sounds better than 'do whatever man'.”
Brendon laughed softly, sitting up to meet Spencer's eyes. “You think?”
“Yeah,” Spencer said gently, leaning his head back against the wall.
The other man bit his lip, looking nervous. “If I'm wrong about this, we'll just pretend it never happened, yeah?” he said quietly. Spencer made a confused sound, but didn't have time to voice a question before Brendon was leaning forward and kissing him softly, shyly.
Happily surprised, Spencer raised a hand to cradle Brendon's jaw. The kiss was chaste, just lips pressed together softly, but it still sent sparks bouncing down Spencer's spine. “Definitely not wrong about this,” he whispered when they pulled apart for air, and Brendon's laughter dusted across his lips.
They came together again, touches of lips gradually giving way to the exploration of tongues, and Brendon hummed softly when Spencer's hand ran down his spine. This kind of intimacy wasn't something Spencer was used to, and he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing. That was okay though, he was fine with that, as long as he got to have Brendon close he could deal with any potential awkwardness.
It wasn't until Brendon tried to maneuver onto Spencer's lap and fell off the crate instead, that Spencer really remembered where they were. He laughed, grinning at Brendon on the ground. Lips tingling pleasantly, he held out a hand to pull Brendon up off the ground. “Come on. Let's go talk to Ryan and Jon. We've got plans to make.”