“You mean Earth,” Hunter says. And from the look in her eye, Lana can see she is imagining some of the same things.
Jack sneers. “You said yourself we have no way to kill it.”
“There’s still somewhere no one could ever find it. Somewhere we’ll never go.”
“Where?”
“The sun,” Lana says. “We shoot it into the sun.”
“I’d have to program Bel manually,” Hunter says. “From the bridge.”
Jack raises a trembling finger. “No. Out of the question.”
“Jack—”
“Gregorian and myself,” Jack says. “That’s it. I’ll have my portable. You can walk me through it.”
This makes sense to Lana. Frankly, she doesn’t want anyone else to go out there.
Hunter shakes her head. “You’d be programming Belinda to destroy herself while her crew is onboard. Even if we set a timer and get to the Homunculus first, she’ll fight you. You’d need to hardwire a workaround. I’m the only one who knows her navigation system well enough to do it.”
Jack clicks his portable. “Belinda, is all of this true?”
“It is. I’m afraid I’m programmed to prioritize crew safety. Odds of survival are better out here with the creature than on the surface of the sun.”
“There’s got to be a simple override.”
“No. I am the override,” Bel says.
“Fuck that.”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Alright, fine, so I’ll hardwire the thing. The workaround. Whatever.”
Hunter says, “You can’t even read coordinates off a screen. I can do the hardwire in three minutes or less. You need me on this.”
“I said no, damn it. You stay here. Everyone stays here!”
Justin snorts and rolls over. Stetson sits upright.
He wants to protect them. Lana understands that. But this is bigger than them, bigger than whatever guilt he’s harboring. She touches his wrist. “Jack…”
He whips away his arm and storms off. She lets him go. There’s no disappearing in here.
Hunter grips her elbow and tells her, “One way or another, I need to get to that bridge.”
“I know. I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah. Good luck.”
Chapter 30
So he ends up back in the lavatory, hand propped against the door, preparing to push it closed. The moment lingers, as does his hand, as does the crack in the door. Why close it? What then? Sit here and fume about these choices which do not feel like choices? Like before. When he was crowded in a different cold room with a different type of threat outside the walls. When the officers—the people he fed for months with anything he could find—forced him into a decision he had no business making.
But is that true?
Was he really forced?
Couldn’t he have sacrificed his own life, laid it down like so many others, just letting what remained of his strength dissolve away with the rest of him? Not with that promise to keep moving stuck like a bit of shrapnel in his brain. Nudging him steadily forward. It is still there now, though different because he is different. If he could go back, he wonders, would he make a different choice?
He does not close the door. Just stands, exhausted, the damaged skin along his hands and arms stiff and aching. His body in that drunken state of overtiredness, eyes remaining open by momentum only.
He has tried not to cause people harm. That should count for something.
He never wanted to be a father or a captain or a leader. He just liked the idea of a fast ship that could go anywhere and a home he could occasionally return to. If someone was waiting there for him, all the better. But things got complicated. Ani got pregnant and instead of feeling what he should have felt—some sort of joy—something in Jack receded. He clung to the comfort of the known unknowns, the dangers of space and the underworld he would come to navigate so well. And now look at him. Hunter is one of his oldest friends, like a sister to him, always over his shoulder with her no-bullshit attitude. In a sense, she’s been co-captain all this time. He is supposed to ask her to come on a brisk walk beside a handful of unstoppable monsters.
If they get out of this, he’ll go legitimate. That’s what he told Lana. He hadn’t known why at the time, but it must have been in his subconscious for a while. First thing he’ll do is make sure all debts are paid. Then cut ties with the underworld. He’ll return to Earth and drop in on Kip every once in a while. He won’t try to make up for the past. He’ll just be better. It’s a promise he has made many times before, usually while slinking out of a hotel room still cloudy and reeking of booze, but this time is real. It has to be.
Nine years and he can barely picture his son’s face. He doesn’t know what hobbies the kid has, or interests, artistic leanings, talents, schoolboy crushes. Last time he saw him, Kip was into virtual reality entertainment. Quiet at first, he opened up when Jack asked him about his latest adventure. It was this bizarre-sounding puzzle game where all you did was stack oddly shaped blocks on top of each other in an attempt to reach a floating mountain. Kip had been at the first level for weeks, though he said he liked building the boxes in a lopsided way so he could climb up and ride the resulting avalanche. What a strange kid, Jack thought at the time. He’s probably moved on by now. For all he knows, while Ani gets drunk each night, Kip is out there exploring the harder side of drugs at nine years old. It’s not unheard of in shitty little towns like Nulleport. Maybe Jack helped transport the narcotics. Maybe Kip will become a dealer, or a smuggler like his dear old Pa.
He pictures an alternative future, grossly perfect: Jack clean-cut and embracing his smiling son, Lana next to him, a backdrop of rolling green hills and a soundtrack of chirping birds. They wear wedding bands and grin like dolls and wave at Ani on her porch, who waves back beside her perfect new husband. They all have very white teeth.
His laugh carries through the hall.
A coward sacrifices others before himself. He won’t do it anymore.
A shadow slants down the corridor. He looks out.
Justin saunters into view and pushes on the door, startles when he spots Jack. He is mostly asleep, hair sticking up in chunks, puffy-eyed. “Whoa. You scared the shit outta me.”
Jack clears his throat. “Sorry. Here, I’ll get out of your way.”
“I just gotta pee.”
Jack slips past and into the hall. Justin’s shoulders brush against his chest. Small, narrow bones. The kid seems far too young to be the same age as Jack when he joined the service. In fact, Justin is three years older. And still just a kid. How would he fare in the camps with his pale complexion and soft lips and girlish eyelashes, caked with filth, and those cheekbones showing through?
“You alright, Uncle Jack?”
“Yeah. No. Shit.”
He stumbles back and bumps into the wall. He blinks, and Justin disappears. In his place stands one of the men Jack keeps submerged in the depths of his mind until they rip into his dreams. He knows this man, though he doesn’t know his name. The way his lower lip and most of his chin are missing, chewed off by the latest bout of diseases sweeping through the huts. In the final moment of his life, this man saw Jack standing above him, one foot straddled on either side of his torso, pickaxe in his hands. The man was awake. What remained of his mouth twisted to form some unspoken question. His eyebrows creased, then raised, then a smile broke, as if the man above him had been revealed a friend. But Jack was no friend. He’d never seen the man before. His eyes were still open when Jack swung the axe.
“Uncle Jack?” His nephew is framed by the light of the doorway.
“I’m s—I’m sorry,” Jack stutters.
“The hell are you sorry for?”