From the moment Luca stopped asking to be killed, the captain began doing all sorts of things no one had asked him to. Not content with bringing roses every day, he started leaving fairy tale books and light reading for Luca, who spent his hours alone in the treatment room.
On days when Luca kept his mouth shut and stared at the wall, he didn’t press for answers. He simply sat beside him and quietly turned the pages of the book he’d brought.
That measured distance and steady tenderness became a lifeline hauling him back to the surface every time Luca branded himself a monster and suffered for it. He still couldn’t love the self he’d been changed into. But during the hours the captain visited, he began, very slowly, to accept that he wasn’t a broken lump of meat but a person named Luca.
The captain hummed to himself.
“Hmm, hm, hm.”
Thinking of Luca, who’d grown noticeably closer to him lately, he broke into a full smile.
The first thing that had caught his eye when he saw Luca was the soft fall of black hair. Under light it took on a subtle sheen, like a deep night sky. Beautiful and mysterious, as though it held the universe inside it.
A few days ago he’d washed that hair with juniper-scented oil, and the way it slid between his fingers was so soft that he’d caught himself stroking it for a long while without realizing.
But lovelier than hair like a night sky were those pale blue eyes. At first they’d been stained with pain and hatred, cold beyond words, but once he began opening his heart a little, they shone as though they held the deepest, clearest lake in the universe.
Still, if he had to name the most striking feature he’d noticed while living alongside him, wouldn’t it be the voice?
Pretty as he is, his voice runs very low.
A low register with a curious timbre, neither too heavy nor too thick. Even a short “Mm” in reply set the air ringing quietly and caught hold of the captain’s eardrums.
Maybe that was why he could hear Luca no matter how softly the boy muttered to himself. A clear, beautiful, composed voice, like listening to a song.
Everything about him from head to toe leaves an impression. He looks delicate and pretty, but his voice is solid, and he moves so carefully. Wary, too. The more I know him, the more he works on all five senses.
That first week, Luca had been like a kitten with all its fur puffed out. He’d spat out nothing but kill me and refused every hand that came near.
But the captain had seen at a glance the fear and loneliness hidden behind the venom. He also knew perfectly well that what soothed a bristling young animal was warm, gentle sunlight.
So he brought Luca a yellow flower every day. He wanted even a little life to circulate in that bleak treatment room.
At first Luca found the yellow flowers he’d never seen back home fascinating, yet kept them at a distance and only observed, as if something terrible would happen should he get close. Then, bit by bit, his guard came down and he stroked the petals gently. With an extremely careful touch, in case they bruised under the strength of his grip.
He’s terribly guarded, but treat him well and he comes down just as easily. It’s unbearably endearing.
Another endearing image came to mind. Luca grumbled that the daily visits were a nuisance, and all the while tracked every one of his gestures, every path he walked across the room. Contrary to what came out of his mouth, his eyes said he was dying to know more, not that he was bothered. That particular brand of honesty was impossibly cute.
Honesty. Mm, right. Luca doesn’t seem to know how to hide things well.
When he kissed his forehead or the back of his hand, Luca flinched and went stiff, but never shouted that he hated it. No, what showed more was embarrassment, a boy at a loss in the face of affection he’d never received before. Would Obel, who examined him every day, know about the earlobes that flushed faintly when he was touched gently?
He’d better not. He must not.
He recalled, too, the way those pale blue eyes had stared straight at him and asked,
“What kind of person are you?”
That he’d begun to wonder about him. It was the surest sign of life there was, that he’d raised his head out of the abyss of death and started looking at another person. That fact alone made a corner of the captain’s chest itch with joy.
Before I give him that answer, I have to make him healthier and safer.
At the end of the corridor he’d walked, the bridge doors opened. Beyond the heavy panels that parted with a hydraulic hiss came tense mechanical noise and the busy movement of the crew.
The captain stopped humming. It was time to set down the tender man he was in front of Luca and become the cold-blooded captain of the Nautilus.
“Report.”
Ivelinsia came forward at once, throwing up a chart.
“The Aegis pursuit force has closed to one point two parsecs astern. One of their ships is correcting course at high speed, trying to cut off our projected jump point. Their commander is fairly clever.”
On the screen, Aegis ships glowing red were tightening around the Nautilus’s course. If Ivelinsia was right, their jump route would be sealed off in five minutes. Every eye on the bridge turned to the captain at once.
He glared at the screen with his arms folded. Thousands of tactical scenarios flicked through his head.
Aegis won’t find my ship easily.
He’d promised Luca that. For the sake of keeping the promise, and above all so as not to hand the terror of war a second time to a boy who’d only just begun catching his breath in the treatment room, this pursuit had to be shaken off perfectly.
“Navigator, maintain current heading. Throttle engine output down to eighty percent.”
The bridge stirred at the order. Ivelinsia’s eyes went wide.
“Captain? If we cut speed, we’ll be crawling into their encirclement ourselves!”
“Exactly. We slow down and make it look like we’ve been caught in their interception course.”
“Sir?”
“They’re expecting us to panic and speed up, so they’ve concentrated everything into maneuverability. Maneuverability alone makes it hard to respond to anything irregular.”
He continued calmly.
“Thirty seconds before we enter the interception point, we change heading forty-five degrees downward.”
He looked at the comms port linked into one corner of the screen and grinned.
“Kai, that inertial control unit you just overhauled. Seems like perfect timing for a performance test, doesn’t it?”
Kai’s voice came flooding through the port, brimming with delight.
“Oh, Captain! You trust my work, do you? Leave it to me! You’ll be more than satisfied!”
“Good. Ivelinsia, scatter chaff and dummy signals at the blockade point they’re expecting. We’ll punch through beneath their net, at the weakest boundary of the Tartaros Gas Nebula.”
“But that nebula’s gravity field is unstable...”
“And the problem is? It’s a gravity field the Nautilus can handle easily. All hands, brace for impact! We maneuver on my signal.”
The Nautilus seemed to be drawn slowly, very slowly, into the Aegis net. Silence settled over the bridge. Everyone waited out the countdown with sweat in their palms.
Golden eyes stared out the window. Little by little the Aegis warships came into range of the naked eye. They closed fast. They looked impatient to swallow the Nautilus in a single bite.
Their movements were hurried and arrogant. Exactly as the captain had calculated.
“Now! All engines! Change heading!”
At his shout the Nautilus wrenched itself around with an enormous shriek. The engines’ tremendous roar carried through the hull, but thanks to the inertial control unit Kai was so proud of, the shock inside the bridge stayed minimal.
Outside, the Aegis ships tried to correct course, apparently thrown. But the Nautilus had already slipped in beneath their net.
“Deploy jamming signals!”
The decoys Ivelinsia launched burst in open space and crippled the Aegis radar. In that gap the Nautilus vanished into the swirling red gas of the Tartaros Nebula.
“Nebula entry complete. The Aegis fleet has broken off pursuit. They’ve lost us.”
The crew rejoiced at the radar watchman’s report. Bidding farewell to that wearisome Aegis, even temporarily, was satisfaction enough.
Unlike the celebrating crew, Ivelinsia watched the captain with something like wonder. When had he worked out such an infuriating maneuver? She’d assumed his head was full of nothing but Luca. Apparently commanding the ship was a separate matter entirely.
To stop anyone popping the champagne early, the captain issued orders designed to keep the tension up.
“We’ll stay in the nebula’s low-gravity zone for now and recalculate our route. Maintain silent running until Aegis withdraws completely.”
Then he quietly unfolded his arms. As his tensed muscles loosened, Luca surfaced in his mind again.
The Tartaros Gas Nebula... the red gas here is quite beautiful too.
It was nothing like the desert he could have seen on Luca’s home world, but wouldn’t the sight of this nebula strike him as a little marvelous? On the day Kai’s prosthetics connected, he wanted to be the first to show him a universe stained beautiful in even more colors than this.
I should bring the juniper oil again tomorrow.
Luca liked the smell of wood. He didn’t know the reason for it yet. Still, the harvest of learning even one thing the boy liked made the captain happy.
And the thornless yellow roses.
As he looked out at the peaceful universe beyond the window, his eyes brimmed with anticipation for the plans ahead.
