Chapter Thirty-eight
Declan
Saying Avena’s name left my throat raw enough that the next assisted breath burned, and I still wanted to do it again.
Her forehead rested against my hair while the portable respirator measured what remained of my breath and supplied the rest. The mask softened the sound of the machine but not the pressure inside my chest. Every inhale began as a decision my body could not complete alone.
The support caught it halfway and finished for me.
It was still better than the tube. Anything was better than the tube.
Avena drew back far enough to look at me. Blue-white light covered her throat and moved beneath her cheekbones. Pink warmed the hand holding mine. I had seen those colors in the cabin, but never this close without glass adding its reflection or a field turning her into light.
“Do not speak again,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“That expression does not alter the instruction.”
The corner of my mouth pulled against the mask. There she was. My Tinkerbell.
I tried to lift my head from her shoulder.
The muscles along my neck tightened, trembled and surrendered before I moved more than an inch.
Avena caught me with one hand beneath my skull and eased me back against her.
No technician adjusted the support. No restraint closed around my face.
Her palm remained at the base of my neck until the shaking stopped.
The cabin had let me forget how much of touch was weight.
Her fingers pressed into my skin. Her shoulder held the back of my head.
Her thigh lay against mine beneath the support web, warm through two layers of unfamiliar fabric.
Nothing passed through anything else. Nothing reset when I looked away.
“You’re real.”
“So are you,” she said.
The empty recovery frame stood behind us with its transparent wall open.
Red warnings moved through the vapor still trapped inside it.
I could see the shape my body had left in the supports: the indentation beneath my shoulders, the restraints waiting open near my head, and the tube’s retracted housing.
Vaeron shifted in the restraint couch across from us. His monitoring band no longer flashed because no Dominion network remained close enough to receive it. A narrow red line had appeared beneath its edge instead, cutting into his wrist. He covered it with his other hand before Avena could see.
TRANSIT CALCULATION IN PROGRESS
The letters blurred, then doubled.
“Declan.” Avena touched two fingers to my face. “Keep your eyes on me.”
Vaeron studied the portable support field near my ribs. “The respiratory reserve is falling faster than the vessel’s clock.”
Avena’s head turned. “How much faster?”
“It has lost fourteen minutes since route entry.”
The support indicator projected two hours and thirty-seven minutes across my chest.
“The specification stated three hours,” she said.
“Under Dominion environmental conditions. We are no longer within them.”
The human line changed.
TRANSIT ESTIMATE: 03:11:42
Of course it did. We had escaped a seven-hour life-support system, transferred me to one rated for three, and entered a road home that needed eleven minutes more than I had.
The portable support lost another minute while we watched.
Avena looked at the recovery frame. “Its independent power remains active.”
“So does the suppression order,” Vaeron said.
“The order controls the frame. We do not need the frame.”
Vaeron leaned forward, but his harness stopped him. “The power unit is integrated beneath the respiratory exchange housing. Disconnecting it will activate the containment seal.”
“Can it be isolated from the local system?”
“Not through a Dominion control.”
The difference in his answer mattered. Avena caught it, too.
“Through the courier?” she asked.
“Courier Two carried biological evidence before the recovery supports were removed. There may be a manual transfer bridge beneath the frame clamps.”
“May be?”
“I have not spent my life committing every House Korven equipment revision to memory.”
His voice stayed dry, but the hand over his monitoring band had begun to shake. Avena looked from him to the support clock above me. Two hours and thirty-three minutes.
She released the upper section of her harness.
My fingers closed around hers before she could pull away.
“I have to reach the frame,” she said.
Two pressures.
No.
“The support will fail before we reach Earth.”
One pressure.
I understood that. I also understood the three lines the human corridor had displayed.
Janus source. Orientation source. Third life acknowledged.
Avena’s field was still part of whatever held this route together.
Letting her cross the compartment during transit looked too much like volunteering to discover another rule after breaking it.
I moved my eyes toward the contact warning on the support field.
“The route requires physical contact,” she said. “It does not require my hand.”
“Contact preserved.”
She removed her hand.
Avena saw my face change.
“My hip remains against yours,” she said. “My hand is moving behind you. Nothing else has changed.”
Vaeron released his harness and stood.
He made it one step before the courier’s floor shifted beneath the corridor’s pull. His knees folded. He caught the open recovery frame with both hands, striking his monitoring band against the rail.
“Sit down,” she said.
“The transfer bridge is below the forward clamp.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“You do not know Intelligence hardware.”
“And you cannot remain upright.”
The old man looked at her. Whatever argument he found disappeared when another tremor moved through his hands.
“The lower plate should have a mechanical release beneath the classification mark,” he said.
Avena lowered herself to the deck while maintaining the line of contact along my leg. She reached beneath the frame. Metal clicked, and a panel dropped open near the floor.
The human transit display changed again.
DOMINION SYSTEM ACCESS DETECTED
DO NOT ESTABLISH DATA CONNECTION
A woman’s voice followed the warning.
“Courier Two, keep the recovery frame isolated. A data bridge will carry the return command into your medical support.”
The voice was human. Not translated human or Khevari speech arranged around human words. The vowels belonged to home. The clipped cadence belonged to a control room where too many people were watching the same clock.
“Identify,” I managed.
“Janus Recovery Control. Your original authentication is intact, Captain Shaw. We have three living signatures and a portable support system losing reserve. Do not connect any Dominion data.”
Captain Shaw.
Not this voice. Or not a voice I could recognize through pain and fourteen years of absence. I still did not really know it had been fourteen years, only that Vaeron had spent that many years searching for the record after the Dominion decided I was gone.
“Can you shorten the route?” Avena asked.
“Negative. The corridor is already at the highest stable compression your combined pattern will tolerate.”
“Then tell me how to connect the frame’s power without its command system.”
A pause followed. I heard people speaking beyond the woman, too distant to separate into words.
“There should be a physical energy bridge inside the courier’s forward evidence clamp. Copper-colored housing, two black release points.”
Avena looked beneath the frame. “I see it.”
“Remove the bridge. Do not activate it.”
She pulled a narrow component free. Blue current moved beneath its surface.
“The recovery frame’s power coupling is on the underside of the respiratory housing,” the woman continued. “Your portable support has an emergency receiver below the vascular manifold. Connect both while the bridge is inactive. Activate only after the receiver confirms isolation.”
Avena repeated each instruction before moving. The same discipline she had used to guide me through the corridor beneath Central Integration settled into her voice. No comforting promises. No pretending that understanding the steps guaranteed the result.
Vaeron lowered himself to the deck beside her despite the weakness in his legs. He held the bridge steady while she opened the portable receiver near my side. His monitoring band had begun bleeding where it cut into his wrist.
“Vaeron,” I tried.
The mask turned his name into nothing more than a breath.
He looked at me anyway. “I intend to see your world before I begin obeying sensible instructions, Captain Shaw.”
There was no strength in me for laughter. My eyes still tried.
The support clock read two hours and nineteen minutes. Transit remained three hours and five minutes.
Avena locked the second connector into place.
ISOLATION CONFIRMED
“Activate the bridge,” the human controller said.
Vaeron pressed both black releases. The empty recovery frame went dark. For a fraction of a second, so did the mask.
Avena was beside me before my next breath. Her hand closed around mine. Her light burned blue-white through both arms.
“The power transfer is complete,” she said. “The mask is still connected. The pressure changed, but the support did not stop. It will recalibrate.”
One pressure.
The reserve display recalculated.
06:41:18
Vaeron sat back against the empty frame. His face had gone gray, but satisfaction eased the lines beside his mouth.
“The removed supports appear useful after all,” he said.
Janus Recovery Control spoke again. “Courier Two, medical support is stable. Maintain contact between both Janus sources. Route exit in two hours, fifty-nine minutes.”
“What waits at the exit?” Avena asked.
“A recovery vessel and a secure descent corridor.”
“Secure from whom?”
The human controller was silent for one second too long.
“From anyone who did not answer your authentication.”
It was not reassurance. That helped. A little.
Avena secured Vaeron into his couch before fastening her own harness again.
This time she did not settle beside me with only our hands touching.
She drew my head against her shoulder and kept her arm behind my neck, holding me close enough that the pink beneath her skin remained visible through her sleeve.
Avena stopped breathing.
Vaeron stared at the image. “This is the orientation construct you described, Avena.”
“It is not a construct,” I said, though the words barely existed.
Avena’s hand tightened around mine. “It is home.”
Janus Recovery Control did not interrupt. Maybe the woman could see the cabin. Maybe the corridor displayed something different on her side. I did not ask. The image was too precise and the body holding me was too real.
Time moved differently inside the route.
The transit clock lost minutes while I counted only breaths.
I slept without meaning to and woke each time Avena said my name.
She told me where I was, what touched me, and how much support remained.
Vaeron watched the cabin and occasionally closed his eyes, but he opened them whenever the human controller announced a systems check.
Janus Recovery Control counted down from ten.
At three, the frozen lake dissolved.
At two, stars returned.
At one, Earth filled the display.
Blue water curved beneath white clouds. Night covered half the planet, marked by lines of gold light that spread farther than any city I remembered. The sight struck someplace deep in my chest. I could not measure how much had changed from orbit. I could only see that the world was still there.
Avena leaned toward the display. Blue-white light moved across her face with the reflection of Earth.
“Is that your home?” she asked.
I looked at her, at Vaeron holding himself awake across from us, and at the planet waiting beyond the glass.
My hand closed around hers once.
Then I forced the words through the mask.
“No, it’s ours.”