Catay wheeled herself around the interior of the Hard Luck Hermit, clearly disapproving of everything she saw.
“You’ve rearranged everything and it’s a fucking mess,” Catay said.
“Things haven’t exactly been going well for us,” Kamak said. The ship was a mess on a good day, and they hadn’t had a good day in a while.
“I can see that,” Catay said. “You been keeping your hands off my controls?”
“Never laid a finger on them,” Kamak said. It was even true. Despite her long absence from it, Catay was still the Hard Luck Hermit’s first pilot, and she felt possessive of it. Due to that love for the ship and her loathing for Kamak, Catay had made him swear never to fly it himself. She let out a silent hum of approval that he had kept that promise, at least.
After assuaging her worst fear, Catay used a barely-mobile hand to steer her wheelchair towards the cockpit. It was roomy enough that she could wheel up to the back of the pilot’s seat, but no further. Catay stared at the chair that had once been hers for a moment.
She then lifted trembling arms, braced herself against the arms of her wheelchair, and began to push herself up. The regenerative therapies available in the universe had been unable to fully heal her, but neither was Catay completely paralyzed—only mostly. Her body shook with uncontrollable tremors, and she began to sweat profusely as she moved, but she managed to lift herself up out of her chair and tilt her body into the pilot’s seat. Kamak didn’t bother offering to help as she dragged herself upright into a proper sitting position. She would’ve refused anyway.
After several deep breaths, Catay set about the herculean effort of raising her arms and holding tight to the ship’s controls. Her fingers shook uncontrollably as she struggled to tighten her grip, but she managed to hold tight, take a deep breath, and clench her hands tight -and for a moment she was flying again, with infinity on every side.
Her hands gave out, and limp arms slumped to her side, as she crashed down to cruel reality again.
“Damn it,” she mumbled. “Damn it all.”
Kamak finally stepped up and took a seat in the copilot’s chair. The seat was as close as he had ever come, or would ever come, to being behind the controls of the Hermit.
“I gave the order to go down there, Catay.”
“And I followed it,” Catay snapped. “And I followed it wrong. I have been here watching trees grow for decades, Kamak, I have relived that flight over and over and over and over.”
Catay could replay it in her head like a movie, every moment. Unfolding the wings too early, approaching the storm at the wrong angle, accelerating into high pressure areas. Everything she’d done wrong. Everything she’d done to get her crewmates killed. The mathematics of her failure were etched into her mind, permanently. As were the deceptions surrounding it.
“And fuck you for lying to me about it,” Catay spat. “I don’t need your pity. I never needed it.”
Kamak shrugged and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“What? I got my legs back, I got my ship fixed, none of the crew liked me much anyway,” Kamak said. “But you…”
Kamak looked out the window, at the scorched sky of Tannis above them.
“It didn’t feel right to me you get all the consequences and all the guilt,” Kamak said. “You hated me anyway. I didn’t have anything to lose.”
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The fading beams of sunlight peering over the horizon started to turn everything in sight burnt orange, as darkness threatened to descend.
“You know why everyone you meet hates you, Kamak?”
“Lot of reasons, where do you want me to start?”
“That smarmy fucking attitude, for one,” Catay spat. “No. You’re an asshole, Kamak, but I’ve liked a lot of assholes in my time. Your biggest problem is that it would be so fucking easy for you to not be one.”
Catay managed to turn her head in Kamak’s direction, just to glare at him more hatefully.
“You’ve got every piece of a good man rattling around in that ugly head of yours, but you refuse to put any god damn effort into trying to be better than the piece of shit you are,” Catay said. “That’s why people hate you. Because they could like you, because they should like you, but you don’t let them.”
Over all the time she’d known Kamak, she’d seen him demonstrate courage, loyalty, selflessness, and myriad other good qualities, but all at seemingly random intervals. He’d spent years making himself a martyr for the sake of Catay’s pride, but right now he wouldn’t even look her in the eye and take a moment to consider her words. Anything good about him came on a whim and left just as quickly, leaving everyone around him wondering, hoping, when that next moment of benevolence would come. More often than not, Kamak disappointed them.
“Whatever the hell you’re involved in, get it away from us,” Catay demanded. “And keep away. Twins help her, Vatan sees little enough of you to think the good in you is worth a damn. Enough to drag her crippled mother into a fight on the off chance it might help you.”
“Hey, it worked,” Kamak said.
“If that had been anyone but Khem, you’d be dead,” Catay said. “And there’s a good chance me and my daughter would be too, and that would be your fault.”
For a moment, concern flitted across Kamak’s face. But only for a moment.
“You leave, Kamak, and you stay away from us, unless you somehow find a way to turn yourself into the person Vatan is dumb enough to think you are,” Catay scolded. “Until that happens I don’t so much as want you in the same solar system as her.”
“Understood,” Kamak said.
“Then get your people up here and get the hell out.”
“Well, hold on a minute,” Kamak said. He stood and started moving towards the back of the cockpit. “I got something for you.”
Catay rolled her eyes and wondered what fresh hell Kamak was about to unleash as he went to his quarters and retrieved something. He held it tight in his fist, out of sight, until he could finally drop the woven bracelet onto the arm of the pilot’s chair, just within reach of Catay’s trembling fingers. He stood behind the chair and watched her go silent and motionless as stone. The polished beads woven onto every red band of fabric reflected Catay’s own face back at her.
“Crewmate of mine found this jammed in a drawer in Orvan’s old quarters,” Kamak said. “Figured he meant it for you.”
Catay managed to lift trembling fingertips towards the bracelet and pull it closer to herself. Already exhausted from the struggle of lifting herself into the pilot’s seat, Catay could barely manage to inch the bracelet forward, up over her fingers, onto her palm, and try to slide it down to her wrist…
She could not raise her arm enough. The bracelet caught on her thumb, halfway across her hand, and stuck there, with Catay too exhausted to move it further.
Catay started to weep. She cried bitter, ugly tears that shook her paralyzed body to its core. Kamak could only stomach the sight of it for a few moments before he stepped away and wandered out of the ship. The crew, and Vatan, looked to him expectantly.
“Just giving Catay some time to enjoy the Hermit in its best state,” Kamak said. He took a knee and started helping Farsus patch up Doprel. “Without me in it.”
----------------------------------------
After finishing his work on Doprel, Kamak took a seat under a withered tree and didn’t speak to anyone, even Vatan. He held his ground until Catay finally rolled out of the ship and disappeared into the back of her vehicle. Vatan took one last look at Kamak, and when he refused to meet her gaze, she sighed and returned to the van as well, turning it around and beginning the dusty drive home. Kamak only stood when their vehicle was out of sight.
“Let’s go.”
The order was simple, and easy to follow. Doprel limped back into the ship, aided by To Vo, while Corey used a discarded spear as a makeshift walking stick. Tooley brushed past him, never even glancing in his direction, and headed right for her cockpit to see if Catay had messed with anything. Farsus put his hands on his belt and held his ground until it was only him and Kamak standing in the darkness. The captain stared at his master at arms.
“You have something to say?”
“Merely a question,” Farsus said. “As to why Catay left our vessel wearing a wedding bracelet.”
Kamak’s eyes narrowed.
“Shut the fuck up, Farsus.”
Kamak turned his back and walked into the ship, followed shortly thereafter by Farsus. He had not gotten an answer, but he felt he had learned something anyway.