Tooley stared blankly at the sky, never reacting as the stratosphere of Tannis shifted through myriad colors and then faded into black starlight.
“Alright, get us the hell out of here,” Kamak said. “Doesn’t matter where. Just need some distance.”
Tooley ran a hand along the control panels and then let the autopilot take over. She got out of her seat and headed for her room as Kamak cast a skeptical glance at her instrument readouts. While he didn’t technically know how to pilot the Hard Luck Hermit, he was at least familiar enough with the process when it was being done horribly wrong.
“Hey. That’s not half the shit you need to do to calculate a safe route.”
“Space around Tannis is clear, we’ll make it,” Tooley grunted.
“We’re next door to one of the most crowded planets in the universe,” Kamak said. “You haven’t projected our path, someone else calculating a course could cross right into ours.”
As a security measure, every ship about to make a jump sent out a quick particle pulse indicating which direction it would be traveling in, to help prevent interstellar collision. It was meant to be automatic, but Tooley hadn’t even done enough of the flight settings to get the computer to that point.
“That barely ever happens.”
“Tooley, get back in the chair and get us a safe route,” Kamak ordered. The autopilot was currently running through its calculations, preparing them for acceleration.
“It’ll be fine,” Tooley insisted.
“Do it anyway.”
“No. You want things done differently, get a different pilot,” Tooley said. The autopilot beeped to indicate it had finished it’s calculations, and the ship started adjusting to the new trajectory.
“Tooley, you cunt, you’re going to get us all killed.”
“You want to fly the ship, fucking fly it,” Tooley snapped. She stormed across the common room and slammed her bedroom door behind her. The entire ship rattled when the door slammed shut, as it reached it’s flight angle and started to power up the engines. The cockpit stared out at a blackness full of a thousand different blinking lights, and a thousand different ways for them to die on impact.
‘Tooley, fucking- Farsus, shut it down!”
The ship’s rumbling engines quieted as Farsus reached across the console and slammed his fist down on the engine shutdown button. The rumbling ship fell silent, as did the cockpit, as Kamak breathed a sigh of relief, followed shortly thereafter by a low growl of rage.
“Corey, go tell your fuckbuddy to get out here and get us to a station. I need to hire a new pilot so I can launch our current one into a fucking star.”
“Don’t look at me,” Corey said. “She’s been treating me like shit lately. Send Doprel, she still likes him.”
“Not at times like this,” Doprel said. “As far as she’s concerned I’m just Kamak’s sidekick.”
“Perhaps I can speak to her,” To Vo suggested. “We’ve rarely interacted. She may see me as a neutral party.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Kamak grunted. With a determined nod, To Vo stood, straightened out her clothing, and marched towards Tooley’s quarters. Kamak stayed in his seat for the whole thirty ticks it took for To Vo to walk back into the cockpit, now with a bright red spot on her cheek.
“Your pilot has punched me in the face.”
“Lucky you she’s got such bad form,” Kamak said.
“Alright, fuck this,” Corey said. He stood up and retraced To Vo’s path to Tooley’s room. He didn’t bother knocking. After punching in the door code and storming his way in, he made it about two steps into Tooley’s room before a glass bottle hit him in the chest.
“Ow! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Everything,” Tooley shouted back. She was lounging on her bunk, bottle in one hand and another bottle in the other hand. Her room, which had always been a mess, now resembled a full-on disaster area. Absolutely nothing was in its proper place, and Corey had to watch every step to avoid tripping on discarded bottles or other trash.
“What is going on with you lately?”
Corey kicked some of the trash aside to give himself a safe place to stand. Tooley didn’t even look at him while he talked.
“You’ve always been an asshole, but ever since the Bang Gate blew up, you’ve been doubling down. Like you’re going out of your way to be the biggest jackass possible.”
“Sounds about right,” Tooley said. Corey groaned.
“Okay, fine, whatever,” he said. “Be a jackass if you want, but at least be a smart one. You nearly crashed the ship, you came for Khem with a broken bottle, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Yeah.”
The bluntness of the statement actually caught Corey off guard, and Tooley took another sip from her bottle as he regained his wits.
“What?”
“I. Want. To. Die.”
Tooley spoke slowly both for emphasis, and because she was finally getting a little buzzed. She tossed aside one of her two bottles of booze and threw the empty hand up. “Are you fucking surprised? Is this shocking?”
After enduring a moment of silence, Tooley actually glanced in Corey’s direction. The look of pity on his face made her sick.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Tooley said. “I don’t want your cheap shit attempts at therapy. You want to help, get me another drink. Or a bullet in the head. Dealer’s choice.”
Tooley took another drink as Corey finally composed himself enough to form a coherent thought.
“What happened to you?”
“Have you looked around?” Tooley grunted. “I barely wanted to be alive before all this shit. Now I’m on the entire universe’s shit list, and I get to spend every swap for the rest of my life trying to scrape out some last minute bullshit to not die a horrific, painful death. And for fucking what, Corvash? So I can die a little later? So I can be miserable a little longer?”
The rising bitterness turned to fury, and Tooley hurled her remaining bottle of booze across the room. It narrowly missed Corey and crashed against the other wall as Tooley slammed a fist into her cot and screamed at the top of her lungs.
“What’s the point?”
Corey got the distinct impression the question wasn’t really aimed at him, but he felt compelled to answer.
“But- You don’t- there’s still things worth living for,” Corey said. It was a trite platitude and he knew it, but he had to say something, anything.
“I said I didn’t want therapy.”
“What about flying? You love flying. The way you look when you fly-”
“Is an act,” Tooley spat. “I used to love flying. Sometimes I pretend I still do. Sometimes I pretend good enough it almost feels like I still do. But I don’t. I just...don’t.”
The aggression gradually bled out of Tooley’s eyes, until she was staring forward, dead-eyed, into nothing. Corey took the risk of a step forward. Tooley didn’t throw anything at him, so he figured he was in the clear, and stepped up to the side of her bunk, taking a seat on the edge.
“What changed? Was it something on your homeworld?”
“God, I wish it was,” Tooley said. “Then I could at least keep going on spite. Blame someone. That’d be better. But no. It’s just me. I did this.”
The dead eyes kept staring forward, barely acknowledging Corey, or anything else in the world.
“I broke me.”
After a moment of silence that dragged on too long, Corey reached out and put a hand on Tooley’s wrist. The reminder of his presence dragged Tooley out of her dead-eyed reverie by force. She glared at him, but did not pull away from his touch.
“What happened? When did it start to feel different?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Tooley said. “It was a long time. I remember flying as a kid and loving every second of it, wanting to do it myself more than anything. So I chased it. And when they told me I couldn’t, I spent years married to a scumbag fuck I hated so that I could scam my way offworld. Then it was years busting my ass to afford to live offworld and pay for the books, pilot school fees, everything. Even after that it was years of cramming for exams, studying physics, learning techniques. I never backed down. Never stopped. Never slowed down. I worked until my bones ached and studied until my eyes burned. I wanted to be a pilot so bad I never stopped pushing myself until I got it.”
“And when you finally reached your goal…”
“There wasn’t any part of me left that cared,” Tooley said flatly.
“I know it maybe wasn’t what you expected-”
“Flying is exactly what I expected. Being a pilot is everything I wanted it to be. I just don’t want it anymore,” Tooley said. “I burned myself out. I killed the dreamer to get the dream.”
Tooley had no idea when she had crossed the line, but it had been crossed long ago, and she could not go back. The endless freedom of flight she had longed for was now just an endless abyss, empty in all directions. She maintained and even improved her piloting skills, hoping to reclaim some spark of the desire she’d once felt, but nothing worked. What was empty remained empty.
“That...that sucks. I’m sorry,” Corey said. He knew even as he said them that his words weren’t helping, but he still felt compelled to talk. “But there’s still good reasons to be alive.”
The empty statements did get a response out of Tooley, unfortunately, that response was anger. Tooley lifted her leg and kicked Corey off of her bunk.
“Get the fuck out,” she demanded. “Let me drink myself to death in peace.”
Corey stood and made for the exit, knowing Tooley would only get more violent as time went on. Tooley needed an intervention of the kind they didn’t have time for. The Hermit didn’t have a qualified therapist on board, but they did have Doprel, and some restraints. A forceful intervention would piss Tooley off, but it would at least keep her alive long enough to get her shit together.
The already bad plan got off to an even worse start when Corey took a single step forward and promptly caught his heel on a discarded bottle. The empty whiskey bottle rolled out from under his foot, and the unexpected obstacle sent Corey plummeting backwards. He landed hard in a pile of Tooley’s garbage, and his back popped audibly as he hit the ground ass first. The bottle clinked against the wall loudly as Corey laid on the floor and let out a quiet groan.
“Ow.”
The injury was soon joined by insult, as Tooley started laughing her ass off. It was a loud, raucous laugh, the already aggravating sound made even worse by the fact that every bit of it was aimed firmly at Corey’s already wounded ego. He stood, nursing his sore backside, as Tooley doubled over in laughter, clutching her gut as tears started to stream down her face.
“Yeah, alright,” Corey mumbled. If watching him eat shit was what kept Tooley alive, so be it. He wasn’t sticking around to get laughed at, though. He started walking, more carefully this time, until he felt a tug at the hem of his shirt. Corey stopped, waited, and listened.
Tooley wasn’t laughing anymore. The tears streaming down her face were not tears of laughter. Corey took a step back, sitting on the bunk. This time, Tooley did not kick him away. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into him, and cried harder than Corey had ever seen anyone cry. He sat still, put one arm around her, and let her weep. He didn’t know what else to do. No one had ever been there for him when he cried.
After shedding a lifetime’s worth of overdue tears into Corey’s shoulder, Tooley let out one last shuddering sob and tried to reign in her tears. She took a deep breath and straightened out, resting her head on Corey’s shoulder instead of pressing it into his chest.
“You tell anyone about this I’m going to kill you,” she mumbled.
“I figured.”
“I just- I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Corey said. “And you don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”
“I’m not scared you’ll leave, dipshit,” Tooley said. For better or worse, they were stuck together, for now. “I’m scared you’ll be here forever and I won’t care. That I can’t care.”
“You have to try, at least.”
“What did I fucking say about therapy, Corvash?”
“It’s working so far,” Corey mumbled. Tooley laughed at him.
“You falling on your ass did the heavy lifting,” Tooley said.
The sarcasm was returning, and that meant Tooley was on her way back to normal. Good timing for it, as well, since someone was now pounding at the door for their attention. Kamak had lost his patience for Corey’s attempts at therapy.
“Shit,” Tooley said. She pulled away from Corey and tried desperately to straighten up her act, cleaning out the mess she’d made of her face and hair.
“Do you need a minute? I can tell them-”
“No, I really should fly us somewhere,” Tooley said. “We keep sitting around here we’re all going to get killed.”
Tooley dug around on the floor and found the bottle of pills that would sober her up, and swallowed one of them quickly.
“You look like a mess, though.”
“I’ll just tell them we were banging.”
“Tooley, it’s really obvious you’ve been crying.”
“Okay, so you were choking me,” Tooley said. “I’m messed up like that, they’ll buy it.”
“I don’t know if I want to be associated with-”
“Too late!”
Tooley stomped out of her room, pausing briefly to tell Kamak to go fuck himself on the way. The captain stood by the doorway and watched her make a beeline for the cockpit as Corey stumbled his way out of the messy room.
“She better have her head on straight.”
“In a general sense, no,” Corey said. “But she wants to fly, at least.”
“That’s all we need,” Kamak said. “And about all she’s good for.”