Also at https://archiveofourown.org/works/47252971
Jane surveyed the scene. By all appearances, a murder/suicide.
Good god, did she want to hurl. No, that could – would -wait.
The apparent murder, Dirk, was obviously holding his sword in a way it wasn’t meant to be held, underhand. His grip had lost it’s strength in death, but was still on the hilt of the sword.
As for Roxy – Jane couldn’t even make out what her pose was meant to be. Perhaps a glancing attack, before she was sandwiched? What she was sure of was that Dirk had used his own body to obsure Roxy’s view of his attack.
The room showed some signs of their struggle, there was an order to the spaceship parts across the floor that had been disrupted in a rather intense throw down. Which left no clear indication of who instigated it. Dirk had occupied the hangar the past several days, so Roxy would have had to come. That didn’t mean anything though.
Jane had some idea what she was doing with life powers at this point. A bit of sensing, a bit of transfer, a bit of topping up the life meter. she’d gotten training on Derse, and had more reasons to practice the medicinal skills on carapaces since boarding the ship. Carapaces do some silly things at times – silly, dangerous things.
There was no life in either body. Roxy’s corpse was easy to explain – a much fresher corporeal form stood at the hanger doors. Tear soaked. Jane had wanted to comfort her – but was presented with the more immediate issue of at hand
The whole reincarnation thing should leave threads she could sense, even over the whole halo of souls thing that had been going on the past months. Roxy had some still left. Not quite a smell of reincarnating, but a sense of it.
Dirk has no such threads to follow. No life in the body, no obvious direction to look. It was, honestly, shocking _how dead_ his corpse was, was compared to Roxy’s. This left Jane with two options to explore.
“Come on,” Jane pulled Roxy away from the hangar doors, trying to secure the scene by closing them behind her, “We need to take a look at sensors.”
The controls were locked up for the doors to the bridge. This did nothing to stop Jane – she apologized even as she was tearing the doors out of their frames, to find a room silent as it had ever been, but with flashing screens. “Are there any ‘did you try turning it off and on again’ buttons?”
Roxy, still showing shock from the fight, said nothing, but went to a spot under the console and somehow squeezed underneath it. The light went out, and a second later came back on. A moment later she limboed back out from the cranny. Screens flashed more friendly colors, rebooting – and then went red again almost immediately.
“What do the even say?” Jane could follow the displays enough to tell that… “Something is too close?”
“it looks like… proximity. we’re being tailed. or…”
“Dirk.”
“he couldnt… could he?”
“I mean, there are, like, three options,” Jane tried to enter detective mode again, as she started dearcing though the bridge’s windows for any confirmation, “First, we know about heroic deaths. You’ve talked about them before. Is there any way him killing you would have been heroic?”
Roxy tried to focus. “not leanin that way. specially not because id just reincarnate, or be justly ded myself.”
“Then, a ‘just’ death?”
“th way he was taling about meenah rite befor… maybe. it mighta just been to rile me up. he wanda…” she went silent. She had hit a new round of tears.
Jane have her a minute, and a hug, before trying to prompt her again, “Then. Where in the hangar did you reincarnate?”
Roxy thought. Traced in the air. “practacially on the other side.”
“So. Either that’s something that happened to end up outside the ship _during_ the fight, or *Dirk* didn’t have time to notice it – or.” Jane gave a long sigh, “Or maybe he’s in space suffocating again and again and again. *God*.”
“i cn slow us down.” Roxy moved stiffly towards the navigation controls, “i cn. i….” Nothing was responding buttons, sliders, everything was on the emergency screen. “i… cn figure this out. i can i can i can.” She banged on the unresponsive console.
“Roxy.” Jane stared at the pale blue dot in the center of the window. It wasn’t nearly as small a dot as she had remembered seeing last, “We need to talk with Jake about options.”
“Er. right. Dead reckoning. I’m sorry, but that’s the term.” It was the first time Jake had been on the bridge and felt important. Essential. Dirk was in a very bad place right now, but one had to put on their own oxygen supply before saving others. “We get some taught strings, hang them from mirrored points, figure out our tack relative to it. The planet will obviously pull us in as we get closer, eddies in spacetime and whatnot, but we need numbers now.”
“and yu know this from?” the more heads in this, the better. Roxy was not calm, but slightly calmer.
“A ship is a ship. And even if I haven’t island hopped by every star in the night sky… it’s at least more than quoting from a book.”
The numbers looked horrible.
“At least it won’t be, like, head on?” Jane didn’t know any of these numbers. She had wanted to be a baker. Maybe go to business school some day. This wasn’t business school.
“We won’t be vaporized – but as usual, not the fall that kills you, but the ground at the end. Even water would feel like cement at these speeds.” Jake, paradoxically, felt the most alive he had been since boarding the ship. The was now a unadulterated peril, an adventure, “Unless…?” her turned to Roxy.
“hey, dirk and iv havked human comuters, hacked troll computers. either condy actually plurged for the good stuff or this is some dirk bifuricated shits. one bit flips, they all flip out.”
“And. No lifeboat, thanks to Dirk – not that we would have known about the one without his hangar obsessions. No course correction, also possibly thanks to Dirk. What hasn’t he touched?”
“Do the engines have a manual switch?” Jane wondered aloud.
“not like wed need. everyfins wired up for up her.”
“Then – plot hole thing?” Jake ventured.
“The-? Oh, that space time… we can evacuate the carpacians though it. The plan *was* always to get it to Earth and let the rest out.” Jane confirmed.
“but then it needs to get safely offa the ship. am not burn up, or whatever a plot hole does in a spaceship crash.”
“Where-?” Jake leaned in.
“condy’s old ecercize room. obvs you can’t get, in, i cn get it out.”
“We should start evacuation post haste. No panics, no man left behind. Except,” Jake held a moment of silence, “the man we are forced to leave behind.”
“yeah thas me,” Roxy sighed, “either alof you take the earth up the pussy and id be so gaddam heroic. only i can do it supidly enough.”
Jane and Jake looked blankly at each other for a moment.
“Well,” Jake sighed, “*you* are the healer, and she does have, what, 300% more pussy than either of us? Like, the cat, and-“
Jane groaned. and brought her hand to the bridge of her nose. “I’m keeping Meenah sedated for all of this, just so you know. No accidentally heroic deaths. If I am… planning on peeling a pussy pancake off a planet on… in…”
“go janie go”
“Nah, I’ve lost it.”
Roxy threaded herself through the maze and into Condy’s personal exercise room for the last time. She didn’t know how she felt about the place now… the outdated equipment, the memories. She’d been put though a lot in this room – killed a lot of times, in fact, in more recent memory. But that was as much Condy’s plan as the contortion had been, hadn’t it? Desensitization. She collected a few knickknacks, the posters on the walls – she’d never have dreamed up that stuff on her own, so why not keep them captchalogued… for a while at least. The antique equipment she had no use for, except for a few last stretches to compare where she was now to where she had been.
A hole in spacetime should be a hard thing to transport – and she certainly wouldn’t captchalogue it, lest that disconnect it somehow from it’s GREEN SUN exit. But, there was a convenient handle on the other side. She could just reach over and… yep. There it be.
Jake and Jane had gathered a small group, volunteers for the first transfer.
“Honestly, why bring them on the ship if they’re just going to be catching Zees *now*?” Jake didn’t appreciate the decision Jane made for… well, everyone.
“Would you have preferred this many months with just the fou- five of us? Alone?” Jane was unsure of where she wanted to draw the line – between species or between the living. There obviously was a sensible place, but was a bridge for burning far into the future.
“That would be a rather large lump of monotony to down. Point taken. Who’s quarterback and who’s receiver?”
“It will be easier if they step through themselves. You can be *stewardess* if you want,” Jane gave a little grin.
“guise?”
“Yeah, Rox.” Jane called out, “The Cafete- oh that’s a weird effect.”
“Hole in hand, or hand in hole?” Jake tried.
“shemantics, really”
“Ah, um… any suggestions for instructing these guys?”
“ah. hmm. shoot.”
“No I’m asking”
“thas how you say it, right? c-h-u-t-e? shoot? lemme just…” She propped the hole against the wall, did a little bit of talking to herself as she mimed out some dimensions, and a large plastic-ish tube connected to an angled front panel manifested from the void, “this ones a little too big ta pull from my ass, so ill give ya the express service. lemme just-“
“One moment-” Jane took a quick measurement, “No, just to be safe, I should go first. Um… give me a shout before they start coming. I’ll need a few seconds to put them to sleep.” Jane managed to nudge the hole onto the floor with her shoe, and then let herself drop through.
Roxy then held the hole in place on the wall in place as Jake threaded the tube through realities for catch-free transition.
“Laddies and Duchesses, We are ready for the boarding of the first group!”
All three were busy for several days, ferrying the carapaces to their “temporary sleeping quarters”. It wasn’t a gigantic number, given those already housed in Jan’s halo and already sleeping in orbit of the Green Sun. It was more an issue of getting carapaces to abandon the alchemized stashes they had been able to gather over the past months. Some trinkets were allowed, to speed things along, but they were getting dispossessed again.
For the last time, Roxy hoped.
She made frequent trips to check up on Meenah. She hadn’t spent much time awake since the fight – enough for a nibble and a bathroom break, before Jane put her under again. Jane… well, Roxy had caught a glance in passing when she was explain the plan to her father. The really should have involved him, but – what was he going to do?
Help with the carapace evacuation, as it turned out. A lot of the black carapaces seemed to show him more respect than Jake. Jane hadn’t said if he was staying awake or going under at any point – but that was a decision among themselves.
Roxy was also trying to plan. Which. She should do. Or attempt to override whatever lockout again. Which she should do.
Instead she’d just. Stand on the bridge. The numbers they’d already calculated said about when the Earth would fill the window to the edges. And them completely. And about when the window be filled with flames, and would break into a million pieces. And for a little while, again, she’d be alone.
But she was guaranteed to make it though it…. right?
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