Starlight

by Lisa Henry

  Command should have sent a team of entomologists instead of a bunch of guys from intel, probably.

  I could tell Chris didn’t like Doc’s answer though, and not just from the frustration that rolled out of him in waves and crashed up against the rest of us. It was written all over his face. His brow furrowed again and his mouth turned down. From what I’d seen of Chris in our shared memoires—from what I’d felt of him—he was the kind of guy who didn’t like puzzles he couldn’t solve, and there was no bigger puzzle in the universe than the Faceless. Chris had figured his out-of-the-box thinking when it came to this mission might be the thing that cracked it once and for all. The idea that Doc might be right and the Faceless could remain entirely incomprehensible to us was one that sat like a rock in his gut. Chris wanted to be the guy who saved the entire planet from the Faceless by coming up with a way we could actually negotiate with them, but how could we?

  It was impossible.

  Kai-Ren liked us. We amused and interested him. And once, accidentally, my anger and fear and heartbreak had hit just the right pitch to catch his attention.

  “Doc’s right. They’re like insects,” I said. I withdrew my crumpled cigarette packet from my pocket, and lit one. “They’re not individuals, not the way we are. Can you even imagine how crazy we seem to them? Over a billion people, all with our own thoughts and ambitions, crammed onto one tiny little planet. It must look like a fucking mess to them.”

  There had been more than seven billion of us once, back before the Faceless left craters where our largest cities had once stood. Back before those people crawling on the surface of our tiny, fragile planet had even known to look up at the stars in terror instead of wonder. They never even saw it coming.

  Sometimes I envied them for that.

  It was our chaos that fascinated Kai-Ren though. That individuality. Cam had been a stoic captive. Not me. I’d kicked and screamed and rattled the cage with my panic.

  A spark of remembered fear shivered through me, and I ducked my head to avoid Chris’s gaze.

  Cam brushed his fingers over my thigh, just a light touch to remind me he was there.

  “There’s always common ground,” Chris said at last, like speaking the words with conviction would somehow make them true. “Something to build on. There has to be.”

  I shrugged, and didn’t bother answer him. What was there to say? If Chris wanted to keep pushing that rock up the hill, day in and day out, who the fuck was I to tell him to quit?

  He’d figure it out in the end, or die trying.

  Doc cleared his throat and we moved on to talking about rations and what we were going to run out of next, not that there was anything we could do about it anyway.

  All our debriefings were exercises in fatalism, one way or another.

  ****

  Back home in Kopa, by the creek, there had been a bunch of massive Moreton Bay fig trees, or banyans. Each tree grew outward, dropping roots down from their branches in tendrils, their insides hollowing out as they expanded. Some of the old people used to tell stories handed down to them about how before Kopa had been a township—before it had been much of anything at all—when cyclones swept in from the sea the people used to shelter inside the banyans, hidden in the hollows, crouching there as the storm outside raged. We used to play in those empty spaces when I was a kid. It was dark and cool inside, with spots of dappled sunlight on the dirt floor where the light filtered through the twisted mesh of the buttress roots.

  Parts of the Faceless ship were like that. Roots and tendrils and empty spaces. The bones of the ship were dark though, and smooth, not at all like the rough surface of the banyan trees. But even in the darkest places on the Faceless ship there was faint light. Weird greenish light, like bioluminescence. It was in the bloodstream of the ship itself, in the weird floating platelets that pulsed through the walls and the strange skeleture of the ship.

  There was a damp little recess in a wall a few decks up from our room, and I went and sat there after the evening debriefing. Not that there were actual decks on a Faceless ship, with stairs or elevators or anything. Instead, everything was built on a spiral. A helix, Chris called it, like the inside of the shells I sometimes used to find on the beach back at Kopa: one continuous curving thread that twisted slowly upward. There was nothing special about this recess. It was just a place where Cam and I met up, far enough away from the others that they wouldn’t stumble over us unless they were looking, and away from the areas the Faceless seemed to frequent the most. It was about the same size as the alcoves the ones the Faceless slept in and ate in, but it didn’t seem to do anything. We’d pressed on the walls when we were first scoping the place out, but they didn’t open up and suck us in.

  I sat on the damp floor while I waited, and closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was in Kopa. I tried to remember how it felt to have the sunlight beating on my back and the red dirt burning the soles of my feet. Some guys were made to chase starlight in the black, but some of them, like me, were smaller than that, curled up tight like a dried, withered leaf. Brittle, with all the edges tattered and torn. Some of us weren’t built to withstand the storm.

  “Hey.” Cam’s hand was warm on the back of my neck, his thumb rubbing against the soft hair at my nape that had grown from prickles into wisps during our time onboard the Faceless ship.

  “Hey.”

  Cam sat down beside me, his shoulder knocking against mine. He stretched his legs out. Their reach was a little longer than mine, but that was Cam all over, wasn’t it? Smart, good-looking, tall. The perfect poster boy for the war effort, his handsome smile reminding us that humanity was good, that humanity was worth fighting for, or breaking your back in a factory for, or dying choking on a lungful of disease.

  It wasn’t Cam’s fault though. Nobody had ever asked him if he wanted his face plastered all over the world.

  Join the Military and Save the Earth.

  Cam’s face was the most famous on the planet, probably, and it rankled me more than it did him. I was never any good at sharing, and back planetside there wasn’t a single fucking day that had passed when we didn’t get the look: It’s Cameron Rushton! But what’s he doing with that reffo?

  I was taken by the Faceless too, but nobody ever put me on a poster or in front of the media. Guess they were just too damn worried about what I might say if I opened my mouth.

  “Chris is a fucking dick,” I said now, picking at a hangnail.

  Cam threw me a look like he was trying to figure out if I was looking for a fight or not. Hell if I knew either, honestly.

  “He’s not a dick,” he said at last. He raised his eyebrows. “And I didn’t come and find you so we could talk about Chris.”

  “Yeah? What’d you come and find me for then, LT?”

  He leaned in closer so that his breath was hot against my cheek when he spoke. “I came to tell you I’ve been thinking about your dick for hours, Crewman Garrett. Thinking about how good it would feel if you fucked me.”

  “Is that so?” I asked, chewing on my lower lip in that way that never failed to draw his gaze. “Sounds a lot like you’re advocating for some fraternization, sir. We could get in a lot of trouble for that.”

  “Well.” Cam leaned away again, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Of course I’d never ask you to break the rules, crewman.”

  “So you were just thinking about my dick hypothetically, sir?”

  “Of course, crewman,” Cam said. “Hypothetically.”

  Sometimes we teased each other with this dumb game for ages, but today I was already wound up and jittery and I didn’t have the patience for it. I laughed, and then Cam did too, and I reached out and hauled him over so that he was straddling my lap. He’d ditched his tunic somewhere on the way here, so he was just wearing his thin T-shirt. The damp fabric was stuck to the planes of his torso and I peeled it up so that I could run my fingers across his abdomen and watch the way the muscles moved and jerked under my touch. When Cam sucke
d a breath in, I slid my hand down into his pants and felt him shiver against me as I closed my hand around his cock.

  The Faceless technology—nanos, a virus, what-the-fuck-ever, had left an echo in us, a kind of a feedback loop. It was strongest when we fucked. I was touching Cam, but also feeling what he did as he was touched. Wasn’t just his cock I was stroking.

  So we had Kai-Ren to thank for that too, I guess.

  “What are you smiling about?” Cam asked, grinding into my hand, his breath hot against my mouth.

  “You know,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the head of his cock to make us both squirm. “The usual. I’m never entirely sure I’m alone in my own head, but at least the sex is amazing.”

  “Mmm.” Cam caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged gently. Then he released me, and licked the small hurt away. “Look at you. Brady Garrett, the optimist.”

  “Lies.” I left his cock alone for a moment to tackle his fly, and mine. He leaned up to let me shove his pants and underwear down. “I’m not an optimist. Life is bleak and the universe is meaningless and we’re all gonna die.”

  A joke.

  Just a joke, but Cam stilled. He reached out and held my face between his hands, and his gaze searched mine.

  “Life is a gift,” he said softly. “And the universe is a miracle, and we have each other as long as we live. And…” He brushed his lips against mine in a kiss that was way too soft for a quick fuck in a dark corner. “And I love you.”

  There was no echo of a lie in his heartbeat, no twist of one in his gut when he said those words. There never had been.

  “Sometimes you look at me like I’m drowning, Cam,” I said, swallowing around the sudden ache in my throat. “And you gotta jump in and save me a hundred times a day. Do you ever get tired of that?”

  His gaze was open. His heart was too. “Never.”

  “I love you too,” I whispered back to him, and we kissed again. Heat built between us again, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, each touch, each kiss more frantic and hungry than the last, until Cam was grinding against me and I was desperate to come, my cock throbbing and my balls aching. I was half-afraid I would before I even got inside him.

  “Come on,” he said, leaning down and dragging a hand along the wall, leaving his skin gleaming with shining, viscous fluid. Then he slathered it along my dick.

  It was gross, if I let myself think about it, so I refused to let myself think about it. Denial was an old friend of mine. Besides, we were getting nutrients from the goo inside the walls every time we used an alcove to eat. What difference did using it for this make?

  I scooped some onto my fingers, and then felt down the crease of Cam’s ass to get him ready. There was a part of me that could never quite believe this. Could never quite believe that Cam was mine like this.

  “Love you,” I said again, just to hear his response.

  “I love you too,” he said, his eyes closing as my fingers breached him. “I’m ready, Brady. So ready.”

  He was so beautiful, and so fundamentally good, and maybe I was learning to be something of an optimist after all, because a universe where Cam was mine? Maybe this was the best of all possible universes after all.

  “Fuck, Brady.” Cam’s voice was strained as I drove up into him. I loved how he let me do this. Loved how he let me take him apart. Loved how tight his ass was around my cock, and how I could feel the way tremors raced through him under my hands. Together, we made electricity.

  Should have fucking harnessed that to try to get our tablets charged.

  My rhythm faltered, and I smothered a laugh into Cam’s throat.

  “What?” he asked, his fingers digging into my shoulders.

  “Sorry. Just thinking stupid stuff.”

  “Then fucking focus, Crewman Garrett.”

  I huffed out another laugh, “Are you seriously trying to pull rank on me when my dick’s in your ass?”

  “Brady!” he whined.

  “I got you,” I told him. “I got you, Cam.” We both shuddered through the sensation as he clenched around my cock. “Fuck, yeah.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and held my breath, and tried not to come too soon.

  Outside the universe was a whirling maelstrom, chaotic and beyond comprehension, but here in this dark little corner of the Faceless ship it was just us. Just Cam and me, and the electricity between us, and the faint echo of other consciousnesses touching ours like tiny waves on a distant shore, and I loved him, and I was warm for now, and safe for now, and he loved me back. This was more than I ever thought I’d get, and I was allowed this. This miracle.

  “Brady. Jesus, Brady.” Cam’s eyes were closed, and his voice was barely louder than a breath. He threaded our fingers together and curled them around his dick. We stroked him off together, his pleasure reverberating through me, building tighter in both of us, climbing higher and higher until we were both shaking with it, our breath punched out of us every time Cam sank back down onto my cock, every time he clenched around me.

  “Brady!” He came with a gasp, threads of cum dripping down our fingers, our stomachs, and I followed fast behind, pushing into him urgently like my body was afraid I’d never be allowed in him again.

  Cam sprawled over me, pressing his mouth against my clavicle, breath hot and fast. I traced my fingers down his back, drawing patterns against his damp flesh. We lay there, skin to skin, catching our breath slowly as we fell through the stars.

  Chapter Three

  I walked with Cam back to our quarters later that night, both of us lazy and tired, but there was an itch in my skull that wouldn’t let me settle. I checked that Lucy was in bed, snuffling away in the canvas bunk above mine, and then headed back outside and along the corridor, following a series of pulsing lights in the membranous walls of the ship. Doc had set up his medbay down the corridor from our shared quarters. He called it a medbay, but it was basically just a smallish room where he could sit down on his camp stool and put his feet up and read his books without the rest of us bothering him. He was sorting through his books when I found him, stacking them in his footlocker carefully so they didn’t come in contact with the sticky floor.

  There was a fried solar charger sitting on the floor next to his camp stool. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. “Should’ve given us an engineer. Or a mechanic or a sparkie instead of a bunch of useless fucking officers.”

  Doc grinned at me from around the chewed pen jammed in his mouth. He was rationing cigarettes too. “Not sure there was a lot of forward planning involved in this clusterfuck of a mission, son.”

  I snorted at that. “You’re one to talk.”

  Doc waggled his bushy eyebrows.

  I scowled at him to hide the sudden rush of warm affection that swelled in me. Doc was here because of me. Because he knew I was scared, and he’d always looked out for me. Even when I was nothing more than a mouthy fucking recruit, he’d looked out for me. Taken me under his cranky old wing and smoothed out some of the rougher edges of my attitude problem, or at least taught me to pick my battles. Mostly. I was still kind of unteachable in that regard.

  He hauled a textbook out of the stack he kept in his footlocker. “Here.”

  I took it. “General Physiology? Why the fuck would I want to read this?”

  “Because if you keep reading Camus, you’ll slit your fucking wrists on me,” Doc said. “And because I’m promoting you to surgical assistant.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s a hell of a step up from mop jockey.”

  Doc grunted. “Well, the pay’s shit.”

  “Seriously though, Doc, what’s the point? Something goes wrong and the Faceless throw us in the pod and we’re good.” I smiled to drown the frisson of fear that skittered down my spine at the memory.

  Twice.

  That had happened to me twice. The first time I’d been beaten into a broken, bloody pulp. The second time had been asphyxiation. I wasn’t going for a third time.

&nbs
p; “Because who the hell knows how those things work?” Doc asked. “And who’s to say they won’t break down?”

  “Fair enough.” I hugged the textbook to my chest.

  He grunted again.

  The stuff he’d said about me and Camus wasn’t that much of an exaggeration. I think we both knew the real reason he’d given me the book was to give me something to do, to stop me from climbing the walls or from having a fucking meltdown whenever I remembered exactly where I was.

  “Any chance you’ve got a textbook on psychological disorders in there as well?” I asked, nodding at his footlocker.

  “Son,” Doc said, “you are that fucking textbook.”

  Fair point.

  “So are you gonna give me tests on this shit?” I asked.

  “Yep.” Doc chewed on his pen a little more aggressively, and drew his bushy eyebrows together tightly. “Are you gonna give me attitude about it?”

  “Hell yes.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “I don’t know why I expected anything different.”

  “Me neither.”

  We gave one another shit, Doc and me, but there was more between us than that. Much more. I loved Doc. I’d never said it aloud, but he knew. He’d seen me at my worst and he’d picked me up and put me back together. He could have looked right through me like everyone else had, but Doc wasn’t that kind of man. He was here, wasn’t he? There was nobody in the universe who could replace my dad, but Doc was the only man who could ever come close.

  He rose to his feet, grumbling as his old knees creaked. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Want one?”

  “Fuck, yes!” It was the reason I’d sought him out to begin with, and he knew it. I took one eagerly. “You got any more stashed around here anywhere?”

  “Not many,” Doc said ruefully. “How much of an asshole are you gonna be when you’re in withdrawal?”