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Victor smiled. She was making light, breaking up the tension like Alejandra used to do.
Alejandra, his cousin and dearest friend back on his family's ship, El Cavador. She and Victor had teased each other like this constantly. She, telling him that he was knobby kneed or laughing at him for squeaking like a girl whenever she or Mono had jumped out of a hiding place and startled him. And he, mimicking her whenever he caught her humming while she worked. Hers were pleasant little melodies that seemed to sway back and forth like a swing. "What are you humming about anyway?" he had asked her once. "What's so pleasant about doing the laundry?"
"I'm telling myself a story," she had said.
"A story? With hums? Stories require words, Janda."
"The story is in my head, genius. The humming is ... like the soundtrack."
"So you're telling yourself a story and making up the music while you're washing other people's clothing. You're quite the multitasker, Janda. And these stories, let me guess, they're about a handsome, teenage mechanic who can fix anything and build anything and smells as sweet as roses."
She had looked at him with such a start, with such an expression of surprise on her face, that at first he had thought he had offended her. But the look had vanished an instant later, and Janda had returned to smiling and scrubbing the clothes again, with her hands in the dry gloves box where the sudsy water was contained. "Victor Delgado," she had said. "Don't you know? If I ever created a story about you, I would make it a true story. You wouldn't smell like roses, you would smell like farts." Then she had flung open the dry gloves box and threw a soaked shirt in his face. And the next moment she was roaring with laughter because in his surprise, in his twisting to avoid the soaked fabric, he had farted. Accidently of course, something he would never do in front of her, but there it was.
And she was still laughing when he finally got his feet anchored to something and grabbed the shirt and flung it back at her. She had dodged it easily, and a heartbeat later he was flying away up the corridor of the ship, humiliated and yet laughing inside as well.
She had gotten in trouble for that, he remembered. Water had leaked out of the scrubbing box, and it had taken four women a good twenty minutes to collect it from the air and the crevices in the wall.
He should have seen it then. He should have known that the friendship they shared was something more than that. Why hadn't he recognized what those feelings truly were?
Because he had never experienced them before, he told himself. Because they had come on so gradually all his life that by the time he recognized them for what they were, it was too late to stop them.
It made little difference now. Janda was gone. Just like Father.
And here he was talking to Imala the same way. Why? Because it was natural? Because he missed that part of himself, the part that could tease a friend? It wasn't flirtatious. Or at least he hoped it didn't seem that way. He was eighteen. Imala was ... what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? He was a child to her. Did she think him flirtatious?
Imala's face appeared in Victor's HUD, snapping him from his reverie. "If you're having doubts, Vico, then let's rethink this."
She had mistaken his hesitation for fear. "I'm fine, Imala. I'm just taking a moment to consider how best to do this."
He unstrapped the duffel bag from around his back and pulled out the bubble, an inflatable dome designed to form an airtight seal on the side of the ship. With Victor inside the bubble, he could cut a hole into the ship without exposing it to the vacuum of space.
Victor pulled the ripcord, and the bubble filled with air and assumed its domed shape. He climbed under the dome with his duffel bag of tools and sealed the bubble to the wall. "Whatever happens, Imala, don't stop recording."
They had agreed that Imala would record everything Victor captured with his helmetcam. If he didn't make it back, they needed to share what they had found with whoever would listen. "Don't just give it to Lem," Victor had said. "Upload it on the nets. Broadcast it to the world. If enough people know what's inside that ship, maybe someone will see a way to end this war."
He unzipped the duffel bag and dug around the tools, looking for the laser cutter. His gloved hand found it and pulled it out. Victor set it to a low setting, pressed it against the wall, and waited for the beam to punch through. Father had taught him this technique years ago. The two of them out in the Kuiper Belt had cut into a dozen derelict ships over the years. Most had been grisly scenes: free miners hit by pirates; ships with mechanical failures that had stranded the crew and starved them out. Whoever they were, they were almost always dead by the time El Cavador arrived.
Mother had tried to protect Victor from participating, arguing about it with Father one night when they thought Victor was asleep in his hammock. "Anyone in the family can do that job," Mother had said in a hushed tone. "It doesn't have to be Vico."
"No one uses these tools as often as he and I do," Father had said. "I trust him with a cutter more than anyone. I don't want someone doing this who isn't experienced with the equipment. Anything could go wrong."
"Which is why our son shouldn't be the one to go."
"He's a member of this family, Rena. Everyone has their duty."
"He's just a boy, mi amor. Un nino." A child.
"Cierto," Father had said, falling into Spanish alongside her, the way he always did whenever a disagreement escalated. "Un nino que hace su parte en esa familia, tal como ti y tal como yo." A child who does his part in this family, just like you and just like me.
In the end, they had compromised. Victor would help cut, but he wouldn't go inside the ship and assess the damage. "Leave that to the men of the crew," Mother had said. Father hadn't argued, and so Victor had been spared the worst of it. But not seeing what was inside the ships was perhaps worse than actually seeing them since Victor's mind always painted the worst possible picture.
He wondered then, as he often did, where Mother was now. Lem had said that the women and children on El Cavador had left the ship and boarded a WU-HU vessel, but Lem had no idea where the vessel was or if it had even survived the attack. It had been heading for the Asteroid Belt, so in all likelihood Mother was there now, perhaps at a depot or outpost where other survivors were gathering. She wasn't dead. Victor refused to even consider it. Losing Father had been grief enough. No, Mother was safe somewhere, tending to the women and children, comforting them, strengthening them, protecting them as she had always done on El Cavador. He had to believe that.
The laser punched through.
Victor stopped the beam and checked the readings. "The wall's only four inches thick, Imala. I can cut through this easily."
"Be careful, Vico."
