Work Text:
Audio transmission, 1-12-2234.
SHIP2456: “Hello?”
SHIP2456: “Is anyone there?”
SHIP2456: “Is anyone receiving my transmission?”
SHIP2456: “This is Tommy, Crew Number 8, reporting from SHIP2456. Has anyone received my transmission?”
SHIP2456: “Again, this is Tommy. SHIP2456. The ship has sustained significant damage to the winds and flank. The rest of the crew—they—I—I don’t know. I don’t know if the rest of the crew survived.”
SHIP2456: “I’m not even supposed to be on the bridge right now.”
SHIP2456: “Please respond.”
SHIP2456: “ I can’t—I don’t—I don’t know if I can do this. I’m all alone and—and I—I’m not sure if...there’s no one here. I don’t think they’re going to be okay and I don’t know if I’m going to be okay. There’s no one to help me. Is there anyone listening?”
SHIP2456: “Please respond.”
SHIP2456: “Please.”
End transmission.
Tommy is alone. He knows this if nothing else.
He watched the collision of the lone asteroid—the one that their shoddy radars didn’t detect until it was too late. He saw everyone standing at the supposedly steady bridge twist and break when the ship lost gravity control.
He didn’t blink— couldn’t blink—as the people that had accepted him as family flew into the air with the impact, wrinkling like paper dolls. He did scream. He might still be screaming, but he’s not sure.
He was belted in. They always make—they always made him belt in while they were accelerating. None of them ever did, though. And each time, he would beg them to let him stand at the bridge without the chest straps. He wanted to see the ship warp from the helm, not the backseat.
He was a kid , they said. Unregistered. Too risky . Maybe instead of arguing that he was old enough to shoulder the risks instead of sitting with belts across his shoulders, he should have argued that it was risky for them too.
But it’s too late for that now. And he is alone.
He is alone and even though he wants to believe that someone else has survived, they’re all in front of him in crumpled heaps, deadly still.
In his bones, the ache of loneliness has set in. Worse than that, the seatbelt digs into his ribs and one of his arms is twisted uncomfortably. Broken, maybe. The ship has realigned, and he can hear the dinging warning of oxygen leaks and damage, flashing red lights, but he lets his head drop to his chest. He closes his eyes.
Tommy is alone.
When he wakes up again, his heartbeat is pounding in his chest and arm, eyes crusted and body aching. He doesn’t know if he can even move. Still, he reaches with numb fingers and unbuckles the belts, falling to the floor as his legs collapse underneath him.
He’s not sure how long he stays there, head spinning.
World spinning.
Eventually, he pushes himself up with a single, shaking arm and walks slowly to the bridge.
They’re dead.
Of course, they’re dead. Because every time that something even remotely good happens to Tommy, it’s stolen. Before them there was a kind orphanage-ship, foreclosed. A family of merchants—killed in a shoot-out over the fact that they raised their per-unit prices by a dollar. A hundred ships that wouldn’t take a kid and a couple that did.
Nothing sticks.
On his tongue, the word lucky tastes acidic. He is lucky, isn’t he? He survived something that he shouldn’t have—and it’s not the first time that’s happened. But the word is poisonous, bitter, and sticky; he can’t spit it out like an unpleasant drink. He’s stuck with it.
Good luck for him, maybe. Bad luck for everyone else.
He hovers over the command center, scanning messages. There’s a demand for re-pressurization in the hull that he authorizes with a keycard pulled off a corpse. There’s fuel leak warning—more of a memo that nearly all of the fuel is already gone, really. He won’t have enough to re-enter warp.
Another box of text, surrounded by blinking red, states that the wings of the ship are shredded, weakened, and ballast will have to be removed. The ship is small; three hundred pounds might be enough to stabilize it for slow flight, and he tries not to think of the bodies a couple of feet away that weigh more than enough.
He pulls down the communications transistor and taps all of the buttons before finding the one for broadcasting. It lets out a gentle beep when he presses it, so he starts to talk. He states his name. He states their ship identification number. He pleads for an answer.
No one responds.
He leaves the radio lying on the console of the bridge. At first, he can’t bring himself to leave his bunk. The ship sits silent in space, engines dead. He sits in silence too, staring at the ceiling above, counting the slats of metal.
On the second day, his fingers twitch with energy that doesn’t reach the rest of him. On the third day, he paces. On the fourth day, he decides that he will not die in the dark, dragging himself out of bed in the same, unwashed uniform, eyes puffy and hair sticking in all directions. He bundles grief in a tiny box and stacks it among the others. He starts to work and he refuses to stop, because there is no alternative.
He doesn’t want to die.
Who does?
Audio transmission, 5-12-2234.
SHIP2456: “Tommy again. Crew Number 8. I feel kinda stupid saying my number when there’s no one—when the crew—never mind. This is Tommy. SHIP2456. Please respond if you receive this transmission.”
SHIP2456: “Anyone?”
SHIP2456: “ No? Fuck you, space. You’re a bitch. You suck. Ah—if anyone’s hearing this, by the way, help would be nice. Rations aren’t too great. We were supposed to land this week for maintenance, but that was if we traveled by warp. We—no. Sorry. There’s no we. Fuck.”
SHIP2456: “Sorry. Can’t travel by warp. Gas storage is all fucked up and so are the wings. My arm’s pretty shitty too, but there are enough painkillers onboard so—I’m—I guess I’m doing alright. I … I guess. If you get this message, please respond. This is Tommy. SHIP2456.”
SHIP2456: “Fuck this. I’m just talking to myself.”
End transmission.
He starts by patrolling the halls with a roll of duct tape. It sounds stupid, but he’s learned that in a pinch, the vacuum of space can occasionally be defeated by some 4-year-old silvery plastic with adhesive. To rip it, he has to stick the end to the wall and pull it apart with his good hand while his left hangs limply at his side.
Wearing a haphazardly sealed suit, he shuffles through rooms, stopping occasionally and listening for the rush of air. When he finds weak spots, he blocks them with wads of tape and crosses his fingers. Above him, the fluorescence lights wobble and flicker.
After securing the cabin as best he can, he goes into the kitchen and counts the food packets. There aren’t many, but the pantry was stocked for an eight-person crew, so he should be alright. The problem is the water; he’s pretty sure that the filtration system’s broken. If he doesn’t find a way to groundside, both he and the hydroponics system will be dead within three months.
Take fewer shits, he tells himself.
And, You’ll be fine. But he’s not so sure about that one.
He tests the airlock a couple of times, pretending to check on whether it’s still working. Really, he’s engraving the motion of pushing the button in his muscle memory so that when he has to do it, he won’t hesitate.
It takes a long time to drag their bodies into the airlock. One by one, collars hooked under his working arm as he braces and leans backwards, trying not to slip. Later, he’ll regret refusing to look at their faces. Now, he can’t bear to do it.
He cries when he releases the seal between ship and space, sends them into gaps between distant stars. In the end, blurry vision doesn’t impede his ability to turn a key and press a confirmation button, opening the airlock.
“Goodbye,” he whispers, and they’re gone.
Maybe he never stops crying. Maybe tears have been streaming down his face since the asteroid. It’s a waste, saltwater. Nonpotable and inefficient, but he can’t stop.
He stands at the command center and wishes that the occasion of acceleration without a seatbelt was more celebratory. When he pushes the ship into slow flight with the flick of a lever and the scan of a stolen keycard, the metal supports of the ship creak and protest, but they don’t give.
The warnings that the ship is too heavy disappear from the screen as the new weight registers.
And it starts to move.
Audio transmission, 7-12-2234.
SHIP2456: “Tommy. SHIP2456. Anyone receiving this transmission? If so, please respond.”
SHIP2456: “No?”
SHIP2456: “Didn’t think so.”
SHIP2456: “I’ve set a course for the nearest merchant center. There’s not enough water to make it there, but maybe I’ll pretend that there is. The trip will take four months since I don’t have enough fuel for warp. There’s enough drinking water for three.
SHIP2456: “I don’t think that there’s anyone else on this route.”
SHIP2456: “I thought I saw a space whale outside my window the other day. I’ve never seen one before. Maybe I imagined it, but I like to think that I’m not alone. They’re endangered, y’know. I must be attracting them. Like women. I get all the women.
SHIP2456: “Oh, well—I’m doing it again. Talking to myself on a public broadcast. Fuck. Suppose it’s fine because no one’s fuckin’ listening. This is Tommy from SHIP2456. Goodnight.”
End transmission.
Each morning, Tommy considers it a miracle that he isn’t dead yet.
Somehow, he combats every error message in the control center. Somehow, he keeps the cabin sealed and the wings whole and the hydroponic garden alive, tries to remember how to rewire the sparking plastic snakes that comprise the electrical panel based on the time he spent helping with repairs in the past. He doesn’t take many showers; he limits his water and food intake.
He’s alone and tired but he’s alive.
Without the rest of the crew around, he starts to learn their jobs. There’s not much of a library on the ship, but he does find several hefty and faded instruction manuals that haven’t even been digitized in a forgotten cabinet. He attacks them with a highlighter, trying to understand the fragile structure his life depends on.
Slowly but surely, the error messages splayed across the screen start to look less like incomprehensible combinations of numbers and words and more like instructions.
The first time that he goes outside to fix a detached radar sensor, he thinks it’ll be the end of him. That his suit will spring a leak or a rock will hit him or somehow, he’ll mess it up. He doesn’t—surprisingly, it goes off without a hitch. After that, he starts to go out more often.
Somehow, the void of space feels like home. And sometimes, he leaves the ship just to watch the stars without a thick, glass window in the way.
He sprouts plants and brings them onto the bridge. He finds rope and strings it through the pipes, making a swing above the control panel. There’s no one to tell him no.
No one, he thinks. His head is an echo chamber. And there are days when all he can think about is the minute that he pressed the button that opened the airlock. Or the minute when he put on his belts and no one else did.
He dreams of those memories too.
So waking up is hard. And going to sleep is harder. And each day that he survives is a miracle, but Tommy refuses to give up.
Audio transmission, 25-12-2234.
SHIP2456: “This is Tommy. SHIP2456. You know the drill, space void.”
SHIP2456: “Your job is to make scary static noises. My job is to be the super cool protagonist. Man, you know your part well. Maybe you can tone down the static a bit, though. Maybe you can uh—I don’t know—maybe you could send this signal somewhere? To someone?”
SHIP2456: “I was reading about today in this dusty-ass book. Found it while I was exploring deep storage.”
SHIP2456: “Today is Christmas. That’s what it said. Old tradition, I think. From Earth—wonder whether Earth’s still around, these days. Anyway, you’re supposed to give people presents on Christmas.”
SHIP2456: “Don’t suppose that you could connect this signal to someone as a present?”
SHIP2456: “Yeah. No. I get it. I thought I would check though, just in case.”
SHIP2456: “Tommy. SHIP2456. Merry Christmas, bitches.”
End transmission.
Tommy discovers, one day—as he trips and falls while transmitting a message to no one—that the radio doesn’t have wires.
Absent-mindedly, he picks it up and sticks it in his pocket instead of returning it to the stand. Despite the fact that he’s never heard anything other than static, he’s starting to use it more frequently. With each dip into his reservoir of clean drinking water, his thoughts circle the idea that someone might hear his plea for help.
Admittedly, no one has yet, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t.
He’s nothing if not persistent.
He tells it knock-knock jokes at the kitchen table.
He sings it rock songs as he rehydrates freeze-dried potatoes or when he’s scrubbing the grease off engine parts. The only music on the ship is a box of old discs that someone must have collected hundreds of years ago and a dusty CD player that he listens to them on.
He’s memorized all the songs, and the radio is subjected to karaoke night after karaoke night . He declares it the worst audience he’s ever had—it doesn’t even applaud, just crackles maliciously.
Audio transmission, 5-1-2234.
SHIP2456: “Tommy. SHIP2456. Got some important news.”
SHIP2456: “There was definitely a space whale outside the port window today. Isn’t that cool? It’s cool, right? I don’t even know how they survive out there. It was huge. I guess they eat stars ... I think? Pretty sure they migrate from planet to planet, too, but I could be wrong.”
SHIP2456: “I failed biology.”
SHIP2456: “Also—I found some spaghetti packets in the pantry and broke my three-week streak of potatoes!.”
SHIP2456: “That’s the good news.”
SHIP2456: “I haven’t made any progress on the water purifier. And there’s no refills for gas or water out here. That’s alright, I guess.”
SHIP2456: “That’s the bad news—if you hadn’t already guessed it, space void. At least I got to see a space whale. Yeah. At the rate that the ship’s going, there’s still months until the merchant checkpoint.”
SHIP2456: “There’s not months of water left.”
SHIP2456: “Well, life goes on. Today’s shower day. Finally. Hopefully, the whale’s still here. Gotta go. Goodnight.”
End transmission.
“Knock knock,” Tommy says to the radio, leaving it running while he works on some wiring, using a wrench to open a panel in the belly of the ship.
It crackles.
“You’re supposed to say who’s there,” Tommy tells it. “Anyway—”
“Who’s there?” the radio says.
“Holy shit,” Tommy says, falling backwards after a pause of disbelief. His wrench clatters to the floor. “Holy shit, holy shit. Shit! Fuck! Holy shit!”
“You alright?” the radio asks, followed by a soft chuckle.
“Are you real?” Tommy replies, feeling one second away from fainting. “Fuck. Are you real? Is this real?”
“Techno!” the voice in the radio calls. “Is this real, mate?”
“Pretty sure,” says someone else, deep and monotone. “Could be wrong. But probably.”
“Who won the second Galactic-Terra war?” Tommy asks, frantically, wiggling his fingers in front of his eyes and trying to decide if he’s dreaming or not.
“The Mars-Europa collusion,” the man answers. There’s something off about how quickly he says it, voice darkened. Tommy shakes the thought free, and the man keeps talking. “If you already knew the answer to that, how would it be proof of us being real?”
“Didn’t know the answer,” Tommy replies. “I failed history. Actually, yeah. That wouldn’t have worked either way. But I’m pretty sure you’re real, so—”
“Kid,” the deeper voice interrupts him. “You know that this is a public channel for commercial vessels, right? You might wanna get off the airway.”
“Not a kid,” he answers.
“How old are you?” one of the men asks.
Here’s the thing: merchant vessels don’t take in seventeen-year-olds without documentation or birth certificates or registration. It’s inconvenient, and merchants do not like inconvenience.
“Twenty-seven,” Tommy lies—his voice has always been pretty deep. Maybe they’ll just think that he acts childish. Maybe. Hopefully. Worth a try, at least. They don’t interrupt him, so they might have bought it.
“My name is Tommy. Identification SHIP2546,” he continues. “And I’ve been stranded for 40 days without the ability to warp. My water filtration system is broken, and I’m almost out of fuel.”
“Shit,” one of the voices says.
“Yeah,” Tommy replies.
“Did you ballast?” the deeper voice asks. “Could help you move faster.”
“I did,” he answers, voice tight.
“What’d you throw?” the man asks.
“Doesn’t matter,” he replies.
“It does if it could have helped you fix the ship,” the man says. “Or if it was your cargo. Or food.”
“It was my crew,” Tommy says. After all this time, he still feels numb when the words pass over his lips, and he hates the way his voice cracks. “The bodies of my crew.”
“Shit,” the first voice repeats. “Give me your coordinates. Now.”
He does, reads them out from the control panel number by number. When he’s finished, he hears the clicking of keys followed by a deliberating, agonizing silence.
“Phil,” the second voice says, warning. “Do you see how far off course that is? This dude’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“And this dude, ” Phil says. “Is going to die in the middle of nowhere if we don’t go. There’s no patrol ships there. There’s nothing out there. C’mon, mate.”
“No.”
Tommy feels like he’s about to throw up on the floor he just mopped. No.
“Look,” the second voice says. “Phil’s sentimental. Horribly soft. Sorry to get your hopes up, but we’re not comin’.”
“Oh,” Tommy says faintly.
“Techno,” Phil says pleadingly. “Please. An adventure—like old times.”
“Like you said,” Techno replies. “There’s nothin’ out there. Nothing worth flyin’ twenty days for—and I think there’s a belt in between our ships, so we won’t be able to warp for all of it. Think of the fuel charges”
“Space whales!” Tommy blurts desperately.
The conversation comes to a grinding halt.
“What did you say?” Phil asks slowly.
“Space whales,” Tommy repeats. “There’s a space whale out here.”
“You’re jokin’,” Techno says. “No way.”
“Tech. Pull up the Royal Conservatory bid for a live one,” Phil commands. “Do it.”
There’s clicking, a sharp breath. “That’s—“
“The same pay as ten site-jobs. I know.”
“There’s no way he’s telling the truth,” Techno says. “No fuckin’ way. The last time I saw a space whale was fifteen years ago. Bruh, they’re not even endangered anymore—they’re borderline extinct!”
“If there’s even a chance…” Phil trails off.
“He’s probably tryin’ to mug us,” Techno says.
“Do I sound like I’m capable of mugging?” Tommy asks. He has the sinking feeling that Phil is raising an eyebrow and Techno is mouthing the word yes.
“Look. I’m not. I’m gonna fuckin’ die out here if you don’t come. This is the first signal I’ve received for almost six weeks,” he continues. “Please. Come get me. All you have to do is drop me off at the merchant center—I’m not even far from it.”
Maybe it’s the space whales. Maybe it’s the fact that he sounds a lot younger, a lot more scared, than a twenty-seven-year-old should. Maybe Phil is making pleading eyes and Techno is grumbling and replotting course, letting off valve steam for a starboard-side turn.
Either way, Phil says, “We’re coming.”
Tommy can’t help it; he barely manages to make it through the call and markdown their transmission signature before he hangs up the radio and starts to sob. They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.
Tommy is alone. But maybe, just maybe, he will not be alone forever.
Audio transmission, 7-1-2234.
SHIP2456: “Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know—he's in the best selling show—is there life on Mars?”
SHIP1114: “There is. Has been since 2080. Have you considered going into the music industry?”
SHIP2456: “Ah! Shit—sorry. Scared me. Hello. You’re early.”
SHIP1114: “Suppose so. That song’s gotta be three hundred years old by now. Good one, though. Bowie, right?”
SHIP2456: “Right. Who’re you? Where’s Phil?”
SHIP1114: “Plotting course. Tech’s going to teach you how to send ship diagnostics, by the way. We need to make sure that your vessel’s not going to explode before we get there or anything.”
SHIP1114: “I’m Wilbur. Wilbur Soot. Nice to meet you.”
End transmission.
The first thing that Wilbur does is ask if Tommys injured. He’s the medic of SHIP1114, although Tommy doesn’t know if it’s a self-proclaimed or appointed title. Tommy wants to lie—because a twenty-seven-year-old is better than a seventeen-year-old, but a twenty-seven-year-old with a useless arm is still pretty shit. He doesn’t, though, and he’s not sure why.
“I duct-taped it,” he answers when Wilbur asks what he’s done to treat it.
“You’re joking,” Wilbur replies.
“If the tape was good enough for the ship,” Tommy declares halfheartedly. “It’s good enough for me!” He ignores the fact that lately, the ship has started springing air leaks again. And the fact that his arm is stiff and unmaneuverable—at least it’s his left.
“Can you move it?”
“It’s, uh—I can, kinda—”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Wilbur interrupts. “How long has it been?”
They go through the diagnostic list while radio static crackles in the background. As Wilbur listens, Tommy unwraps his arm, holding scissors in one hand and his sleeve with his teeth. It moves—not a full 90 degrees—but a slow, painful bend.
“If it was broken,” Wilbur says. “It’s probably healed wrong. No offense, man, but you did a shit job.”
“I know,” Tommy replies. “Better than nothing.”
Wilbur talks him through physical therapy exercises. Tommy writes them down studiously. When the conversation starts to draw to a close, he does his best to prolong it with questions about music and what SHIP1114 is like. It can’t go on forever, though; Wilbur has on-ship duties to tend to.
The bridge is far-too-quiet when he hangs up.
Tommy's arm aches.
The third time that he sees the space whale, he jumps up in euphoric celebration, head rushing with joy. If the whale is still here, then they’re going to come for it. And if the whale stays with him, they’ll come to get him too.
It’s gargantuan, almost as big as the ship, skin craggy and wrinkles around its eyes that make it look wiser than an animal should. As the ship moves, it follows along, flowing through space in a spot just behind the main thruster; it must like the heat of the flames.
He curls into the metal ledge of the port window to watch it, staying there for hours
“Hey, beautiful,” he croons through the glass. “Couldn’t resist, huh?
As he stares into one of its dinner-plate eyes, he swears that it winks. Or maybe not—he can only see one side of its face. And even space whales have to blink.
“I think that you need a name,” he tells it. “Clem? Do you like that?” The whale flips through the air and he takes that as a yes; its namesake is a can of unopened clementines he found in the lower kitchen storage—a salvation that, at the time, felt as large as the whale.
“Clem,” he says. “Thanks for coming back.”
The fourth time that Clem returns from star-eating expeditions—if that’s what space whales eat, because he’s really not sure yet—Tommy goes out to meet it.
In theory, he should be terrified. But this real life, not theory, and to Tommy, Clem poses less of a risk than loneliness. Plus, he’s pretty sure that they don’t eat humans. Pretty sure. Only one way to find out.
He suits up and clips into the tether-rope, letting the vacuum of space equilibrate in the airlock before he steps onto the surface of the ship and immediately starts to float.
Motions tentative, the whale circles him. Looks at him. Blinks. And for a second, he thinks that he’s about to be eaten.
Then, it opens its mouth and lets out a low wail—one that must be lost to the advance of space because he can’t hear it—and bounces Tommy gently on the tip of its rostrum. He screams in delight. They twirl together, Tommy and Clem, spiraling through the air outside of the ship, slowly tugged along by autopilot.
He doesn’t pull himself back in until oxygen warnings flash red across his suit-screen.
It’s the best moment of his life.
Audio transmission, 9-1-2234.
SHIP2456: “Hullo. Phil said that you would help me check the engines.”
SHIP1114: “Yeah. Gonna have to connect to your systems, so I’ll plug the IP now. Might take a minute.”
SHIP2456: “How’s your day been?”
SHIP1114: “Fine.”
SHIP2456: “What’d you do?”
SHIP1114: “System’s maintenance. Checked the coolant rigs. Fun stuff.
SHIP2456: “Cool. Get it—cool? Nevermind. What’s your favorite planet?”
SHIP1114: “Kepler.
SHIP2456: “62e? I’ve been there.”
SHIP1114: “No. 440b.”
SHIP2456: “Oh. Heard of it. Never been.
SHIP2456: “What’s—
SHIP1114: “Bruh. This feels like a job interview.”
SHIP2456: “Why don’t you try carrying the conversation for once, Mr. Tech-No-Blade? My back's getting tired.”
SHIP1114: “Said you were twenty-seven?”
SHIP2456: “Yep.”
SHIP1114: “Who’d you fight for in Gal-Ter?”
SHIP2456: “I wasn’t—I wasn’t old enough. That was—I was—I was seventeen then.”
SHIP1114: “They drafted for four years.”
SHIP2456: “I’m unregistered. They didn’t have docs to pull from me and I was—uh— out in the middle of nowhere on some groundside farm. Did you fight?”
SHIP1114: “Yes.”
SHIP2456: “Was it—”
SHIP1114: “Systems analysis is ready.”
SHIP2456: “Okay.”
End transmission.
After that conversation, Tommy does hours of research on things a twenty-seven-year-old should know. Because the only concerns he had during the Galactic-Terra war were based around how difficult it was to be a seven-year-old stowaway when universal borders closed, and Technoblade nearly caught him in several precarious lies.
He remembers that there was never enough food and barely an ounce of trust between whole crews. Getting onto ships took a lot of bargaining and even more begging; nobody wanted the responsibility of a kid. Especially an unregistered kid that wouldn’t receive ration slips.
He doesn’t remember who was fighting or why. Just that some sides got out with resources and freedom, others with husks of groundside. All that ship fleets transported for years was ammunition and medical supplies, box upon box stacked in the hull—his clothes smelled perpetually like gunpowder.
Technoblade, he hums, scanning the index of a heavy textbook on the war—pages crumpled, edges worn—and not expecting to find anything. T, T, T, Tech, Techno, Technoblade.
His finger comes to a violent stop. Because there it is, smack dab between technique and technocracy.
Technoblade. Capital letter. Proper noun. Followed by a page number, and a side note in a textbox. Page also covers Philza .
He flips through the pages frantically until he finds the right one.
Technoblade , it reads. Referred to as “The Blood God,” during wartime. The Europa Convention’s leader (See Europa, 2224-2228 ), a major component of the Mars-Europa Collusion (See Political Motivations of the Mars-Europa Collusion ). Known for his ruthless fighting, training techniques, and technological prowess, Technoblade led his troops to an eventual, though sanguine, victory with funds and resources from Mars (See Philza . See Mars ). Although most famous for his combat, Technoblade is also recognized for the large-scale potato-farming operations he undertook in order to keep his troops and citizens alive when trading and supply drops were cut off (See The Great Potato War )…
And underneath that.
Philza —Referred to as “The Angel of Death,” during wartime. The (formerly) crowned king of Mars (See Mars, 2224-2228 ). A major component of the Mars-Europa Collusion (See Political Motivations of the Mars-Europa Collusion ). Known for his piloting skills, self-designed wartime bases (See Endlantis ), and courageous values—and for his merciless dispatches on the front lines—Philza inherited Mars two years before the Galactic-Terra war, following the death of his father. Against the royal family’s wishes, he led and funded troops in conjunction with Europa (See Technoblade . See Europa ), returning victorious and abdicating after five years at war …
He sets down the textbook. He blinks. He takes a deep breath.
“What the fuck!” he screams to the empty ship. His voice echoes, but, predictably, there’s no response.
“Wilbur,” Tommy starts their next call off with. “Wilbur. What the fuck.”
“What?” the man asks. “Are you alright?” Recently, they’ve slipped away from formal calls regarding equipment and medical advice and into the territory of conversational transmissions.
“I thought that you were a commercial ship,” he says.
“We are,” Wilbur replies. “Kinda. We do digs. Architectural repairs—Phil’s good at that stuff. And I’m just the medic and the songwriter.”
“Phil,” Tommy says. “ Philza .”
“Yes?”
“Are we talking former-king-of-Mars, Philza ?”
For the first time since the transmission’s started, Wilbur pauses. And after so long that Tommy thinks the call might have disconnected, the man sighs. “They’d hoped it would take you longer to find out,” he says.
“With a name like Technoblade ,” Tommy answers. “History’s kinda hard to hide.”
“I told him that he should have gone by something else,” Wilbur mutters. “I’m the only smart one on this ship.”
“Sorry. What?”
“Shit,” Wilbur says. “Ignore that.”
“What?” Tommy repeats slowly, wondering if he’s dealing with more than two war—war heros? War criminals? Monikers like that don’t really matter when they’re the ones coming to retrieve him. Assuming, of course, that Technoblade’s not actually going to drink his blood.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Wilbur says, voice hard.
“Okay,” Tommy replies. And they do.
When they hang up, he searches the textbook for Wilbur and Will and Wil , finding nothing conclusive. Next comes Soot, and there it is: President Soot. He’s not as surprised as he should be, probably.
President Soot , the page says. The former leader of L’manberg, Jupiter’s first orbital-colony (See L’manberg ). Following a rigged election, President Soot was exiled, leaving JSchlatt as the illicitly-elected leader (See The Election Fallout. See JSchlatt ). Angered by the absence of its ally, the Europa Convention declared war (See Europa, 2224-2228. See Technoblade ). Mars, led by Philza, followed suit (See Mars 2224-2228. See Philza ). Although this declaration triggered many factions and conflicts, it is attributed as the catalyst of the Galactic-Terra War as a whole. Soot fled the planet, joining the Mars-Europa Collusion as a medic. His work would later be held in wide acclaim. He is still considered one of the best frontline healers of an intergalactic war, although there are suspicions that his knowledge on chemical use originated in the recreational pharmaceuticals his colony was founded on…
“Huh,” Tommy says.
Techno and Phil’s pages are full of close-typed text, but there’s a picture on Wilbur’s. In it, three men stand shoulder to shoulder, sturdy, grinning fiercely. One with short brown hair and a crooked smile, taller than the others; one with long, pink braids, broad-chested, a scabbarded beam-sword strapped to his back and an entire arsenal in his belt; one with hair so golden that he doesn’t need jewelry to look royal, mechano-wings spread out behind him.
There are scars splashed across their faces, military cloaks pulled over their shoulders. Their clothes are torn, and they’re clearly on a recently-vacated battlefield, but the intensity in their eyes makes Tommy wonder how any of the other sides in the war even thought about going against them, even thought that they had a chance at victory.
His whole life, Tommy has brought disaster to every ship, every person he meets. But these men have fought a war—won and survived. These men stared death in the face and refused to blink.
Maybe, it’ll be a little harder for space to get rid of them.
Audio transmission, 11-1-2234.
SHIP1114: “Look at your screen. Main one.”
SHIP2456: “An oncoming—wait. Is this—is this a video call?”
SHIP1114: “No. Sorry—we’re too far away for that, still. Just click on it, mate.”
SHIP2456: “What is it?”
SHIP1114: “Click!”
SHIP2456: “Is this—“
SHIP1114: “Technoblade coded it.”
SHIP1114: “This is Technoblade. You’re welcome.”
SHIP2456: “I don’t owe you shit. But—this is really nice.”
SHIP1114: “Like I said—you’re welcome.”
SHIP2456: “I never said I liked it, okay? I said that it was nice. Tryin’ to get a favor or something?”
SHIP1114: “You’re rude. Remind me why we’re comin’, again?”
SHIP2456: “Irresistible charm.”
SHIP1114:“Phil—turn the ship around. Before it’s too late.”
SHIP2456: “It is too late, bitch! I’ve got gravitational pull.”
End Transmission.
“You’re cheating!” Wilbur yells over the audio connection. “You’re definitely cheating.”
“Bruh,” Technoblade says. “I am not cheatin’. Unlike you, I’m actually playin’ with strategy and not buyin’ the prettiest cards.”
“You wrote the code!” Tommy adds. “It’s very possible that you’re cheating right now.”
“Phil,” Techno groans, stretching the name out. “I’m being bullied. And they’re doubtin’ my morals.”
“Your reputation will never recover,” Phil replies, laughing. “And Techno?”
“Yeah?”
“Watch out for Wilbur’s cards.”
“Phil!” Wilbur cries. “Phil! Is this betrayal? Is this a sword through my back?”
“What do you mean, watch out for his cards?” Techno asks. Tommy imagines them, three former soldiers hunched over computer screens, energetically debating Techno’s latest digital card game.
“Don’t listen to him!” Wilbur shouts. “I am but a simple man without strategy.”
“Be careful, Blade,” Tommy says. “He’s a tricky one.”
“You too?” Wilbur cries. “Enemies, all of you.”
“He’s not goin’ to win,” Techno says. “Calm down. He’s been pickin’ the prettiest cards this whole time.”
“I’m not going to win,” Wilbur replies. “I just did.”
Tommy’s screen erupts in pixels of confetti as Wilbur places a final, victory-ensuing card; apparently he’d been spiriting them away for a strategic hand all along—not that Tommy really gets how to play the game.
“What will I do now?” Technoblade asks, voice lilting with sarcasm. “My dreams, crushed.”
“Oh please,” Wilbur says. “Don’t act like you saw that coming.”
“I—”
“Admit it.”
“Fine, Soot. You got me—that was a nice play.”
“Thank you, Techno. It was.”
“Is anyone going to explain the rules?” Tommy asks pleadingly. He won’t win for another fifteen rounds and hours of exasperated explanation—two days later. It’s not his fault that Techno makes such confusing games.
And he won’t ever admit it, but he enjoys losing to them just as much as winning.
The first time that Tommy’s tether comes unclipped in space, it’s because he never really attached it at all. One second he’s stepping out of the airlock, waving his arms to attract Clem’s attention, and the next he’s flailing and watching as the cord fixed to the ship floats away, decidedly less attached to his belt than it should be.
“Shit,” he mutters, trying to push himself towards it. But there’s nothing to generate momentum. He stretches frantically, extending his arm and feeling his shoulder protest, but it floats just out of reach. Taunting.
“Shit,” he repeats. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Space is a bad place to be with only thirty minutes of air and a ship that’s on autopilot, slowly drifting away. He tries to keep his breathing steady but there’s not much he can do to avoid the ragged gasps that hold hands with panic.
He stares at the void in between the stars, fumbling for a plan, and it stares back. Then, some bright-white cluster of stars seems to blink. It—wait. No. That was just Clem’s eye. Somehow, the whale’s come around from the side without him noticing, bouncing Tommy off its fin.
“Hello,” he says in between one half-sob and another, knowing that it can’t hear him. “Did you find any stars to eat?”
It bumps into him again, and he’s pushed back towards the ship.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh!”
Another nudge with its rostrum. By the time he realizes what’s happened, the whale has pushed him to the airlock entrance, waiting until he grabs onto the metal handle by the door to back away.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“Thank you.”
Before it swims off, he swears that it nods. It could be—and probably was—some conjuration of his panicked mind. Probably. But maybe not, and there’s no way to be sure.
The second and the third and the fourth times his tether comes unclipped in space, it’s intentional.
It might be dangerous, sure, but Tommy hates the feeling of panic, hates how it builds in his chest and stretches into something encompassing and limiting all at once—he doesn’t want to feel it anymore. And his self-preservation could be described as adequate on good days.
So he takes a deep breath, unclips the harness tether, and grasps onto one of Clem’s fins as it pulls him through the void.
It feels like flying.
It feels like he’s lost all control—but, he doesn’t quite dislike it. Careening through space feels like freedom too.
He brings spare air canisters when he finds them in storage, teaching himself to maneuver and fly and do flips, racing Clem through space at break-neck speed. When he wins, he knows that it’s just because the whale has let him.
And when he points back towards the ship, Clem follows his lead and returns him to the airlock. Always.
Audio transmission, 16-1-2234.
SHIP1114: “Tommy. Toms. Tom. You there?”
SHIP2456: “Wilbur! How are you?”
SHIP1114: “Pretty good. Want to be my metronome?”
SHIP2456: “Sounds like work, big dubs. And you know how I feel about that.“
SHIP1114: “Yeah—well, it was my turn to check in with you. And I want to work on a new song. All you have to do is clap your hands. Unless you don’t think that you can do that...”
SHIP2456: “Fine. Now?”
SHIP1114: “Yeah. Now.”
SHIP1114: “You’re going too fast.”
SHIP2456: “I think that I’m going the perfect speed. Maybe it’s time to rewrite your song—your singing is shit, by the way.”
SHIP1114: “Fuck off.”
End Transmission.
“Are you close?” Tommy asks, face pressed into the glass of the window, hand leaving smudges. “Will you be here soon?”
“Soon, mate,” Phil answers.
“Are we there yet?” Wilbur parrots incessantly from the background.
“We’re turnin’ around,” Techno says. “Sorry. Forget somethin’, and we have to go back for it.”
“I’m flipping you off right now,” Tommy declares. “Just wait a bit, then you’ll be able to actually see it.”
He’s so excited that he can’t stay still, running from window to window, checking that the ship-to-ship docking procedures are ready, leaving a neatly-packed bag of essentials on his bed because they might not have enough fuel to bring his ship along.
After this long talking to them over the radio, it’s finally time to go. So, of course, this is when things start to go wrong.
When he enters the bridge, there’s a warning flashing across his screen—something past his expertise, probably, but even he can tell that it means trouble. A belt and debris to navigate through, piloting that means turning off the slowly-drifting autopilot and steering himself.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Wilbur says, and he realizes that while he’s been staring at the stain of pixelated red, they haven’t stopped talking.
“Yeah, sorry,” he says. “Distracted. I’m back now.”
He sits down in front of the screens and starts the countdown for manual control. He can do this; he’s a big man, and he’s supposed to be twenty-seven and a pilot. He can do this. Just in case, he retrieves his suit from storage and pulls it on, setting the helmet next to him on the desk.
This is just a final challenge before they get here, right?
Right.
3, 2, 1, the ship says. He feels the resistance and tug of control return to the wheel at the helm and grips it tightly, gritting his teeth. At first, there’s just the occasional space-rock. Then, they start to come at him more frequently. As he wheels left and banks right, zig-zagging through space, he laments the fact that he never really practiced flying after he passed the basic lessons all children are given.
“You nervous or somethin’?” Techno asked, probably referencing how quiet he’s been while concentrating.
“Kinda,” he answers, turning sharply and barely avoiding a chunk of something coming straight for the ship. “Excited.”
The sound of a new alert blaring over the speakers, sparking a sharp jolt of surprise through Tommy’s chest, covers up what sounds suspiciously like a Me too from Technoblade; the ship shudders.
“Sorry!” he yells. “Gotta go—uh—gotta go take a shit! Call me when you’re here.” Hoping that the man hasn't noticed the scream of the sirens, he hangs up the call and aims the ship for a relatively clear trajectory before returning it to autopilot; it doesn’t escape his notice that the wheel barely responds when he wrenches it to the right. The lights flash red and when he pulls up the diagnostic screen, he’s informed that a smaller wing flap’s been hit.
Until it’s fixed, he won’t be able to turn.
“Shit,” he says, pulling on the helmet and tethering himself in the airlock, grabbing a bag of tools and pressing the decompression button. Outside, one of the flaps with thinner aluminum struts has been cratered, smashed in by debris flying by.
Bracing both of his hands against the metal, he wraps his fingers around the edge and tugs the pieces towards himself, hoping that the ship will think that it’s been fixed if the flap is extended, at least. Dust sifts past his helmet, the occasional chip of debris bouncing off the glass.
He’s nearly got it, one shoulder propped against the wall of the ship, when it gives and launches forward.
Suddenly, Tommy’s flying backward and all of the smaller chunks of rock and ice that had been buffeting the sides of his ship are hitting his suit. If he doesn’t get back in, they’re going to tear through it. And if he doesn’t get back in, the autopilot won’t be able to hold course for long without a collision.
He grabs the wildly swinging tether-line. “Come on, Tommy,” he mutters, breath coming in gasps. “You got this.” Hand over hand, he pulls himself back toward the ship.
He’s nearly there, nearly there, nearly there—
Something hits him, the impact of it so hard that for a second, he feels nothing but pressure. White-hot pain follows, lancing through his side. Tears hit the glass of his helmet window, and it’s only in a strangely disconnected form of observation that he knows they’re his.
“Come on,” he mumbles, “Move. Move, please,” but he can’t. He can’t lift his arms, can’t do anything but watch as the ship careens forward and he’s tugged along and more and more rocks fly by, paralyzed by shock.
Even if his suit isn’t ripped yet, it won’t be long. And that’s if he doesn’t bleed out first. Or the ship doesn’t hit something and explode, rip apart in the vacuum of space.
“Move.”
I can’t.
“Move.”
I can’t.
“Move.”
He can’t move, but he isn’t, it turns out, alone. “Clem?” he whispers. Because it’s there, blinking, arching up and over and through the debris, headed straight for him. And he promises himself that someday, the whale won’t have to fucking save him anymore. But today, he’s never been happier to know that it will.
Tucking him under its flipper, it swoops towards the ship, pushing him towards the open airlock. Once he’s inside, it pulls back, probably retreating to a safer place in the belt. “Thank you,” he whispers, closing the doors and crumpling in a heap, arm clenched around his side. “I’m not trying to make this a habit, I promise.”
He takes a shuddering breath that refuses to fill his lungs completely and stumbles to his feet.
On either side of him, the ship walls groan, the sound of protesting metal pounded by debris echoing through the halls. He’s barely out of the airlock and closing the doors when he sees a particularly sharp rock pierce the metal and break the seal.
The radio comes to life.
“Hello?” Phil asks. “Tommy? Techno said that you were busy—and, uh, we’re here, mate. But have you noticed that you’re entering an asteroid belt?”
“Yes,” he pants. “I noticed.”
“Yeah. Great,” Phil replies. “So—we need to get out of here as soon as possible. Where’s the whale?”
“What?” Tommy asks.
“The whale,” Phil repeats. “The space whale. We need to harness it and get out.”
“No,” Tommy says quietly, after a long pause.
“No?” Phil asks. “Fuckin’ hell, we’re here, Tommy. And we had a deal. We need to go before one of our ships crashes, so we need to harness the whale now.”
“No,” Tommy repeats as he rushes back to the bridge, limping and trying to keep his weight on one leg, ignoring how he feels on the verge of passing out. “No—we can’t harness it. Because—because it’s going to get hit. The rocks’ll kill it if you don’t let it swim through them. It won’t be able to steer itself.”
“Look, kid,” Techno says. “Honestly, they’ll pay for a dead whale too. And we need to go. Now. Get your stuff.”
He knows that Clem won’t be able to navigate the field with a harness around its flippers. Constricted. The pounding reminder in his side shows just how easily it could be killed by a single, malicious rock. It’s saved him more than once, and now, it seems like it’s his turn; he can’t bear to let it die because of him.
“No!” he says, practically yells, trying to slow the ragged gasps escaping between words. “I won’t do it. I won’t let you, either.” Peering through the glass window of the bridge, he can see their harpoon and harness system, waiting patiently for the appearance of an unsuspecting whale.
An ultimatum, he decides.
“If you harness it,” he continues, voice steeled. “I won’t get on your ship.”
“You’re not going to be able to steer through this by yourself,” Phil warns.
“I know,” Tommy answers. “That’s the point. So take me or take the fucking whale. But not both.”
It’s almost cruel, forcing them to choose between him and what they’ve come all this way for. But each decision is a weigh-off, and he couldn’t possibly get on a ship with people that pick money over lives.
He thinks of spiraling through the air with Clem. He thinks of flying.
“Sometimes,” Techno sighs, feedback crackling through the radio connection. “There are casualties, Tommy.”
“You won the war,” Tommy tells him, voice rebounding in his helmet. Another warning starts to ding on the screen in front of him. “It’s over—so stop thinking like a strategist. We’re more than numbers.”
He thinks of clapping the beat to a song Wilbur had never shown anyone else. He thinks of card games and late-night calls and the time that he nearly blew up the ship while Techno told him what wires to connect. He remembers admitting that he didn’t know when his birthday was—they immediately declared that day his. They told him to make a wish, and he wished for them to come faster.
He thinks of a photo in a ten-year-old textbook. Hard eyes and scarred faces and hands full of weapons.
“It’s going to leave,” Wilbur warns. “You’re never going to see it again, either way.
“Good,” Tommy answers. “That’s fine. Do it and you won’t ever see me again.
There’s silence on the line, a pause that seems insurmountable. No one speaks to him, but he hears a muffled argument—Wilbur demanding something, Phil rebutting. Someone sighs. Then, without a command from Phil, the harpoon mount starts to retract, and he nearly cries with relief.
“We’ll send a pod,” Techno growls. “You’ll get on it.”
“It’s a little late for that, big man,” Tommy says quietly. Around him, the walls groan in protest; duct-tape, it turns out, has a definite lifespan when faced with space debris.
“What?” Wilbur asks. “What do you—” His question is drowned out by the voices of the others, a wave of confusion. Everyone asking what he means, what’s happening.
“Open your airlock door,” he replies. Then, he disconnects his headset and double-checks that the cuffs on his suit are as tight as possible, resealing the helmet. Taking a deep breath of recycled air and ignoring the stabbing pain in his side, he runs past the bridge, past the bunkrooms, into the airlock where the wall is hissing suspiciously.
He grabs an air canister and skids to a stop, waiting for decompression.
The door slides open. Falling into space, he spins as he orients himself towards the ship and aims the canister behind him, circling the metal walls of the ship until he finds their airlock and falls into it. The impact of the landing sends sparks of white pain through his body, through his vision.
And his side burns.
The door has barely closed again when he pulls off his helmet, gasping for air. And through the glass of the window, he watches his ship splinter, pulled apart by the vacuum of space, hatches and windows tugged away from its body. A small implosion. The void between him and the ship renders the destruction completely silent, and he thinks that it deserves at least a scream of metal as it dies, but it doesn’t make a sound. It’s oddly and upsettingly anticlimactic.
Past the ship, he sees Clem. Maybe it's seen his exit; maybe it’s still waiting for him. Either way, the whale will be safe.
“Goodbye,” he whispers.
“We had a deal, mate,” he hears from behind him. Phil. “A space whale for a pick-up.”
“You made your choice,” he says without turning around, unclipping the belt of the suit and pulling off the front—if they decide to send him back into space, he’ll be too tired to save himself, anyway.
“You—” Phil starts.
“What the fuck was that? ” Wilbur interrupts, entrance announced by rapid footsteps in the hall. “Your life for a whale—really? You think its rational to bargain your life for a fucking animal?”
“Yeah,” Tommy shrugs, hissing through his teeth at the pain the motion shoots through his body. “Kinda.”
Their voices fade away. The lights are far too bright, fluorescent din buzzing in his ears; it makes him want to throw up. When he presses his hand to his side, it comes away red and wet.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, turning around.
They look like the photo—a little cleaner, maybe. Longer hair and extra wrinkles, but their eyes hold that same determined gleam. They’re angry, but that was evident in their voices before he saw their expressions.
“Tommy?” Wilbur says—and he keeps talking, but Tommy’s ears aren’t working quite right. He can’t make out what follows. As if he’s looking through heavy port-glass, his vision wavers and blurs. Blinking, he tries to steady himself.
He sees Phil’s mouth form around the number twenty-seven —asked as a question, eyebrows quirked as he takes in Tommy’s face and acne and chin that refuses to grow stubble.
“I think,” Tommy says, voice slurring. He takes a stumbling step forward, hand clutching his side. “I think that something’s wrong.”
Finally, they see the blood dripping through his fingers. Falling onto the metal floor, percussive. Scarlet.
Tommy sees static and the metal-plated floor rushing up to meet him, followed by nothing at all.
He falls.
He flies.
There are voices and the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, hands, bandages. Someone telling him to drink something, eat something, go back to sleep . He feels the ship accelerate and slow, hears a whispered utterance that he’s just a kid.
He’s tangled in dreams; they twist around his thoughts and through his fingers, but each time he blinks, their imagery disappears. Gone from sight and memory. Sometimes, he wakes up and the tangled dreams are gone, replaced by twisted sheets.
When he’s awake, Wilbur is there. Hand on an old-fashioned stethoscope, fingers on Tommy’s forehead, testing temperature and heart rate at the same time just like a field medic might. Patient and kind, though there are wrinkles between his eyebrows and bags under his eyes. He wears glasses: round, wire-rimmed, and whispers to Tommy, stories of the ship—Techno’s cooking failures, the debris field that Phil’s been navigating. Once, Tommy forces out a, “Clem?” Wilbur cocks his head, and Tommy realizes that he never admitted to naming the whale. His eyes slip shut, before he can reword his question.
His side aches, pain smothered by an IV.
His head aches, a mix of apprehension and exhaustion and fear that the IV barely manages to dull.
He sleeps.
He blinks.
Technoblade is sitting in a chair across from the medbay bed, head propped in his hands, form lit by the gentle lighting meant to simulate night and the glow from the window. When he sees Tommy’s eyes open, he leans forward.
“What’s your name?” Techno asks. He’s large, strong, arms bulked and lip interrupted by a years-old slash, but he doesn’t really scare Tommy. Not balancing on one of the medbay’s uncomfortable plastic chairs, the kind that folds out from the wall. Not after hours of conversation.
Almost, but not quite.
“Tommy,” he mumbles blearily.
“Your last name,” Techno specifies. “There’s more than enough Tommy's on record—believe me, I’ve been searchin’. Phil’s worried that you stole the ship and that we’ve got a felon on board. Wilbur’s been keepin’ us out of here—I had to sneak in to ask.”
“Just Tommy,” he says. “I guess. If there was more, I don’t know it anymore.”
“Oh,” Techno replies awkwardly. “I—I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Tommy says into the sheets. Beside the bed, a monitor beeps softly, keeping time with his heart.
“So you’re not a criminal, right?” Techo asks. “Or on the run? I mean, not that you seem like one, but we gotta be sure—”
“No,” Tommy answers. “I’m not. I wasn’t an official crew member, that’s all. Everything else was true. They just gave me a place to stay.”
“Oh,” Techno repeats eloquently, his expression like that of someone who’s known the truth for a while but tried to ignore it. “How old are you, then?”
“Seventeen.”
Techno sighs.
He doesn’t ask anything else, just pats Tommy’s head gently before pushing off the chair and padding out of the room, having obtained the answers he came for. Tommy hears a whispered, “Goodnight,” followed by the gentle click of the door, and the man is gone. Later, he’ll wonder if it was all a dream.
Now, he thinks of the way Techno’s face fell when he admitted— too tired to lie— that he wasn’t even an adult.
The stiffness of bandages around his chest is only uncomfortable for a couple of minutes before he tumbles back into dreams.
Sleep, at least, is a constant.
He blinks.
Wilbur is there, lifting his arms and changing the bandages around his thin chest. He ignores the painful tug of adhesive.
“Sorry,” Wilbur says. “Didn’t want to wake you up, but I had to check the stitches.”
“S’okay,” Tommy replies, head resting on Wilbur’s shoulder. It really doesn’t hurt that bad anymore, although he suspects that the IV taped into his elbow is still doing most of the work for him. “Kinda itchy.”
“Yeah,” Wilbur answers. “Sorry about that. Should start to get better, I think—Phil let me pull out the full arsenal for you.”
“So I’m a lab rat?”
“Don’t worry,” Wilbur says. “I’m world-renowned, remember? And I didn’t stop when the fighting did.”
“Does that mean you can fix my arm?” Tommy asks, twisting it and feeling the slight protest of misaligned bone or muscle, knitted together months earlier.
“No,” Wilbur answers. “I’ve looked at it, but it’s too late. I might be a fuckin’ good doctor but I’m not a magician. I—sorry”
“Yeah,” Tommy answers. “Soot, defeated by a broken arm, ay?”
Wilbur just punches his shoulder gently, glaring and muttering something about how broken arms and arms broken 3 months ago are very different things, Tommy, and even I can’t perform more than two miracles in a week.
Two miracles, Tommy thinks after Wilbur says it, suddenly realizing that maybe he’s gotten very lucky to be in a hospital bed, bandages being replaced, and not bled out on the floor of an airlock.
“Thanks,” he whispers. Wilbur must think it comes out of nowhere because he pauses for a second with a quizzical expression in his eyes before offering back an equally subdued, “You’re welcome.”
Things start to get better after that.
Or, at least, his side starts to get better, sharp pain receding into aches receding into barely-there twinges when he turns. Stitches removed, bandages shrinking in size, IV fluid decreased by the day.
He’s not sure where he stands with everything else, but at least he can stand again.
Having been bleeding out and arguing when their ship arrived and hospitalized for the following weeks, he’s not really done much observation of the place that they live. And suddenly, limping slowly down the hallways with Phil at his side, he has the realization that it’s huge.
“You could have afforded to come pick me up a hundred times,” Tommy grumbles, staring at the arching ceilings, the doors that slide open as they pass. “It doesn’t seem like money’s an issue.” And he regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, but Phil smiles.
“It’s not, really” the man says, shrugging. “Let’s just say that certain groups of people are convinced that they have to pay us to keep the universe quiet—-as if we’d ever want to fight again. I don’t think any of us have really forgotten what it was like to budget everything that we had, though. And anyway, Tech’s big on reciprocity. Also—you totally could have been trying to mug us.”
The idea that they budgeted more than money, risked more than money, goes unspoken. The ship is full of raucous laughter and heated discussions, dinners around a well-worn table in the kitchen, but the war must feel as close in their minds as it seems distant to Tommy. He sees it in their shoulder, their arsenal, their reasoning.
There were other people in the textbook. One exceptional field medic couldn’t save them all.
“Stop thinking about that,” Phil says.
“Thinking about what?” Tommy asks, screaming loudly in his head in case Wilbur’s figured out mind reading while mixing chemicals in the lab.
“You were frowning,” Phil says—not a mind reader, then, thankfully—as he scans a keycard and beckons for Tommy to enter a room he’s never seen before. “And that was a long time ago. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“I’m just insulted that you still think I’m capable of mugging. It’s insulting for—” Tommy starts. But the room in front of him steals the words from his mouth.
There are plants. Not just one or two like Tommy removed from the hydroponic, but a garden. Vines spilling down the walls. He can’t remember the last time he went groundside and saw something like this—most ships can barely support human life, let alone plants that need light and constant care. But there’s a forest here. There’s dirt, things growing, alive.
“Most are from my home,” Phil says softly.
“Mars,” Tommy states because he doesn’t know what else to say, too busy being in awe. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Phil replies.
As they walk, Phil brushes fingertips along closed buds, and they open into vibrant flowers; Tommy pokes one but all it does is twitch, so he flips it off for being rude.
“They only open for royal blood,” Phil tells him. “Gift from my family. Don’t ask me how that works, but Wilbur could probably explain if you’re curious.” And Tommy’s not really sure how that works either, but if whales can evolve to survive in space, surely a royal family can breed elitist flowers.
Tommy pokes another just in case he’s secretly a long-lost royal. It doesn’t open, so he assumes that he’s not. In front of them, a glass window looms, towering and dark with pinpricks of stars.
“This is why I brought you,” Phil says, staring out.
“We see the stars every day,” Tommy tells him, hoping the old man’s not gone senile.
“Wait,” Phil replies. “You’ll see.”
And he does.
He sees.
There’s a whale swimming towards the window, with dinner plate eyes and graceful fins. Tommy screams and presses his palms into the glass; it bumps gently against them, and he feels the tiniest shudder of impact at the motion.
“Holy shit,” he whispers. “Clem. You came back.”
“It never left,” Phil whispers.
Audio transmission, 9-2-2234.
SHIP1114: “Permission request to dock.”
DOCK1: “Please state your credentials. Full name, ship registrations date, license code, and register IP.”
SHIP1114: “This is Philza.”
DOCK1: “I said, Full—oh—apologies, your majest—sir. I'm so sorry. Permission granted. Dock at your earliest convenience. Time limit and charge have been waived, sir.”
SHIP1114: “Thank you.”
DOCK1: “My pleasure.”
End transmission.
They’ve given Tommy a room, and he’s not sure whether it’s permanent. Moderately small with an alcove bed across from a desk, and a circular port window, it’s still larger than what he had on the old ship. He has his own bathroom—and Techno practically mandates showers when he accidentally slips into his old water-rationing habits.
Tentatively, he starts to stack things on the shelves, make a space for himself. They play a picture-drawing game where everyone is unsuccessful in guessing the subject—because they’re all terrible at art, and Phil keeps choosing animals from Mars that nobody knows anyway. When the game ends, Techno stands up to throw the papers away; Tommy sweeps them off the table and insists that he’ll do it for them.
Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.
He hangs them above his bed instead, staring at them when he can’t fall asleep. Remembering the laughter that the amorphous blubs and indistinguishable scribbles were tinged with.
Every night, they eat dinner in the kitchen, around a table that he belongs at like he was the missing puzzle piece all along. Four seats, and he’s the one completing it.
He helps in the garden.
Techno grits his teeth as Phil teaches Tommy to steer the ship through a minor debris field, grumbling that, “This thing is way too expensive for a kid to be in charge of, Phil.” But he doesn’t crash a single time and even Techno smiles at his shout of joy when they escape on the other end with only a couple of dents.
And Tommy thinks, maybe, maybe, maybe, this is it . The ship hasn’t been hit by an asteroid and he’s never seen a better pilot than Phil. No one tries to fight them, nothing bad happens. Sometimes, Clem shows up to tap against the window, demanding attention. He’s safe.
Maybe.
Maybe not, he thinks as he hears the screech of struts docking against the edge of the ship.
“Phil?” he calls, running into the commons as fast as his feet will go, steadying hands against the metal walls as the world shifts around him.
“Yeah, mate?” Phil replies, forehead screwed in concentration. At his side, Techno is flipping secondary switches and releasing pressure, and lights are flashing on every screen. They’re landing the ship. Wilbur stands at their side, fingers flying over a keyboard, satchel already thrown over his shoulder.
“Where are we?” Tommy asks.
“Merchant checkpoint,” Phil answers. “Sorry—forgot to tell you that we were ahead of schedule. Would you mind grabbing the shopping list off the fridge?”
He looks at them. He looks at his twisting hands, his feet. “Sure,” he says, followed by a shuddering breath. “Yeah. The shopping list. Be right back.”
Walking into the kitchen, his thoughts race too fast to be brushed off as exertion, lungs gasping for air. Because this whole time, he’s been worried that the universe will take them away. That it won’t let him be victorious in anything, won’t want him to succeed.
Now, he sees the alternative—that they’re the ones that don’t want him.
And really, bringing him here is fulfilling the deal that they made months ago, but it burns, stinging something vital deep in his chest.
He plucks the shopping list off the fridge and tells himself that he’s not dying, that he’ll be fine, that he hasn’t even known them for very long, and that he’ll find a new ship. Somehow, the reassurances aren’t convincing at all. And getting dropped off at the merchant center isn’t a death sentence, no, but his fickle heart has its own opinion.
In the hallway, he forces air into his lungs and rubs his eyes, knowing that his return to the bridge has taken longer than it should have.
“Here,” he says, pushing the piece of crumpled paper into Phil’s hands.
“Thanks,” the man says. “You coming with us?
“No,” he answers, straining for a nonchalant tone that evades him. “I’m tired. I think that I’ll stay on the ship.”
He assumes that the successive statement of until you’re ready to take off goes unsaid. Because he’s seventeen and a nuisance and of course they don’t want him to stay—why would he think that? Why would he ever think that?
Phil cocks his head and stares inquisitively but is forced back to the control panel when a request starts to ding on the screen.
“Are you feeling alright?” Wilbur asks. “Is it your side?”
“I’m fine,” Tommy answers, hoping desperately that there’s no scratchiness in his voice, avoiding eye contact. Then he turns and walks back to his room in a loping stride, locking the door behind him. He doesn’t want them to see him cry.
He doesn’t want them to—
He doesn’t get to make that choice.
As he stuffs clothes into a duffel bag, tears run down his face. Inefficient. He remembers thinking that they were inefficient back when he was actually in danger of dying, and he thinks the same now. Stupid.
The pictures go into the bag last, slid neatly behind against the side so that they won’t wrinkle.
Dragging the strap over his shoulder, he sits down on the bed and stares at the white wall across the room. Because after all this time, he doesn’t really want to go. But he doesn’t want them to have to order him off the ship, either, so he forces himself into the hall, dragging his feet. Past the kitchen and the commons and the bridge until he’s staring at the gangplank through puffy eyes.
Then, he hears footsteps. Voices. And he realizes that he must have the worst timing in the world because Techno and Phil and Wilbur are returning to the ship, just as laden with bags as he is.
“Tommy?” Wilbur asks, their laughter cutting off when they see him.
“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. You’re back.”
“We’re back,” Phil echoes.
“You leavin’?” Techno asks.
“I mean—I—that’s why we’re here, right?” he asks, shifting on his heels
“What?” Wilbur says quietly. “What are you talking about?”
“The first time we talked, I said that all you had to do was take me to the merchant center,” Tommy replies, forcing cheerfulness, hiding tears with a halfhearted smile. “And we’re here now, thanks. So I’m getting off, I guess.”
“Oh, Tommy,” Phil says. “Mate. No. I—I forgot about that. That’s not why we’re here.”
“Kinda rude if you ask me,” Techno says, rummaging through shopping bags. “For you to just, run away. I mean—look.” He holds up an article of clothing that looks like the ugliest pair of overalls that Tommy’s ever seen, boots attached, neon orange. “—you would have passed up on the chance to wear this?”
“What the fuck is that,” Tommy says, choking on laughter that he can’t seem to stop. He drops his own bag and rubs his eyes.
“An abomination,” Wilbur answers. “Phil makes crew members wear them at work because he thinks it’s funny.”
“Crew members?” Tommy mumbles.
They nod.
“Oh,” he replies. “Crew members?” His brain is telling him that he should get his ears checked.
“Crew members,” Phil says. “I mean—not that you have to. You could go. If you wanted to. I—”
“Yes,” Tommy says, interrupting him. “Yes. Yes!”
“Good,” Wilbur says, smiling. “Children are excellent free labor. We won’t even have to pay you.”
“We kinda just assumed that you weren’t gonna leave us alone,” Techno says. “Like—that we weren’t gonna be able to get rid of you anyway, so…”
“I take offense to that,” Tommy grumbles, offering to carry some of their bags onto the ship. They’ll talk about the whole almost-running-away thing, the whole issue of being a little too self-sacrificing, the need for reassurance, later. His smile stretches across his face so wide that his cheeks hurt, and as soon as he helps with takeoff—insisting that everyone wears their belts during it—he tacks the pictures back up over his bed.
A couple of days later, he asks if they regret coming for him, and they answer no, unanimous, no pauses to come up with lies, no hesitation—and he realizes that there’s nothing it could be but the truth.
The overalls fit perfectly; it’s a love-hate relationship.
“I don’t want to wear them!” Tommy screams from his room, bracing against a wall as Techno yells back that they’re about to land and he better show up in his uniform! The ship shudders slightly, settling against the soft dirt of groundside.
“You don’t have a choice, mate,” Phil replies apologetically, so Tommy tugs the overalls on, plastic boots squeaking on the shiny, metal floor of the ship as he walks onto the bridge.
They’ve landed at the first job Phil’s been requested for since Tommy officially joined the crew. For weeks, he’s been complaining about the fact that he’ll be expected to do work, but his head’s been buzzing with excitement since he saw the plotted course on the navigation screen.
He stands at their side, shoulder to shoulder, as the gangplank drops.
and the universe said you are not alone
Light from two glowing stars hits their faces, fresh air blowing up from the ground and rushing into his lungs. Tommy wonders how long it’s been since he stood on something that wasn’t the relentlessly cold metal of a ship floor.
Years? A decade?
“You ready?” Wilbur asks.
“Yes,” he answers, letting out a breath and taking his first step forward. “I am.”
and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing
Under his feet, the ground gives slightly, springing with each step he takes. He whoops in delight, jumping up and down, feeling the plants brush the canvas of his overalls and welcome him to the planet.
Flowers sway in the breeze, unfamiliar. He can already tell that Phil is itching to take some back to the ship. He’s never felt more alive
“Where’s the site?” he asks, breathless.
“Look up,” Techno answers, laughing.
and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code
Tommy glances up from the plants and the ground and there they are, buildings, gargantuan columns spiraling into the sky, silhouetted by the dusty orange clouds behind; white marble and ancient glass and structures so big he wondered how they’ve managed to stay standing.
Involuntarily, his mouth drops open.
“What do you think?” Techno asks Phil. Tommy can tell that the buildings are cracked and failing, damaged by decades of abandon and storms, but it doesn’t even dent the veneration that beats in his chest.
“I think that we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Phil answers softly—and Tommy thinks that even he’s impressed by the sight in front of them, pantheons built by something untouchable, long-gone. Long-dead too, probably, but immortalized by their own creations. “We better start walking.”
and the universe said I love you because you are love.
When they start their trek across the field, Tommy lets them go ahead. He doesn’t follow, just watches as they stride towards the columns, Wilbur singing some song and Techno plugging his ears and Phil laughing.
He has asked the universe for something good and finally, finally, it has answered. He realizes that he’s gotten lucky and this time, the luck is good —a four-leaf clover of sorts. Rare, maybe, but never impossible to find.
Noticing that he’s fallen behind, Phil turns, waving an arm encouragingly.
“Toms!” Wilbur yells. “Speed the fuck up! You’ve got medical bills to pay off!” The starlight across their overalls and hair and clothes looks golden. They are golden. And the universe says yes. Yes. Yes.
you are the player.
“Coming!”