Event Horizon
It was a hell of a party. The Åbergs celebrated the news of the wedding, congratulating the happy couple with drink, food, and hearty good wishes. Nika participated, and when asked she has made light of the fact that her right hand is fully bandaged in a splint for several of the days and her other hand has knuckles wrapped in gauze. Practicing her karate!
Now that they are out in the Black once more Nika has returned to the bridge to her accustomed place. But there is something a little more... settled. Peaceful.... than before they landed. She has one booted foot up on the console and her head's tipped back as the ship flies, her blue eyes closed.
---
Tuesday, 25 May 2523
Durance class Equinox
En route to Angel
1535hrs, ship's time
The past few days dirtside had been filled to bursting: the Battle of Paquin and our subsequent escape to Aesir, the jubilation over the Independents' victory over the Alliance, the party the Åbergs threw to celebrate it and their enthusiastic inclusion of the crew. And when Mama Åberg heard of the impending wedding …
Bozhe moi, but Jake's family sure can party.
I was still fairly reeling from it, hours out from Aesir. Angel lay ahead of us and whatever the future held. I'd managed to steal away for a bit while dirtside to think on it and plan, but the party wasn't the only thing that had me unbalanced. Nikolai was missing, thrown into the Elect program, and might even now be shipped out into the war to serve—and die—as a faceless supersoldier-gone-wrong. For all I knew, he might have already died over Paquin or in the ground fighting at Silverhold. Bitter experience, however, has taught me to never believe someone was dead until you see his body and even then it paid to keep a close eye on the corpse … because as Mike and I had proved more than once by our own example, a body is not necessarily sufficient proof of death.
Knowing that and not knowing if Nikolai were alive or dead was torture. Potemkin might have been a murderous insane bastard but he had it right: sometimes hope is the cruelest thing of all. Right now it needled me something fierce, to the point I could not lose myself in my work. That's when I knew I had to leave the engine room and find another human being to talk to. We were en route to Angel and our engines could do without me for a little bit.
Nothing's going to explode while you grab a coffee and a chat. Go. Leave. You're just spinning your wheels in here.
This was not something I could take to my mother or my family. God knew, they were mired enough in uncertainty and misery over Nikolai. They didn't need me adding to it. I was likewise reluctant to go to Joshua. I knew he already felt what I did, it being hard to impossible for him to shut me out given the depth of what I was feeling. Arden and Kiera? No. That left Nika. We'd grown distant since our fistfight and had come together for the op to extract my family. Events since then had kept us from spending much time together and it bothered me that I had not yet thanked her for her help in getting my family out.
When had we grown so far apart? And far enough away that it's taken me til now to think to thank her? That's not gonna last.
I poured two mugs of coffee and squelching the déjà vu of a similar action that ended with me mopping the floor with her, I stepped onto the bridge to find her in the pilot's chair taking her ease.
"Hey," I said softly, lest I startle her. "Coffee?"
---
Opening her eyes to the engineer as she and the coffee make their appearance, Nika offered a smile. "That'd be great, thanks." Though she, too, felt the distance between them, it was not enough to overcome the fact that this woman is one of her best friends. She held out her left hand to take the mug, the right still wrapped up since she doesn't need it much at the moment. "How's everyone settling?" she asked curiously. "They seemed to do well with the Åbergs." That had amused Nika to no end, really.
---
"Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," I said, cribbing Tolstoy shamelessly. "God knows, our families could use some happy right now."
Big, boisterous, deeply emotional and fiercely devoted to each other, for my family the loss of Nikolai was hideous. It struck me back then as it did now that the Åbergs and my family were alike in our misery. We'd each lost a beloved son to the Alliance and in both cases to circumstances surrounding a secret. I didn't elaborate as I settled in the engineer's chair to Nika's left. I knew I didn't have to. Nika had felt the loss of Jake keenly when he'd died—it had happened on her watch and as our Captain, she took it personally. She'd been spared that burden with Nikolai, however, and I'd been careful to keep my own problems from adding to hers.
"Still," I said as the peace of the bridge settled around us. "As a lead up for the wedding, there couldn't be anything better. I swear, I don't think they stopped drinking and dancing once in the entire three days we were there. I'm amazed anyone could still walk, much less have a coherent conversation." Of which there'd been several, I had good reason to know.
---
"Heh," Nika snerked softly. "There's a reason I've always loved Jake's family. Going there makes things... look better." She sipped from the cup and studied her scraped knuckles. They were healing nicely. "Mama Åberg always cracks me up."
---
I echoed her laugh and grinned at her. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say she's got some Russian in her background." It wasn't too farfetched—Scandinavian or Russian, our ancestry came from cold climates and warm people. "That woman could drink anyone in my family under the table. Pity, I should have started a pool."
I sipped my coffee and reflected that the Åbergs were an unlooked for bright spot in the dark place we currently traveled. And I wasn't thinking only about losing Nikolai, but of other things that had happened over the past few weeks. The news of the Independent hit on the Alliance Military Academy on Santo reached us during the flight to Paquin and I was privately appalled. It was one thing to kill the enemy in combat on the battlefield, with both sides possessing full knowledge of participation in the conflict. Such encounters followed the time honored Rules of Engagement. That is not what happened at the Academy, with seasoned soldiers storming a school of untried cadets. Some of the students were as young as sixteen years old and it didn't take a genius to predict the outcome. I understood the brutal mathematics of it—one had to strike decisively against the enemy's ability to send forces against you. But this? This was the slaughter of innocent civilians. It didn't much matter to me that the civilians in question wore a uniform. They hadn't been fully inducted; they hadn't yet been given their first post. They hadn't, in truth, been given a chance to prove themselves a threat. And while I had been guilty of laying ambush against an opponent in the past and had killed without remorse the same, I had the consolation of knowing that—with one exception—it had been combat, with deadly intentions declared and acknowledged by both sides.
The abuses of the Alliance could not be allowed to continue, that much was crystal clear. What wasn't as clear was the means by which the Independents would achieve victory. It did no good to trade one abusive tyrant for another. The Academy raid left a bad taste in my mouth, left a gnawing doubt in my conviction that the Independents would offer a better alternative to the government we currently fought.
It's still early yet, I rationalized. I wasn't unaware of the psychological advantage of striking hard and fast at targets heretofore considered off-limits. I also knew that human psychology is a very fickle thing and what looked like a winning strategy could backfire badly. Much like the glassing of Shadow in the previous war had the opposite effect the Alliance intended, causing the Independents to go for broke instead of standing down, I hoped the slaughter at the Academy would not prove the Independents' Big Mistake. If that happened …
I blinked. Aware that I'd been silent a touch too long, I gamely picked up the conversational thread. "There's a lot of celebrating out there. I wonder how long it'll last."
---
"Hard to say," Nika replied. She sipped her coffee. "How're the plans coming?" she asked. "Y'all haven't really talked to me about what you want for a service. It isn't like I've ever done one before."
---
"Joshua and I talked about it and agreed to have it as simple as possible." We'd discussed it while trapped in a burning ship on Puck, not that I'd ever reveal that detail to Nika. "Just friends and family as can come, a small ceremony, and a big party afterward. As for the service itself? If it were up to me, something as short as 'Do you?/Uh-huh/And you?/Uh-huh/It's done' would suffice." I breathed a laugh. "However, as someone pointed out to me recently, you only get married for the first time once. Best you make it as nice a memory as possible and since Joshua's got so few he can call his own that are special, I'd like something a little more elaborate for his sake. I'm up to suggestions. I confess I didn't get that far in the planning when I still had Deirdre available." I tried to imagine Deirdre's expression upon hearing my abbreviated marriage service. I settled on amused. She had a sense of humor and an enormous amount of patience when dealing with me and I would be forever grateful for it. "Of course," I added. "Joshua's inexperience might be a plus, here. He wouldn't know if we did things differently from convention. It just has to be nice."
---
"I'll do my best to make it nice while keeping it simple. I think I know you both well enough to make that happen," Nika retorted with a grin. She set her coffee cup down to scritch a bit inside the bandages around her right hand and grimaces faintly. "You're funny."
---
"I've been called a lot of things, but funny is a rare one," I said. I pulled a small screwdriver from my sleeve pocket. It was long and thin and made to get into tight places. "Here, use this."
---
Reaching out to take the screwdriver, Nika looks at it with a nonplussed expression and then she laughs and hands it back. "Nah, I don't need that. It's just being annoying. I don't need to dig up my skin."
---
"Sure," I said and slipped it back into my pocket. I'd held off asking for days but I couldn't resist any longer. "So who was your karate partner this time?"
---
"The dummy," Nika replied easily, picking up her coffee cup again to savor the flavor. "I hadn't worked out right for a long time. Busted one of my knuckles." She shrugged nonchalantly.
---
"You mean Arden?" I asked, deliberately obtuse. Something was bothering her, that much was clear. Given how well letting troubles fester had worked the last time, I wanted to see if I could draw her out before things got worse. "If you'd come to me first, I coulda told you it was a bad idea and spared you a busted hand."
---
Snickering, Nika leaned her head back and closed her eyes again in a relaxed pose. "Nope. The wooden one. And it didn't really matter that it was a bad idea. I knew that," she admitted quietly. There was a long silence and she murmured the admission finally, "I just needed to feel something."
---
Pain as a means to focus. I was Russian and the ability to withstand suffering was in my genetic makeup. It had served me well over the years, enabling me to take risks and win through when others would not. I wasn't a stranger to the concept but I was appalled to see Nika adopt it. Unsure how to proceed but unwilling to subside, I dared ask, "Did it work? Did you feel what you were looking for?"
---
She kept her eyes closed as she thought about it. "Guess it accomplished what I set out to do," Nika admitted. "When the black hole sucks you in, anything's better than nothingness." Which is pretty much where she's been for a long time. Her silence dragged out once more, an air of something not yet said hanging in it. She finally opened her eyes and looked at Rina. "Joshua's pretty much trying to convince me that I should lean on all of you a little more. But it's not exactly my way."
---
"Would it be rude of me to ask that you do? If only a little?" I leaned forward. "Look, we've already got one stubborn blockheaded bitch on board. I don't think we need another one."
---
"I don't know what to say that doesn't sound like self-indulgent whining. Or like I'm....." Nika paused, a flash of pain crossing her face. "Like I'm complaining about not getting candy when the rest of the family is starving." She shrugged. "Everyone's got their issues," she said, turning her face back to the viewport. "Mine ain't worse than anyone else's." The drawl is a touch more prevalent.
---
"Maybe so, but that doesn't make them irrelevant," I said right back, instantly angry but keeping my temper in check. To hell with the implicit warning in her drawl, I wasn't going to let this slide. "Besides, it's not some stupid contest, who's suffering the most. I'm probably not the best person to say this, since I'm not Christian or even Joshua, but just because everyone else is hurting, it doesn't mean you can't ask for help. Helping someone else sometimes helps you at the same time. You ever think of that?"
I leaned forward again and spoke in earnest.
"So please. Help us out. Ask."
---
Studying the engineer, Nika asks quietly, "And .... what help can you offer, Rina?" It's not a challenge so much as an honest query. "The things that are happening are in my head. They're sometimes not even a reflection of what's really going on -- they're just perceptions skewed by... the issues." She hedges slightly. "And frankly, no matter how tired I get of being in my own head, I also don't want to drag other people into it so much." Although she does seem to be taking Joshua's advice to at least TRY.
---
"What help can I offer? I won't know until you tell me what's going on." It was on the tip of my tongue to add, And it's hardly fair of you to decide for me that I can't help. I managed to keep that uncharitable comment behind my teeth. "As for dragging me or the others into it, it's ultimately our decision to allow ourselves to be dragged, so that's not really your call, right?" I sighed, sensing I was about to hit a wall. "I just don't want to leave things as they are until it boils over into ugly. If you recall, we tried that already and it doesn't work. I don't know about you but it took nearly a month for the bruises from that one to fade and if it weren't for some make-up of Kiera's, my mother would have fainted seeing me at the Kremlin, instead of being merely shocked."
A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but enough of the truth that I felt I could let it stand.
"If nothing else, I want to do for you what you did for me, little though I understood it at the time. You were there for me and you made sure I knew it. I was too stupid to take you up on it when I should have and I hate to think of you doing the same thing. Like I said, don't be like me. I don't think the universe can take another version of me, much less a prettier leggy blonde one."
---
It made Nika laugh, at least. Their difference in looks has always been almost as dramatic as their difference in temperament. Keeping her head leaned back against her chair, she seemed to be considering how much to say. Or perhaps how to phrase herself. "I'm a reasonably intelligent woman," she said finally. "Ain't no genius, except maybe when it comes to flyin'." A faint smile quirked the corners of her lips. "But I'm also a simple person. I deal straight as I can with the people in my life, and I try real hard to avoid sticky situations where ... there are no good answers. I'm okay with there not necessarily being a right answer about things. Every choice has consequences that lead us on the journey that is life, yeah?"
She paused, thinking once more. "But I don't deal well with no-win situations. And we've seen a lot of those. Situations where even when we did good, it came at the cost of hurting someone else who didn't really deserve it. Rescuing all those people from the volcano.... came at the cost of leaving half a dozen men on the ground. Choosing not to save them because doing so would have risked all of us for a few. Was it the right call? Yes. Can I live with it? Absolutely. Does it make me happy?" She shrugged a little. "And this war is... taking the same path. Working for the Independents is .... not necessarily the right call. But working for the Alliance is absolutely untenable. And neutrality just means that someone else will decide my fate for me. And it ain't in me to stay neutral, so... I keep hoping that the Independents will be the lesser of evils. But if they really did bomb a school, I ..... just don't know that I can support that."
Nika sighed softly, her words finally going somewhere that might actually help. "I hope you know how very glad I am that you and Joshua are happy, Rina. But I have to admit that it drives home just how unhappy I am. All the time. I can't remember the last time I didn't feel... weighed down."
She was rambling in her misery and it was hard to choose which topic to address first.
"I'm sorry, Nika. I don't have anything I can tell you. My own war experience isn't what you'd call very helpful. Either I was a lifer in the Navy and completely on board with the program or I was working a covert op behind the lines under an assumed identity. Neither scenario particularly fits our current one. All I can say at this point is …," I paused, trying to find the right words. "We're going to be running into a lot of grey areas in this war and we're going to have to muddle through as best we can. It isn't going to be isolated to just us, either. Both sides are going to have their uncertain moments and once they've made their choices, they're going to have to live with them. Maybe what we should focus on is not so much the big picture but the small one. You know, getting through it one day at a time, helping one person at a time—or at least steering clear of trouble one day at a time. And when we can't, we'll have each other to pull us out of the mess. If it makes you feel any better," I added, trying not to depress her further. "I fully expect ninjas to crash the wedding party and shoot the groom, rape the sheep, and steal the bride."
---
"Heh.... no. It doesn't make me feel any better," Nika replied softly, her head dropping back again. "It makes me.... sad. That it's par for the course that we should be worried about the wedding being crashed.... and that neither of us actually expects it to go smoothly."
---
"God, Nika. I was joking about the ninjas." I was really. Ninjas were the farthest down on my list of possible disasters. "Hello, crazy Russian bitch here. Crazy Russian sense of humor."
---
Nika snorted in disgust. "I'm not," she retorted drily. "When has anything gone well for us, Rina? When has anything we really wanted ever actually happened for either of us?"
---
"Most recently? My family, for one. And before you start, yes, I know we came too late for Nikolai." I had to stop and shove my hurt down deep lest it show. It's not about me. It's about Nika. "For things to have really gone wrong with that one, we would have come too late for all of them. But you'll notice, they're all still with us." I let Sasha's decision to stay on Sihnon slide. I wasn't going to derail my point with nitpicky details.
"Going backward from there? We delivered the Companion cargo. We caught a murderer and delivered him up to justice. We got the Mulan Maersk to her final destination in one piece. We reunited Joshua with his mother and granted him peace—a peace, I might add, he'd been searching for his whole adult life. We forged an alliance between two opposing forces on Ghost. We saved a ship full of people from a chemical minefield. We recovered a grieving man's family before he died. C'mon, Nika, we brought down Ah Toy on Beaumonde. God knows how much misery and broken lives she was responsible for. If it hadn't been for us, she'd still be at it."
I sighed.
"Look, we did all those things and we didn't do them without getting banged up. Everything we've done has carried some element of risk. I know that and I accept it as the price we have to pay. But the important thing is not how unscathed we are at the end of it. It only matters that we try." Echoes of a conversation with a man I'd once kissed in the rain on Santo came back to me. For an instant I wondered if he were still on his quest and still doing well. Woolgather later. Take care of what's in front of you first. "If you can make yourself look back on it objectively, Nika, we've managed to do a lot of good, despite our mistakes. Try to keep that in mind, okay?"
---
Nika shook her head. "I never said we hadn't done good things. And I did tell you that the problem I'm having has nothing to do with the reality of what we've done," she said quietly. "Only with the way it feels inside. It doesn't make sense. And maybe it doesn't have to, really. Being as it's in my own head, and it's my set of issues to deal with. I did say I didn't necessarily want to drag anyone else into it. It's hard enough to deal with it without having you trying to point out how pointless it is to feel this way."
---
It was a slap in the face and I sat back and let it burn through me. I had already decided to serve as Nika's punching bag if it helped her through the rough patches. No point in crying now when she's making use of you, is there? Keenly aware that staying silent might be taken as reproach but unable to think of anything to say that wouldn't make it worse, I simply nodded and put my feet up on the console and watched the stars streaming by.
---
The silence apparently was taken as reproach of her words, because Nika's posture slowly went tenser and the silence grew more laden with strain the longer they sat there. The blond glanced at the engineer, but she didn't know how to breach the chasm again. Her splinted hand came up and rubbed her temple absently, her brow furrowing as she stared out of the viewport.
---
I caught the vibe coming off her and internally kicked myself for an idiot. Maybe my whirlwind, no holds barred methods didn't bother Joshua so much but it was coming clear that few others had his stamina when it came to dealing with me. While my attempt this time around was a model of restraint compared to my last one, it still wasn't nuanced enough to help. When we got to Angel, Christian would have to pick up the pieces and it would be best for all involved if I refrained from bashing them to bits any further than I had already. I stifled a sigh and rose to hug her, coffee mug and all, hoping the contact would tell her what my words and good intentions could not.
"Sorry," I said into her hair. "If you wanna talk or vent, you know I'm good for it. Come find me when you do."
---
"You say that, but you don't want to hear it," Nika said softly into her shoulder, hugging her back tightly. "And I can't say I blame you much, Rina. I did tell you it was a bunch of whining." She held on, wishing she could say all that was caught in her throat.
---
"It's okay. Say it anyway," I said, meaning it. "I'll still love you when you're done."
---
"I just want... a little clarity," Nika said softly. "Joshua accused me of trying to live up to some unattainable ideal, but I don't want an idealized Verse. I don't want perfection. I just want... someplace to belong. If I have to go to war again, I know I'm not going to keep my hands clean... I'm going to do things that are questionable. But it'd be nice to feel like I was doing it for a good cause." She kept her eyes buried in Rina's shoulder, her tears hot and rapidly wetting the material there. "I'm tired of feeling like I'm being sucked into the event horizon of a black hole where there's just an eternity of nothingness."
---
I wasn't a genius but even I could see that we were dealing with more than a temporary setback. What Nika was suffering was longer term and damned if I knew what to do about it. Don't think big picture. Think small. Never mind tomorrow. What can you do for her right now? I held her and let her soak my shoulder and the answer came back: You're doing it. She'll get what she needs. Just be still.
So I held her some more and prayed I was on the right track.
---
There were so many words that Nika couldn't say. Not to Rina. Maybe not ever, to anyone. She sniffles and then finally pulls away from her friend. "Is your mother upset that I haven't spoken to her yet about your wedding ceremony? I don't know what your culture says about her involvement and Arden reminded me that she would likely want to be involved. Do you have any thoughts?"
---
I recognized the back-off and didn't argue against it. I gave her one last hug, sat down again, and considered what to say.
"Not upset, no. Not really. I think she's still wrapping her head around the fact that after getting me back after so long, she's gonna have to turn right around and lose me to a husband. I think not discussing the ceremony with her is pretty low on her list of troubles right now. But," I added. "I won't deny she'd appreciate it if she could talk to you about it. It's my 100% fault for not getting to you sooner, so blame the delay on me. It's the truth and one she'll believe. After all, I've been late before. Another delay on my part won't surprise her a bit."
---
Nika tried to offer a small smile and merely nodded. "I'll see what I can do."
---
I was dissatisfied with how our conversation had gone--too many words had been spent to get to what really mattered and feelings had been hurt along the way. And while I wanted to dig deeper now that I had an inkling of where to start, I knew I had to back off and let Nika set the pace. I'd tried to go too far too quickly the last time, with disastrous results, and I was coming to realize that I had to approach this the way I did a finicky fabrication job. I could mill something on my lathe and go agonizingly slow if that's what it took, holding the cutting blade in my hands til they ached and yet have the patience to see the job through. I would have to go as slowly with Nika if I wanted to avoid causing any more damage.
"Okay," I said and left it at that.
---
Nika closed her eyes on the headrest, seeming to feel that she'd bared enough of her thoughts.
---
I sat and sipped my coffee, offering her my silence along with my company, and when my cup was empty, I rose and hugged her and left.
HOW TO SPEAK RUSSIAN[edit]
Bozhe moi! = Боже мой! = Boh-zheh moy! = My God! (exclamation) Sound clip
Go to Nika's Crew Page or Rina's Crew Page
Go back to: Season Six, Aug 2522 to May 2523
Go to EPISODES or TIMELINE
