“What happened?” she asked, her eyes checking Hal over uneasily as she took a few steps back.
“Someone needed their ass beat. I’m fine. Nothing an ice pack won’t fix,” Hal said casually.
“He’s lucky he didn’t get arrested by the locals,” Ty added. He rummaged in a compartment, pulled out a medkit, and threw Hal an instant coldpack. Hal cracked it and placed it on a blackened eye. “The guy did ask for it, though.”
Beryl came out from her quarters after hearing the noise. “What in the twelve hells happened to you, Hal?”
Hal slid the coldpack down to his lip and muttered against it. “Fight. No big deal.”
Ty passed the first aid kit over to Beryl. “Here. Your hands are steadier than mine.”
“OK, soldier, take a seat.” Beryl gestured to the chair beside her. “Did you give him something to remember you by?” she asked as she glanced over his wounds and old scars on his face; one through his eyebrow, and another on his chin.
Hal grinned. “You bet your ass I did.”
Beryl’s eyes met Hal’s, and she smiled back, cleaning his busted lip. “Good.”
She gave him a medjet of something and then worked on his cuts. “You know we’re leaving soon. Don’t get into any trouble. Save it for the run.”
“Sorry, Beryl.”
“You’re not sorry,” she said with a motherly grin, gesturing for him to take off his blood-soaked shirt.
“OK, you’re right.” Hal admitted, pulling the shirt over his head. “Hard to be sorry, when the guy was such a dick.”
Vivi sat back down but kept an eye on Hal. This was the first time she’d gotten a close look at Hal’s other tattoos. He had different linear designs along his arms and chest. And, of course, there was his vat ID tattoo, a rectangular series of lines and squares stretched across his wrist. There was a long slash along his chest, an injury obviously sustained in the fight.
“The guy who attacked you had a knife?” Vivi asked.
“Yeah,” Hal said, glancing to her. His pupils were huge; his normally blue eyes had practically turned black. It was a little unsettling. He made her nervous with the way he seemed so hyped up after a brawl, as if violence was second nature to him. Which she supposed it was, now that she thought about it.
“What were you fighting over?” Beryl asked, cleaning his wounds.
“Quad game. Guy said the Bels were a better team than the Navs.”
Beryl punched him hard in the arm. “What the hell, Hal? That’s the hill you’re going to die on?”
Hal shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta die for something, right?”
“Everybody knows the Streaks are the best anyway,” Beryl said under her breath, raising an eyebrow as she shot Ty a grin.
“HEY!” Hal sat up straighter. “Get the hell off my ship.”
“That’s our ship,” Ty corrected.
“Just kidding.” Beryl laughed as she finished up.
“I like the Navs too,” Vivi ventured quietly.
“See, at least someone has good sense around here,” Hal said, gesturing to Vivi.
“Listen, Hal.” When his eyes were focused on Beryl, she continued. “These cuts are pretty deep, so take it easy on them for the next two days. No sparring, OK?”
Hal nodded, then watched Beryl pinch together the edges of the deep oozing wound on his chest until the adhesive set.
Vivi kept watching Hal. He hadn’t flinched or shown any signs of being in pain as Beryl worked on him. She’d heard vats didn’t have nerves at all, but she was sure that couldn’t be true. She was finding that Hal was a mass of contradictions in a lot of ways. Sometimes he seemed to not care about anything, but when it came to the crew, he was protective to the point of violence.
Just last week, they’d been coming through a crowded spaceport when a guy, obviously drunk due to celebrating the New Year, grabbed her ass. It had taken everything Tyce had to pull Hal off the guy. Even though he’d been protecting her, seeing Hal’s sudden violence had made her anxious around him. She realized her time with Noah was to blame, but it still didn’t make her feel any less on edge to know that.
She found herself wondering what Hal’s story was. She had already picked up on a lot about him; it was obvious that he and Captain Bernon were close, like brothers, and that Tyce seemed to be the only person who could bring Hal back from the brink.
It also seemed that Hal thought she needed a lot of looking after – especially in spacedock. He would go with her off the ship each time she left, giving her some pretense or another. She never called him on it. In some ways, it made her feel safer too, despite being nervous around him. Her uncle, who had been in the ACAS, always said that vats were protective of their officers. Maybe that’s why Hal was keeping an eye on her; Tyce had probably told him to.
Ty pulled her from her thoughts when he sat down beside her, scrolling through his datapad. “As soon as I can talk to Fortenot, I should be getting the new permit from LanTech, then we’re on our way.”
She now knew that the permit would make sure they could pass the Border unchallenged by the ACAS. It would also outline what kinds of AI artifacts LanTech was sending them out for. If they found anything else while they were out there, well, that would belong to them. But first, they had to play the waiting game.
“I can use the extra time to work on that hesitation in the Loshad’s drive,” Vivi said.
“And I’ll resupply the ship,” Beryl said.
“Whatever we do, just keep a low profile.” Ty glanced at Hal. “Low profile, Hal, OK?”
“Got it,” Hal promised.
Ty nodded slowly. “You should all get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Hal opened his eyes in the watery glow of the night cycle in his room. He was sitting up, his gaze focused on the opposite wall as he returned to consciousness.
He could smell blood; his mouth was dry and tasted rusty. The dream of the medbay he’d been in faded away. He looked around the darkened room. The shadows seemed unfamiliar and strange. Ty was hurt. Was that then or was it now? He couldn’t remember; it was all a jumble.
He got up from the bed and tugged on a shirt before making his way to Ty’s room. A growing unease began to throb like a heartbeat in his brain.
A beeping woke Ty in the middle of the night. It was the low, insistent noise of a special alarm that he had set; an alarm that meant Hal wasn’t sleeping well again.
Ty got up and made his way throughout the dark ship, first checking the cargo bay, then the back hall near the engine room, and finally the common area and galley.
The lights were a little brighter in here. Hal was sitting at the table, staring into space.
“Hal?” he asked gently, afraid of startling his friend.
Hal raised his eyes to Ty’s and relaxed a little. “Yeah, Cap?”
“You OK?” He slid into the seat across from him.
Hal sighed. “Yeah. Bad dreams.” He scratched lightly at the table in front of him.
“About?”
“Our time on Bel-Prime. When I was sitting there waiting on you to get back from surgery.”
“Oh.” Tyce remembered Bel-Prime. During that engagement, Ty and Hal and the rest of the company of vats had been fighting the insurgents who had murdered the vat garrison on the planet during an uprising. There had been an explosion and Ty and Hal had been temporarily separated in the smoke and chaos. Tyce had been flung against a wall and woken up speared with rebar through his left side. If not for Hal finding him and carrying him back to base, he would have bled out on that battlefield.