Far Horizon (Juggernaut #4)

Thirteen

When their shuttle door closed, Malachi let out a heavy sigh.

"Sad so soon?" asked Nina.

"I'm not sad, I'm going to miss them both is all. And Jayce."

"He's a character," agreed Nina. She threw her bag easily into an overhead rack and picked up Malachi's to do the same. "I'm going to miss Ellie. She's a little bundle of fun, that one."

Malachi smiled. "Yes she is. I feel bad for the rest of her class. They have no idea what's coming their way. Careful, that bag is heavy."

"Tila's rescue mission had better watch out too," Nina grunted. "What have you got in here?"

"Clothes, tools, datapads. The usual," said Malachi. "Tila doesn't suffer fools."

"Kind of a problem when her default position is that everyone is foolish."

"She's getting better."

"Tell that to Jayce."

"I don't think Jayce even notices what she thinks of him. He sort of gets on with things."

"Bit foolish though, to not notice her attitude. She broadcasts it. To miss that you would have to be some kind of, well, idiot."

"His heart's in the right place."

"Right next to Ellie's, I can tell."

"There's worst places," said Malachi. He smiled, then looked sad again.

Nina took his hand and led them to a seat. Their shuttle was only half-full, so she was able to find two seats on their own easily. Malachi slipped into the seat beside her.

"What happens next?" said Nina.

"You're thinking about next already? We haven't started yet."

"I don't mean to rush through it, but what will you do once this is over?"

Malachi thought for a moment. "Take what we've learned and work on the Valkyrie for one thing, and if we can grok the military engineering skills there's a lot more we can do on the Juggernaut. If we can build out distributed redundancy in the power net, for example, we can reduce the failure rate in hydroponics, and that will increase yields, which means—"

Nina's finger on his lips silenced him. "I don't need a science lesson, Mal. I want to know about you, not the engineering."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, all these new skills you will learn, plus the experience you already have, makes you valuable. You could do more with it than fix pipes."

"We need to fix the pipes though."

"I know, but think how much more you could do somewhere else."

"I can't leave the Juggernaut, I'm needed there."

"I'm not saying turn your back on them, but what if you could do more good out here, rather than in there. Out here you could make contacts, earn money, build a reputation, and you could still use that to help the people of New Haven. Maybe more than you can help them by staying behind. Whatever you want to repair or build or improve, you're going to need tools and materials, right? Won't it be easier to get your hands on those things out in the Commonwealth? Where you can be free?"

"I never thought about it like that," Malachi said after a moment's thought.

"Give it some thought. We have time."

Malachi sighed again at the reminder he would not see his friends again until this was over. Nina smiled at how sensitive he could be. He could stay up all night to tear apart a spaceship and rebuild a fusion core and not give the effort a moment's thought the next day, but five minutes without his friends and he seemed to carry the world on his shoulders.

"You'll see them all in a few weeks. Ellie will be top of her class. Tila will have rescued thousands of people. Jayce will, uh, be back. Until then, you get to spend your assignment with me. We're going to work together, study together, and solve problems together every day until we get that ship operational. You won't have the others, but you will still be next to me, got it?"

Malachi slipped into the seat beside her and put one arm around her. She lay her cheek on his shoulder.

"There are worse places," he repeated.

Nina smiled into his neck and whispered, "I'm going to miss them too."