The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers #4)(76)

She hung by her wrists as the meal cooked, soothing her stiff body with the pull of gravity. She closed her eyes and thought of nothing.

Ten minutes later, the timer chimed. She began the careful process of transferring the scalding meal into a bowl, and was successfully not making a mess when the comms panel played an alert. There was an incoming call.

‘Stars,’ she muttered as a glob of sauce splattered on the floor. Of course. Of course this was when something went wrong. She should’ve just grabbed the protein bars and gone straight back. She gestured at a wall vox, accepting the call. ‘I’ll be right there,’ she said loudly, pouring the hash back into the pot. She could reheat it later. ‘Is everything—’

‘Speaker? Irek ie?’

Speaker froze, and it felt like Gora stopped spinning right along with her. It wasn’t Roveg or Ouloo calling.

It was Tracker.

Speaker was in the shuttle cockpit so fast she barely registered swinging her way there. But oh, oh, there she was – there was Tracker, on screen and breathing and beautiful. Speaker didn’t sit in the hammock. She climbed right up on the control panel, pressing her hands against the edges of the screen, feeling as though half her weight had been cut clean away. ‘Are you all right?’ she cried in Ihreet. She was too loud. She didn’t care.

‘I – yes, yes, of course, I’m—’ Tracker sputtered. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Speaker said hurriedly, ‘but are you well? Have you taken your medicine?’

‘My – what?’ Tracker said. She was shouting, incredulous. ‘Who cares about that?’

‘I – I care, you were having such a bad day when I left, and—’

‘Speaker, you’ve been stuck on a planet alone. Alone! For days! And you want to ask me about my fucking medicine?’

Both sisters stared, realising in real-time that neither had considered the possibility of the other worrying about them. Baffled and exhausted, they did the only thing that made sense:

They laughed.

‘So did you?’ Speaker said, holding her forehead in one hand. ‘Did you take your medicine?’

‘Yes, sweetheart. I did. I’m fine. I’d forgotten all about having a bad day. That feels like standards ago. Are you—’

‘I’m fine. Perfectly fine.’

‘Have you had enough to eat? I couldn’t remember when the last time was that we stocked the shuttle.’

‘Yes, I’m well fed, don’t worry.’

‘And it’s friendly there?’

‘Yes, very friendly. There’s been no trouble.’

‘Shit.’ Tracker rubbed the sides of her face with her palms, as if trying to rid herself of a headache. ‘I kept picturing you and some – I don’t know, some gang of alien bastards fucking with the shuttle, or hurting you, or – I know how stupid this sounds, but stars, I was scared.’

‘It’s not stupid,’ Speaker said. She placed her fingers over Tracker’s face, pretending she could hold her close the way she wanted to. ‘I pictured—’ She shut her eyes. ‘I don’t want to say.’

Tracker clicked her beak reassuringly, the way she did when Speaker awoke from a nightmare or had an upsetting day. ‘We’re okay.’

‘Yes,’ Speaker said. She pressed her hand against the screen, hard. ‘We’re okay.’ She paused, remembering the context of what she’d been doing in the shuttle in the first place. ‘But somebody here isn’t. I—’ Stars, where to begin with summarising the who and what and how? ‘I don’t have time to explain. There’s a kid in trouble. Medical trouble. I need to get back there, I just needed food.’

‘Holy shit. Okay. What—’

Speaker’s eyes widened, and she cut Tracker off. ‘You have comms. Tracker, you have comms.’

‘Well, yeah, I – Oh. Of course, you don’t know. Comms up here are fine, we just haven’t been able to contact anybody planetside. Signal traffic has been a clusterfuck since the temporary satellites were deployed, but I made some tweaks and was able to punch through.’

Never in Speaker’s life had she wanted to hug her brilliant sister’s head so hard. ‘You can contact the TA orbiter?’

‘Uh, yeah, absolutely, I—’

‘I need to you to flag emergency services. We haven’t been able to get a signal through.’

Tracker immediately got to work, punching commands into her control panel. ‘Stars, you’re gonna make me speak Klip. What are the details?’

‘Laru child. Age seventeen. Went into olotohen after asphyxiating—’

‘Went into what?’

‘It’s like a coma.’

‘Do you seriously think I know how to say coma? Or fucking asphyxiating?’

‘Just tell them there’s a Laru child who needs a doctor, and give them the coordinates. Can you say that?’

‘Uh – yeah. Yeah, I think so. I can say Laru and need doctor, at least. What’s child?’

‘Breggan.’

‘Breggan,’ Tracker repeated in her thick accent. ‘Ugh. Okay, you go help, I’ll call.’

‘Tracker?’

‘Yeah?’