“Zach, why weren’t you at the ceremony?”
The man was hardly visible, half of his body underneath the small craft that had been his hobby for months now.
The man stopped his work as Brooks spoke, but did not come out. There was a long stretch of silence, and Ian knew his friend was having a harder time than he let on.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Urle replied finally, sliding out from under the craft. “I thought it was only a request, not an order.”
“It was just a request, I was just surprised,” Brooks said. “And we can drop rank.”
“I’d prefer to keep my head professional right now, if it’s all the same to you, sir.”
Brooks couldn’t say he liked that, but he nodded anyway. It was hard to be the direct superior to someone you considered a close friend.
“I just wanted to check in on you,” Brooks noted.
Oil was on Urle’s uniform, he saw. He did a double-take as he realized the man wasn’t even wearing work clothes; he was actually in his dress uniform.
Brooks pulled over a stool and sat down.
“I’m fine, Captain,” his first mate replied. “I’m just taking care of some minor upgrades here, and then I’m going to do a full self-diagnostic on my personal upgrades before we reach MS-29-“
“That’s not really what I meant. Urle, why are you in your dress suit?”
The man froze a moment, then looked down at himself. “Ah, well, I guess I got side-tracked a bit and put this on before I decided to get some work done instead of going to the ceremony.”
Urle could be forgetful of details, but this was extreme.
And he had an idea what might be bothering his friend so much.
“How did it go telling Hannah and Persis where we were going?” Brooks asked.
“Well,” Urle said. “It was a surprise to them. I mean, to me too, but that’s okay.”
“Were their reactions negative?”
“Persis is kind of excited, I think. But Hannah . . . was mostly quiet. And then today in class she threw a shoe at someone.”
“Threw her shoe?”
“A shoe. It wasn’t actually hers. Or she brought an extra shoe with her, I’m not sure,” Urle grunted.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No, she . . . missed the other kid, thankfully. But I had a long talk with her.”
Urle got up, a frustrated energy in him lending his movements a jerky stiffness. He moved to look at the engine part – Brooks honestly did not know what it was – peering down into a pipe.
“She’s never thrown a shoe before! She’s never thrown anything at anyone before.”
“It sounds like she’s having a hard time,” Brooks said carefully.
“Yeah, she told me that she feels angry but she’s not sure why or even at who,” Urle said, his voice distracted as he still analyzed the part before him.
Brooks knew that technical obsession was a part of how his friend avoided his own feelings.
“I think it might be good for them if you took some time off,” Brooks said.
Urle nodded softly. “Yeah. Yeah, that might be a good idea.”
“I think it’d be good for you, too,” Brooks added gently.
His friend didn’t reply this time, just staring down into the pipe. Then, without a word, he pulled it off.
It wasn’t something that anyone should have been able to just pull off. It was attached securely, and yet Zach ripped it off with the ease of a man ripping paper.
It was easy to forget just how much of him was enhanced, and to what degree.
For a moment, even Urle seemed shocked by his action. “I . . . that needs to be replaced,” he muttered.
“Zach,” Brooks said firmly, standing. “Take the time, all right?”
“I’d prefer to keep doing my duty,” the man said. “I can take care of the girls and still do my job.”
“I believe you, but I think it’d be a good idea to take the time to be with them. They’ll appreciate it.”
Zach said nothing, his eyes downcast towards the empty hole he’d just ripped in the engine.
“Don’t make me have to make it an order,” Brooks said, regret creasing his face.
“All right, Captain. I’ll take . . . a few days off. But I want to stay on-duty until we arrive. I want to be in the greeting party when we go over to the station.”
Zach looked over at him, and Brooks could see the need in his friend’s eyes. It wasn’t a request Brooks wanted to turn down.
“That’s fine,” Brooks told him. “After that you’ll go off active duty.”
Zach’s eyes went back down, not even to the engine, just . . . down. “All right. Thank you, Ian.”
Other Terrestrial 