Shank leaned closer, resting his forehead against the side of her head. “If you didn’t react, I would worry that you were a sociopath. You aren’t used to this world, not like Ben and I are.”
“And that’s an excuse?” Allie took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, but she still felt like she was on the edge of hysterical crying.
“What’s the first death you can really remember? The first time you really grieved?”
Allie lowered her hands and looked at Shank. “I feel horrible, and your solution is to make me feel worse?”
“Humor me,” Shank said.
Unfortunately Allie’s mind had already conjured the image. She remembered long legs, bloodied and tangled, and the short, dying gasps. “My mother was an engineer; she never had been part of our lives. But when I was ten, she sent this big check, and my father said I could get whatever I wanted. I asked my dad to buy a foal from the neighbor. He raised beautiful Arabian horses, and my dad contracted to buy one of the unborn foals. She died,” Allie said, cutting the story short. The truth included countless nights of sitting in the mare’s stall as she imagined all the wonderful things she would do with her horse. When the vet hadn’t shown up in time and the birthing had gone badly, Allie had watched that foal struggle to breathe, her wet breaths and shaking, twisted limbs slowly failing.
The silence drifted between them, and Shank ran his hand up and down her arm for some time before offering his own story. “I was eight when a nonfamily ship attacked ours. It knocked us off the hyperspace thread, and I honestly don’t know how the nav managed to keep the bubble in place long enough for us to tumble out into normal space. I do know that nearly every control circuit in the power room was fried. My uncle climbed down into the lower access to fix it, but the other ship came after us. The second he got the generator up, we had to go to full power to raise shields.”
“Oh God.” Allie felt nauseated. “Your mother didn’t give him time to get out?”
“My grandfather was captain then,” Shank corrected her. “And no. I adored Uncle Sunka, and when I found out, I spent days crying. I told my grandfather I hated him. My family still talks about my ability to hold a grudge because I refused to look at him for three years. Trust me. Your reaction isn’t anywhere near as ridiculous as mine.”
“But you were ten.”
“And I was raised knowing that sometimes you sacrificed a family member to save the rest. I’m not dealing better, and Ben’s not dealing with this better. We just got to this particular finish line a long time before you, and that’s not something to be proud of. Part of me still hates my grandfather, and I know he had to do what he did. If he hadn’t brought the shields up, the other ship’s weapons would have torn through us. Maybe Uncle Sunka would have survived in one of the life pods, maybe not. But he would have watched hundreds of his family die, and I know he wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“It’s still not fair.”
“No,” Shank agreed, “it isn’t.”
Allie stared at the wall, her emotions all knotted up inside. She didn’t want to lose Ben, but she understood Shank’s logic. She wanted to be the strong emotional rock the others could rely on, but she just couldn’t. She hurt.
Shank held her, their soft breaths the only sound.
“How can you see me as strong when I keep fucking up and crying?”
“First, you haven’t cried yet, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Shank said, “and second, I don’t confuse unemotional with strong. I made that mistake when I was seventeen, and I’m not going to make it again now that I’m older. You’re stronger than most people I know.”
“Right.” Allie gave a rough laugh.
“You’ve piloted us through things we shouldn’t have survived.”
“That’s smart with numbers, not strong.”
“And you do the right thing, even when you know it will cost you everything. Allie...” Shank hesitated, and Allie looked at him. “The rest of us didn’t have a choice. We were going to be sent into those refugee camps—those death camps—to do things we couldn’t survive. You knew that. But you’re a nav. They would have sent you home.”
Allie snorted. “Right, then I could have turned into Captain Benares, drinking all my guilt away.”
Shank cupped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Lieutenant Haslet was in charge of nav and tech. She isn’t here. Lendra was comm systems. She isn’t here. Mukti was the other nav, and she isn’t here. All the tech people who had a way out of the hell—they all took it. They all saved themselves, all of them except you.”
“You act like I could have walked away.”
“You could have,” Shank said firmly. “The fact that you didn’t is a testament to the strength of your heart. You’re here because you are too strong to walk away from a fight that you know you have the strength to keep fighting. Don’t ever forget that you choose to do things that others don’t have the strength to accomplish. It’s a choice you make, Allie.”
Allie wasn’t so sure about that. She wasn’t the only noncombat person to choose to come along. Copta might not have gone home right away if she’d stayed, but as a logistics person, she didn’t face the same sort of horrors. Unlike the others, she never would have been faced with having to open fire on refugees. Despite that, she had come, so Shank’s argument wasn’t entirely valid. But that was how Shank needed to see her. “And you want us to make the choice to let Ben walk away?” Allie asked.
“I do. If you veto me, I won’t argue the point with you, but I do think it gives the rest of us the best chance, and I agree with Ben that in the long run it will not change his fate. SC is too big for us to hide from if they know where to start looking.”
Allie ran her hand over her face. Her eyes felt hot and itchy. The pain of it made her feel hollow. “It’s Ben’s life, and he needs to make the choice,” Allie said slowly, hating every word that came out of her mouth. “And I detest that because I know he’s going to choose to walk off this ship and into the custody of the SC.”
“The ironic thing is he’s probably right,” Shank pointed out. “His life expectancy just went up. Speaking of life expectancies, we have another problem.”
Allie groaned. “I can’t handle any more problems without risking a major psychological episode,” she warned him.
