The Heartless Void

5: Star Sorrow

Starbuck cradled the mug of coffee against his chest, sat back in his seat and once again, pressed 'play' on the recording. In front of him, the processor struggled into life and thought for a second before the screen moved. Despite all the money that had been poured into her propulsion and mining systems, the old Pequod had still gone years without a refurb. Her owners swore it was classic Nantucket engineering which held her together, but truly, Starbuck knew it was the tinkering her own crew did onboard.

As it was, he'd had no new messages for the past two weeks. Even in these days of superluminal communication, uplink and downlink could be patchy. For some of her journey out and back, the Pequod operated in her own bubble of space, forced through the fabric by her drive that reached FTL speeds. She had travelled almost two light years in a fraction of that time.

Now, Starbuck did not want to think of technicalities. He found comfort in the stored clips in his personal drive. The vision of a room long-left flickered across the display. It was difficult to calculate time when the very physics of it were habitually broken by the Pequod, but Starbuck knew that he had not been there for a long while. Still, he remembered it all: the fresh sheets on the bed, the smell of the hydroponic plants so lovingly tended, the way the moon could be seen passing between the station and the earth. It was not much, but it was infinitely better than staring at the void through his porthole on the Pequod, listening to the clanking of machinery and refineries.

He tried to visualise himself back there again. One day, he prayed, one day.

On the screen, Micah appeared. He sat down at the desk, coffee in hand, like Starbuck trillions of miles away. He smiled, happy, light, fresh-faced from an evening in the community-run pool, no doubt. His dark curls were still slightly damp, skin a little flushed. Sheepishly, he ran his fingers through his hair, a motion which made Starbuck ache.

"I'm sorry for the delay, my love," Micah said. "I've only just got back from the orphanage, so you'll have to forgive me. We've just finalised the paperwork for little Joan, the last kid of the Shadow orphans, and then I had to pick up Tristram from his apprenticeship. His boss says he's learnt the clinker techniques faster than anyone he's ever taught."

Though he'd already heard this ten times, Starbuck still smiled again. His and Micah's adopted fourteen year old, Tristram, was flying in his apprenticeship in the Nantucket shipbuilding industry. Starbuck prayed that was as close as he'd come to being onboard those rigs.

"I'm glad to hear that things are...as normal as they can be up where you are," Micah continued. "I hope as much as you that it will be your last season for this run and you can come home. I still can't believe how far away you are. I should be used to it after ten years, shouldn't I?"

Ten years, Starbuck thought with a stab in his heart. How many of those years of marriage had Starbuck been home with his husband? Not enough. Never enough.

"I shouldn't say things like that, should I? I'm sorry. But it was one of the reasons I made some enquiries today." Micah sighed and sipped at his coffee. The steam rose about his face and briefly touched the camera on the screen, fogging it. He sheepishly wiped it away. His hand still lingering, as if reaching through the digital connection, he continued, "I know we've spoken of it before – you having more to do with the orphanage, rather than just the dividends and shares you get from the oil. If you're still interested, the board were too. They had no qualms about...well, anything. When you come home, we can set up a meeting and discuss it more formally. You know that you have a reputation above and beyond what others could dream of. The oil trawler crews keep this station going."

A reputation. Micah ignored a glaring part of that reputation: Starbuck was not just the first mate of the Pequod. He was not just one of the most successful oil haulers. His career amongst the stars had been blackened irrevocably, no matter what the official trial had concluded. If he joined Micah at a full-time position at the orphanage, he knew he would not be able to shake that off. He had been responsible for so many of those children's places at that institution.