Chapter 11 - Nightmares

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

—Cormac McCarthy

The shuttle was a freakin' fireworks show again, swallowing everything in its path. Dad's voice, lost in static, warning him about something he couldn't quite catch. Emily was there, reaching across a widening chasm. He saw the terror in her green eyes as the Genesis Platform went up behind her. Then Matteo's face, calling his name from nowhere.

Luca jolted awake. His chest hammered against his ribs and his pajamas clung to him, soaked through with cold sweat. It was every night now, every single night, and the cramped cabin swam around him, too dark, too close, and for a second he couldn't tell dream from ship.

He rolled toward the porthole. Stars against black, cold and distant. The light looked wrong, but everything looked wrong at seven AM on no sleep. He squinted at his watch to confirm. He'd maybe gotten five hours, all of them spent running.

He'd had nightmares before. After those first portal dives, back when all five of them were green and stupid and one bad call away from not coming home. Those faded by morning. These ones followed him out of bed.

By the time Luca walked into the mess hall, most of the crew was already up. They all looked like they'd been dragged out of bed by their ankles, but the noise level said otherwise. Coffee and toast hit him before he'd fully crossed the threshold, and Joey was manning the cooking station, looking suspiciously perky. What was he on?

“Morning, Captain,” Emily said, looking up from her tablet. System diagnostics, probably. Her blonde hair was pulled back tight, fresh uniform, not a wrinkle on her. Meanwhile Luca was pretty sure he had pillow creases on his face. “Sleep well?”

“Better than expected,” he lied, taking the coffee she held out. Dark and strong, exactly what he needed. He slid into the seat next to her and she bumped his shoulder. The contact sent warmth through him that had nothing to do with the coffee. “How's everyone else holding up?”

Ryan caught his eye and gave him this massive, shit-eating grin. "Hey, Rossi! Forget something?"

Luca blinked, brain still lagging. "What?"

Ryan slapped the table, grin widening. "You're twenty, man! You're actually twenty. Birthday in deep space, survived an intergalactic sabotage attempt, the ship almost burning down on us. Not bad for a start to a decade."

Before Luca could reply, Emily joined in, her tone softer but her eyes carrying that dangerous gleam he knew well.

"We remembered," Emily said, shooting Ryan a look. "Though someone ruined my surprise." She slid a piece of toast toward him. Someone had drawn a smiley face on it in jam, and it was the dumbest, most lopsided thing he'd ever seen. "Sorry, my actual present's stuck back on Genesis. Consider this a placeholder. I owe you."

“Hey, my gift's stuck back there too," Ryan protested. "And I'm not letting Em anywhere near it."

Zoe, never one to be left out, raised her coffee in a salute. "Don't worry, Luca, I brought something better." She tossed a small bottle of painkillers onto his tray. "You're gonna want those after Joey's done poking at your bruises."

He smiled before he could stop himself. The ache in his ribs eased for a second. "Thanks, guys. Could be worse ways to turn twenty than breakfast with you idiots."

Chris clapped him on the shoulder on his way past, almost spilling his coffee. "Just remember, Captain, no slacking off now that you're old."

"Med bay's first stop after breakfast," Joey announced, like he was the warden and they were all inmates. "Wanna check everyone over. Make sure yesterday didn't leave any lasting damage."

---

Ryan's "gift stuck back on Genesis" was probably a six-pack he forgot in someone else's fridge. But Emily didn't say things she didn't mean. So now Luca was sitting here chewing toast with jam residue on his fingers, wondering what she got him, and he couldn't even ask because that would make it a whole thing.

He drained his coffee and stood. "Come on, Danny. Let's get this medical clearance done."

The medical bay hit him with antiseptic before he'd cleared the door. Sharp and chemical enough to make his sinuses tighten. Diagnostic equipment lined the walls and medical pods sat in neat rows, everything untouched. Either whoever trashed their ship ran out of time before they got to medical, or they figured the crew would need it after what they did to everything else. Both options pissed him off.

Joey was already there, somehow. He'd finished breakfast after them, but here he was, changed into medical scrubs, red ponytail pulled back, looking like he'd been waiting for hours.

"Alright," he said, gesturing toward two examination tables with a warm smile. "Let's take a look."

Luca hoisted himself onto the nearest table, wincing as the movement pulled at his ribs.

"Need to check those ribs," Joey said, snapping on gloves. "Shirt off."

Luca unzipped his bodysuit and pulled off his t-shirt.

Joey's hands were gentle but thorough. He pressed carefully along his ribcage, then paused when he found a tender spot. Luca sucked in a sharp breath, and Joey made a note on his tablet.

"Bruised but not broken," he announced after a few minutes. "You're going to be sore for another few days, but nothing that won't heal on its own.”

Joey had been running things since before any of them knew what they were doing. Back in Sandworth, Level 1 through 30, he’d called the shots while the rest of them were still figuring out which end of a weapon to hold. Danny’s older brother, yeah, but the guy who’d kept six teenagers alive through portal dives that should have killed them twice over. His own delving squad dissolved a year back when they hit level 60, and he and Chris had joined the IFC medical team after that, rotating between outposts. Chris was more of an engineer, but Joey’s best friend. They’d crossed paths more than once.

"You know," Luca said as Joey cleaned a nasty cut on his knuckle, "I’m glad you and Chris decided to join us."

Joey looked up. Same look Luca remembered from high school, back when they all thought he had the answers. "Wouldn’t miss it for the world," he said. "Besides, someone needs to keep you lot from getting yourselves killed."

He moved on to Danny. The kid’s ribs had taken less of a beating than Luca’s, but the gash above his eye from the reactor blowout had scabbed over ugly, and he had his own scrapes and bruises from the maintenance tunnels.

Chris wandered in just as Joey finished with Danny, shirtless and glistening in gym shorts, looking like he'd walked off a workout commercial. He had a towel around his neck and a confident grin in place.

“Everything still attached?” he asked, nudging Danny with his foot.

Danny groaned. “Yes, Chris.”

Joey didn’t even look up. “Put a shirt on before you get electrocuted somewhere.”

Chris laughed, then shot Luca a look. “You’re welcome, by the way. I set up all the equipment in the gym. Even sanitized.”

“Truly heroic,” Luca deadpanned. “I’ll nominate you for the Medal of Cleanliness.”

Chris flexed enough to make it look effortless. “All part of the service.”

“Aren’t there other, more critical systems to work on?” Luca asked. “Like calibrating the fusion reactor or something?”

Chris didn’t miss a beat. “Fusion generator’s fine. Ryan’s babysitting it.”

Luca raised an eyebrow. “So naturally, you decided to prioritize dumbbells.”

“They’re not dumb,” he said, mock-offended. “They’re crucial to ship morale. Physical health is directly linked to cognitive performance. Look it up.”

“The System already handles that,” Luca said.

“The System built the house.” Chris shrugged like this was obvious. “You still have to live in it. You think my Strength attribute just holds at sixty while I sit on the couch? System gives you the points. But if you don’t train the muscle behind them, the points don’t deliver. Unearned Strength is theoretical Strength. Show me a guy who never lifts and I’ll show you a sixty that hits like a thirty.”

Joey snorted. “He means he gets cranky if he doesn’t lift.”

"Thanks," Luca said, pulling his shirt back on. "For patching us up."

Joey shrugged. "This is what we signed up for," he said. "Adventure, right? Can't have adventure without a little danger."

---

The rest of the morning blurred together. Luca wanted to check on Zoe on the bridge, but the cargo manifests got to him first, and then his stomach started complaining again. He grabbed something from the galley, scarfed it standing up. By the time he made it down to the science lab, his brain was running on autopilot, and autopilot was telling him to make sure Danny had what he needed.

The door hissed open and Luca stopped. Someone had detonated a cardboard bomb in here. Boxes torn apart, their guts spread across every counter. Cables tangled with diagnostic tablets, equipment mounts sat next to sealed plastic trays, and none of it looked like it belonged where it was. Two crates in the corner read SURVEY ARRAY COMPONENTS in blocky stencil, as if anyone was going to mistake them for flowerpots.

Danny was hunched over a bank of workstations, one foot on a crate, checking each connection against a schematic. He tapped the touchscreen. Ryan stood behind him, wrestling a cable through an overhead panel, occasionally grabbing another tool from the pile by his boots.

They didn't hear him over the ventilation whirr and the click of Ryan's ratchet.

"You guys online yet?" Luca asked. The captain voice. He still had to think about it.

Danny looked up. "Wi-Fi just came on ten minutes ago. We can finally pull the external sensor protocols off the server." He handed Luca one of the tablets. "You might as well help. Pull up the calibration baseline for the outer array."

Shit, that wasn’t the plan.

Luca took the tablet. Cold, dusty, like everything else that had been boxed since launch. He wiped it on his thigh and powered it on. The screen came up on the first try, which he did not trust at all. After yesterday, anything that worked without sparking or screaming at him felt like a trap.

Ryan dropped from the ceiling panel, wiping his hands. "Tied in the last mount point for the rear-facing sensors. If nothing shorts, we're in business."

Luca nodded, forcing himself not to hover. This was Danny's lab, his space. But the importance of it settled somewhere between his shoulder blades. If they couldn't map stars or find safe landing zones, they might as well turn the ship around.

"I'll stay out of your way," Luca said. "Just tell me where I can help."

Danny pointed to the crates. "Open the bottom one. That should be the spectrometer array. We need to get it set up before the diagnostics finish running."

Luca knelt, cut the seal, and flipped the lid back. Foam padding held clamps and bundled wiring in place. Real equipment for real science. Three guys in a cold lab, trying to make sense of the freakin’ stars.

"We’re going to need all of this," Luca said.

Danny didn’t look up. "Yeah," he said. "We know."

Luca held the spectrometer mount steady and watched Danny work. The kid moved fast but never rushed, fingers sure on every connection like he’d done it a hundred times. Joey’s little brother, now their Science Officer. Twenty years old and running circles around half the IFC’s research staff.

Ryan was the opposite. Grease on his arms, sleeves rolled up, half his tools scattered across the deck. He cursed under his breath when something didn’t line up, then fixed it like it had never been a problem. Danny worked like a metronome. Ryan worked like he was trying to beat the clock. Luca’d known them both since kindergarten, maybe earlier.

He wasn’t sure when Zoe and Emily had joined their circle. Ryan swore it was that fifth-grade Christmas dance. Danny insisted it was the Halloween party at the O’Malley farm. For Luca, it felt like they were just there one day, and then every day after.

Now they were out here with Alpha Centauri in their sights and The Triumph of Darron under their boots. And somehow, this lab was coming together.

Danny tightened the last clamp on the spectrometer mount and stepped back, checking the alignment. Luca let go and wiped his hands on his pants. Danny didn't need him anymore.

"Alright," Luca said, stepping back. "I'll go check on the comms system. Let me know when the data's flowing."

Danny gave a short nod. "Will do."

Ryan tossed him a small salute, grease-smudged fingers and all. "Thanks for the extra hands, Captain."

The comms console chirped, the familiar tone of an incoming transmission cutting through the lab noise.

It was a priority channel.

The Genesis Platform was calling.