Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Huh.” Looking down at the blood on the floor gave Vicks a familiar feeling, which should not be surprising. When you stuffed hundreds of rowdy fighters into one level without much else to do, somebody was inevitably going to bleed. But it wasn’t supposed to happen here in this room.

“I don’t like this,” he said after a moment.

“You don’t have to like it, you just have to do your job,” Vetch said from behind him, shoving the dolly with its one massive crate toward the corner. He didn’t have big bulging muscles like some of the fighters, but he was tough as a kevlar kebab.

Vicks hummed by way of agreement. He pulled a rag from his pocket and stooped down to wipe up the blood. He could hear Vetch pause behind him, watching. The blood was proof that someone else had been in here. But who? And why? 

He could tell Vetch didn’t want him to follow those questions, so he let them be, for the moment at least. They unloaded the dolly in a corner, and left the echoing emptiness of C-108 to devour its cubical morsel.

—

Their job wasn’t important or exciting or even that interesting, but Vicks didn’t need it to be. He had a roof over his head and regular meals and clean clothes, and he didn’t have to worry about anybody messing with him or pressuring him into anything. It was true that since they were on a battleship, there was a nonzero chance of being blown up or captured by Terons, but Vetch had told him not to worry about that, and there was something so absolute in his tone that Vicks had immediately obeyed. Sometimes he even forgot they were in a war. It wasn’t like the ones they had planetside, where the battles raged in and around people’s homes, shaking the ground beneath the buildings until they crumbled and fell in; out here, battles were rare, and they happened a ways off in the empty space outside the ship, and it was someone else’s job to deal with it. You couldn’t hear them, you couldn’t feel them, and you couldn’t see them unless you happened to be looking out a window at the time.

Their daily routine was comforting, and working for Vetch had its perks. He obviously had some kind of side business, because he received frequent payments, almost always in the form of consumable goods. Vicks felt stupid, because for the life of him he could not figure out what Vetch gave back in return, and he had never worked up the nerve to ask. He hoped it wasn’t drugs or illegal mods. They did move a lot of unlabeled boxes around…

Sometimes the payments were left outside their door. Sometimes in the furthest corner of the engine room. And, most regularly, at a little table in the kitchen. The table always contained a few delicacies of the type only navigators or even commanders usually enjoyed: fresh berries and herbs from the hydroponic kitchen garden, dried fruit, vatmeat jerky, sausage, pickled eggs, vodka, candy, cannabis, and, once in a while, precious fragments of real goat cheese. 

Vicks was allowed to eat, drink, or smoke as much of the payments as he wanted, which in the case of the vodka meant none at all. He'd heard alcohol was an acquired taste, and it was one that didn’t seem worth acquiring. He’d had exactly one drink in his life, and every time he inhaled the fumes from an open bottle or glass, the ghost of that first drink burned the back of his tongue and poured like cold white fire into his lungs. Sometimes just seeing a bottle was enough to make him taste metal.

Sometimes Vetch would send him into the kitchen to pick up the payments while he fixed one of the machines in the mess hall. Vicks tried to be as inconspicuous about it as possible. He lived in fear that some day one of the cooks would challenge him, unlikely as that was. Everyone knew he was Vetch’s boy, and everyone knew that Vetch was someone you didn’t cross, although what that actually meant was unclear to him. Luckily, the kitchen staff made it easy, never staring or calling attention to him. In fact, most of the crew completely ignored him, which was a relief considering how rough the fighters and guards and even some of the maintenance guys were. 

There was one fighter who sometimes stared at him, a small pale-eyed one who hid in corners and crept silently along the walls when not in the company of his larger, louder friend. He never spoke, and he never came close. His expression was hard to read, but he didn’t seem unfriendly. Vicks sometimes smiled at him, but only for a moment, because he knew he wasn’t supposed to bother the fighters and navigators. It would have been nice to have a friend his own age, though. He had Vetch, but Vetch was his boss so it wasn’t the same.

They kept pretty busy, though, so there wouldn’t have been a lot of time for a friend. They had to walk around the ship all day checking for and cleaning up spills, testing the equipment for malfunction or damage, inspecting the algae vats and bug pens and hydroponic garden, replenishing supplies, putting away anything that had been left out, and sometimes rearranging furniture or crates that were in the wrong places or configurations. It took all day and most of the evening to make their rounds, and afterwards they would usually grab a late supper and retire to their room to watch a little tv before bed. Vetch complained about and heckled the shows they watched no matter who had chosen them, which seemed to be a major element of the fun for him. If Vicks commented, thought, Vetch usually shushed him.

On Earth tv shows, everyone had their own room and often their own apartment—sometimes even a whole house to themselves! Vicks sometimes imagined what it would be like to have his own room to decorate and be alone in, and his own tv to watch without someone else arguing or making comments, but he’d never had one, so it was hard to think what he might do with it. His life before the ship was just a blur of rundown, overcrowded nooks and crannies, never long in the same place, never long with the same people.

All he’d brought to their room on the Sleipnir was his blanket, a soft homemade patchwork quilt in shades of rust, red, and gold. Each square was made of a different patterned fabric, and had a different kind of leaf embroidered on it. It was stupid, he knew, but it felt like home to him. Like this one blanket was his real home. 

The one wall in their room that wasn’t covered up by shelving or didn’t have the couch against it was scattered with dozens of printouts, mostly color photographs of landscapes or cities on Earth. It was hard to imagine coarse, burly Vetch walking around on Earth, even though Vicks had never been there and also knew intellectually that not all Earth people were rich and blond and fancy. Hanging exactly in the middle, right over the tv screen, was something that wasn’t a printout: a real cross-stitch sampler in a frame, embroidered with a picture of a cozy cottage nestled inside a border of geometric designs that suggested flowers and birds. It read in large ornate letters: DOM SWEET DOM. 

“Dom?” he’d asked once he’d finally worked up the nerve. “Like…Domingo? Or…dominant?”

Vetch sighed dramatically. “No, дом. Like the English word dome. It means home. Don’t you know Russian?”

“Of course, but it’s in English letters.”

“It’s a pun. Home Sweet Home, but in Russian.”

Vicks frowned. “Part of it is in English, though.”

“Don’t they have humor on the Colonies? Never mind, don’t answer that. You wouldn’t know funny if it bit you in the butt.”

“I don’t think something biting me in the butt would be funny.” 

“You sure?”

Vicks thought about it, and smiled. Although he still had a hard time imagining being bitten by a word. The F would have to flip around so its jaws faced outward, and the Y could lash its tail like a stalking cat. But if it were in position to bite him, its thin side would be facing him and he wouldn’t be able to read it like you normally do, even if he turned around to look. So he really wouldn’t know it was the word ‘funny’ that was biting him. That was definitely funny.

“Who made it?” he asked.

“Kiki. My wife.”

“You have a wife?”

“I did, once. Mean old witch. She was a good cook, though. She would never have turned out the slop they serve here.”

“What happened?” 

“She left me for some troll. And my daughter grew up and moved out. She went to agricultural college, so she can chase boys all over the fields in the middle of the day instead of staying inside where it’s nice and cool. Imagine going to school just to work on a farm!”

“I don’t know what working on a farm is like. Is it bad?”

“It’s hard work. There’s nothing wrong with it, if things are going well, but you don’t need to go to school for it. Anyway, they both up and left, and the rest of the family scattered when our apartment building got knocked down. The whole neighborhood was getting too depressing, so I was thinking of moving, maybe even to the colonies. You might not expect it, but there are more people out in the colonies who respect tradition, even if they’re living far from home on a barren rock out in space. Maybe because of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re surrounded by complete emptiness—nothing growing or living around you, everything hard and cold and flat, no blue sky or warm sun, no changing of the seasons to mark the passage of time—that’s when you really need something to hold onto. A lot of people turn to drugs or sex or games, but they don’t last. There’s only thing that lasts, one thing that connects family with strangers, friends with enemies, and the dead with the living. Tradition. And they know it.” 

“You think living on Mars is like that?”

“Isn’t it? I’ve been there. Spraying a few greenhouse gases doesn’t make a lump of rock into a real living planet. It’s like misting a department store mannequin with perfume and calling it Mom.”

“I don’t know, I guess I’m just used to it.” 

There was a slight rustle as Vetch turned toward him. “I guess that’s why you’re here.”

The tv was making noises that meant nothing. He could feel Vetch’s eyes on him, burning his skin with their caustic blend of pity and judgment. He needed sunblock. He needed a wall. He needed to leave the room, but the whole ship was a room, every bit of it was Vetch’s territory. 

“Your quilt,” Vetch said after far too long.

“What?”

“What does your quilt have pictures of? Rocks? Buildings? Space dust?”

“No. Leaves. You know that.” Vicks wrapped the blanket around himself. He slept with it on the bed, of course, but he also liked to bring it to the couch and curl up under it when they watched tv.

“That’s right. Leaves, from trees and other plants. Living things, that connect you to the earth your people came from, and the knowledge they had about it. Even the way it was made connects you to your ancestors on Earth. Someone sewed it by hand, when they could have just bought it or printed the design or used a sewing machine. Someone cared enough to do it the old way, which means they spent time on it. They put a chunk of their time, their energy, and their life force into that quilt. That gets passed on to you. That square there—” he pointed, “—is made of cotton. That’s from the flower of the cotton plant. No one’s figured out how to grow that on Mars yet. And that square there, the faded red one, that’s a blend that’s part silk. You know what silk is?”

“A kind of cloth.”

“Yeah, but do you know what it’s made of?”

Vicks closed his eyes, thinking. “I read something about it, but it sounds crazy.”  

“Crazy, but true. It comes out of a worm’s butt.”

He snorted.

“It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s part of their cocoon. They build it around themselves when they’re ready to change into a moth. So in this quilt you have real plant and animal materials from Earth, and you also have the skill and knowledge that went into making it. Those things connect you to Earth and your ancestors, and they increase your power and knowledge. All because of tradition. I know you kids think tradition is just a word for the dumb things that old people do, but—”

“They boil the worms,” Vicks said suddenly.

“What?”

“They boil them alive. I remember now. I read an article about it.”

“Yeah. That’s so they don’t chew through the cocoons to get out. They’re just bugs.”

“They’re just trying to grow up.”

Vetch sighed. “Are you a vegan now? You wanna switch out your quilt for one of those gray paper towels they call a standard issue military blanket? We could go get you one.”

“No!” 

“Ha! Neither would I. Neither would a dog. We owe a lot to tradition, and people here know it.”

Vicks huffed through his nostrils, and wrapped himself even tighter. Boil this, abuelo. “So why are you here, then? You hate Mars, and living in outer space isn’t traditional.”

“I didn’t say everyone has to stay in the same place and do the same thing all their lives. But there have to be rules, and people can’t just keep changing them or breaking them whenever they feel like it. Otherwise people would be…I don’t know, coming around to steal your fancy blanket. And all the jerky,” he added pointedly as Vicks triumphantly snagged the last whole piece, leaving him with a pile of teriyaki meat crumbs. “But anyway, like I said, things were breaking down back home and I knew there were people on Mars who hadn’t forgotten who they were. So I went to go check it out, and while I was there, I got an offer to come work here on the ship.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Sure. It’s a decent place. Nice and roomy. Busy. The people are respectful, even if the fighters are slobs. And you’re a good kid.”

Had anyone had ever called him a good kid before? He couldn’t remember anyone paying him enough attention to tell him what they thought of him. 

That question settled, Vicks tried to decide if he liked being told this. It gave him a mild warm feeling, and he knew Vetch meant well, but it was also a little patronizing. He wasn’t a kid anymore. If he were, they wouldn’t have given him this job. Then again, Vetch was his boss and was a lot older, or at least acted a lot older, so it was probably natural of him to call Vicks a kid and think he had the right to pronounce judgment on the quality and morality of his entire personal being. What would he call Vetch if he wanted to return the favor? A good old man? 

“What are you giggling about now?”

He decided he liked it about 75%.

Later, just before he drifted off, it occurred to him that Vetch’s wife had embroidered a Russian word onto the sampler, which probably meant that she knew Russian and Vetch knew Russian and that Russian was important enough to them both to put in a Russian word instead of just saying “home sweet home” like most people would if they spoke English…but “Vetch” and “Kiki” didn’t sound like Russian names. At least he’d never met or heard of any Russian people with those names.

Maybe they were nicknames, or names they used with non-Russian speakers that they thought would be easier to pronounce. He thought about asking Vetch about it, but it would probably sound rude. He’d been rude enough tonight—he didn’t need to add to it. 

Chapter Text

“Blood,” Vicks said. “Again.” It couldn’t possibly be an accident this time. It wasn’t just a spot or a splatter or a streak. Someone had used it to paint a symbol on the door.

Vetch shot him a sideways glance, then leaned in and sniffed at it. “It’s from the meat vat. Just clean it up.”

“But why—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But it keeps showing up more and more often, in more and more places. This is the fourth time we’ve found some today. Blood in the hall. Blood on the wall. Blood on the floor. Blood on the door.” It was like a poem.

Vetch sighed. “It’s just a custom, okay? It’s one of those things the crew do sometimes to bring good luck.”

“How does putting blood on things bring good luck?” It certainly wasn’t good luck for him. He had to clean it up!

Vetch regarded him for a long moment, then turned back to the boxes he was rearranging. “It’s bad luck to talk about it.”

Now it was Vicks’ turn to sigh. If Vetch could get all worked up about Commander Pascal and Commander Descartes retiring from active duty and moving to desk jobs on Earth, which was a perfectly normal thing and probably nice for them because they got to see their families, then Vicks thought he should be allowed to feel disturbed about finding occult symbols painted in blood around the ship. Even if it was normal where Vetch came from, it still felt like the beginning of a horror movie.

If you asked Vetch, it was the beginning of a horror movie. He didn’t like it when anyone left the ship for good—he even fretted when they went off on shore leave—but even worse was new people coming in, people who had no idea how things were run and who wanted to change everything.

It was Vicks’ first regime change so he had nothing to compare it to, but he had to admit that the new commanders were switching up a lot of things. Everything from the environmental settings to the duty roster to the brand of floor cleaner. They’d even replaced some of the staff—the entire guard, most of admin, some of the techs, and some of medical. None of these were people that Vicks or Vetch spent much time with, but Vetch said that wasn’t the point.

Come to think of it, maybe he was right in a way. A blood symbol was just a symbol, but taking people away forever...wasn’t that what the monster did in a horror movie?

On the other hand, that was an extreme way to look at it. It wasn't murder, it was just soldiers getting transferred back to base or to another ship, and if you were actually friends with them you could email each other when you were within range, and maybe try to get assigned together later.

Vicks’ opinion, all considered, was that Pascal and Descartes had been like worn-out sneakers that you barely notice on your feet, whereas Cook and Bering were tight, squeaky new loafers that might give you blisters at first but just needed some breaking in to get comfy.

“Cook!” Vetch snorted. “If only he was a cook. Then he’d listen to the other cooks. Some things are not command’s business, and they should know that. Descartes knew that. You open something up and start poking and prodding without knowing exactly what you’re doing, you’re gonna break it.”

It was hard to argue with that. Especially when they went to the mess hall to pick up the weekly kitchen payment and found Commander Bering in the process of confiscating it. Vicks stifled a wail as his precious jerky AND a particularly sweet-looking bag of buds disappeared into the commander’s greedy pockets. Metaphorically speaking. His uniform didn’t actually have pockets.

“You just leave this stuff lying out on a table? Some of this is contraband. You boys must be rich—maybe we’re paying you too much.”

Vicks tried his best to melt into the wall, hoping that the commander wouldn’t connect his awkwardly alien presence to the contraband.

Luckily, his natural lack of charisma worked in his favor again; Bering strode past him, fixing his gaze on a white-robed figure in the other corner. “But I misspoke—we’re not all boys here. Who’s this lovely lady?”

Backs stiffened all over the kitchen. Fingers closed a little harder around the handles of paring knives, and one cook stepped in front of her, blocking her with his body but never taking his eyes off Bering.

The head cook caught up to the commander and waved the other cook away. “That’s...ahem. Officer Morena, sir.”

Technically Vicks knew that most battleships didn’t have a woman who sat in a corner of the kitchen staring through the walls into space and never speaking, but he was so used to her he’d almost forgotten she was there, and if he’d thought about it, he would have just assumed she was someone’s family member that couldn’t be left at home alone.

“She’s a little pale for a morena,” Bering quipped, and somebody actually hissed. “Well, what’s she doing here? The Sleipnir is men only. And I don’t remember anyone by that name on the roster.”

Glances ricocheted across the room like ping pong balls.

“Is she always like this, or did she take something?”

The head cook cleared his throat as if he could somehow expel Bering through the power of polite indignation. “Morena was a computer tech on one of the scout ships, sir. They encountered an abandoned alien ship. She was part of the team they sent to board it, and she came back like this. Officially it never happened, so they couldn’t send her home to her relatives, and she obviously can’t perform her old duties. So they posted her here, and we take care of her.”

“She doesn’t speak? Does she interact at all? Is she aware of what’s going on?”

“Sir, you can find full reports on her condition in the medbay, as well as reports on her care and physical therapy. We take her there once a month to be examined.”

“Why isn’t she staying in medbay?”

“There is nothing medically wrong with her, sir. All of us agree that the kitchens are the most stable environment on the ship, and that as the department with the lowest personnel turnaround, we can provide experience and consistency as well as dedication.”

“You certainly seem dedicated. Is she related to someone here?”

The head cook hesitated. “Not technically. We...share the same faith.”

Bering lifted an eyebrow. “What, Catholicism? That’s ridiculous. This is a battleship, not a nursing home. She’s a distraction to you and I’m not convinced she’s safe here.”

The head cook’s face turned a livid shade of purple. “I can assure you, sir, that no man here would dare try to disrespect Marzanna.”

“I thought you said her name was Morena?”

“It is.”

“Is that her first name, then? I guess it doesn’t matter. We’ll transfer her to a veteran’s hospital the next time we get back to port. Make a note of it,” he told the aide trailing behind him, and they swept out.

The room fell as silent as Morena.

The cooks glanced at her placid, empty face, and inhaled as one. Mouths grimly set, they went about their usual work.

“For a moment there I thought they were going to make soup out of him,” remarked Vetch, wandering over to the table to scoop up the few dainties that Bering had left behind. “Too bad.”

“Is she going to be okay in a hospital?” Vicks asked. He’d only been in one once that he could remember, and the experience had not been pleasant.

“Oh, they’ll just hide her for a while until they figure out his schedule. Morena in a hospital,” he scoffed. “The nerve. Someone should teach him a lesson.”

What kind of soup could you make out of Commander Bering, Vicks wondered. It would have to be something with strong aromatics like fresh rosemary or sage; he smelled kind of musty. But of course no one would make soup out of a person...would they?

—

Vetch hadn’t been kidding. They dropped their entire day’s schedule and followed Bering around the ship at a discreet distance, watching as he pulled down harmless decorations, confiscated personal items, and told people to rearrange things that were already working perfectly well. It would never have occurred to Vicks to take Bering’s behavior personally—he figured it was natural for a new commander to mark territory and establish dominance—but Vetch’s indignation was infectious, and it was hard to stay chill when you saw a fighter dissolving into tears as Bering snatched away the little hand-woven rug that was all he had left of his grandmother.

Vetch told Vicks to load up on coffee and energy drinks when they went to the mess hall, because they would be switching to the night shift. Not that this really meant much on a spaceship, of course...just dimmer lights and fewer people around. Vicks asked if they would get in trouble if anyone noticed they weren’t around during the day, and immediately felt stupid when Vetch gave him a look and told him not to worry about it.

“No one cares as long as we get our work done. And if someone does...they can have a talk with me.” He let out a merciless chuckle, and Vicks suppressed a shiver.

The first thing they did was stop by the kitchens, for a small basting brush and a container with a lid, and the second stop was the meat vats, where they filled the container with blood, or whatever that liquid in the meat was that looked like blood. Vicks did not like to even look at the meat vats, because once you started it was hard to look away, and then you couldn’t get them out of your mind and they just hung there in front of your eyes all day, pulsing, so he just stayed in the hall while Vetch went in with a knife. He turned the music in his headphones up high so he wouldn’t have to hear any of the noises.

They got an empty crate and a dolly, and headed off to Bering’s office.

Vetch opened up the desk drawer and the supply closet and told Vicks to load up all the stuff that Bering had confiscated. He then took out the container of blood and began to paint a sinister-looking symbol on the wall with the basting brush.

“It was you all along?!”

“What was me?”

“It was you painting those things on the walls around the ship!”

“No, I just got the idea from them. You’re always with me—when would I have time to do it without you seeing me?”

“I don’t know...when I’m in the shower? When I’m asleep?”

“That’s when I’m also in the shower or asleep.”

This was true. Vetch’s snoring was like a white noise machine to him at this point; when it stopped, it was shocking enough to wake him up. “I don’t know...when I’m in the bathroom?”

“You think I run out to the meat vats, tap some blood, run all over the ship painting runes or whatever, and run all the way back, all while you’re sitting on the can? I don’t think you’re that constipated.”

Vicks snorted. When you put it that way, no, he wasn’t. He did play games on his phone sometimes, but not for that long.

“What does it mean?” he ventured after a moment.

“Nothing, it just looks scary. You can do one over the desk if you want. Just keep it simple.”

Vicks thought for a moment, then painted a heart, carefully squishing the brush at the bottom point to make a little dribble. After a moment he added a smiley face in the middle.

Vetch burst out laughing. “Perfect! He’ll think a serial killer has a crush on him.”

Next, Vetch sat down at Bering’s desk and opened his laptop. Vicks usually spaced out and listened to music when Vetch worked on a computer, but this time he was curious enough to hang around and watch. First, Vetch deleted all Bering’s saved custom settings and layouts and restored everything to the factory default. Then he deleted all the commander’s personal media files— books, games, movies, music...everything.

Vicks gaped.

“He can get it all back,” Vetch sighed. “Commanders have a free all-access pass to the Alliance media commissary. It’ll just take him time to download it all again, if he even remembers what he had.”

He did have an awful lot, Vicks had to admit.

When he was done, Vetch opened the now-empty top drawer and dumped the remaining blood into it. “That’ll be a fun surprise when he opens it. He’ll have just cleaned all the blood off the walls, or made someone else do it, more likely. He’ll think that’s it and he can relax now, and he’ll sit down and—”

“Slosh,” said Vicks.

“That’s right. You gotta hit home. Hit ‘em right where they live.”

“Does he live at his desk?”

“You know what I mean.” Vetch very slowly closed the drawer—slosh!—then stood up, turned around, and shook the brush delicately over the seat of the chair until a few drops of blood fell. “He won’t notice this in the middle of everything else that's going on, but someone else is bound to, and then everyone on the ship will be talking about how Bering is on his period.”

“Wow,” said Vicks. “You’re scary.”

He bared his teeth. “Thanks. Now let’s put all this stuff back where it belongs.”