17. Annoyance

Phoenix heard the soft knock but didn't say anything, hissing quietly when she heard the door open anyway and Hannah's voice slipped into the sterile quiet of the morning. "Rashiel, hon? You awake?" The same words she asked every morning, and Phoenix gave the same answer she'd been giving for two weeks.

"Nope."

Snorting, the nurse came in holding the breakfast tray. A large dark bag hung over her shoulder, which she slung into a chair without a word before going over to open the curtains. Ashivded's strange blue sky glinted through the glass, and Phoenix turned her head away from the light as another headache started up her temples. Of course, Hannah just flipped on the lighswitch, and yellow-white light flooded the room as Phoenix snarled wordlessly.

"Quit it. You've slept for quite a few more hours than you need, hon, and don' try and pretend otherwise. And eat your breakfast. You barely touched dinner."

"What's in the bag?"

With a sigh and shake of her head, the nurse handed over the little carton of orange juice and reached for the mystery bag. Unzipping it, lips thin, she pulled out a laptop, new and black and shining, and held it out to her patient. "Cap'n Hawes agrees that you oughta have a computer so you can research Fleet, if you like, and keep yourself occupied. He thought the vidscreen might be getting a little dull for you."

But Phoenix didn't take the laptop. She blinked, gaze going from the computer to the nurse and back, and finally shook her head. "The hell?"

Eyebrows creeping up, Hannah elaborated. "The Cap'n bought this for you."

"He—he's givin' it t'me?"

"Yes. Well, I mean, it's not a gift. I imagine the price will be added to your debt. But yes. You did ask for it, after all."

"I—I wasn' bein' serious."

"Well, then, maybe you should think about what you say `fore you say it."

For a second the thin girl struggled to find words, and finally she just reached out, forehead furrowed, and took the laptop from the displeased nurse's hands.

Hannah waited, but her charge didn't say anything else, and so she cleared her throat. When Phoenix didn't even glace up, Hannah reached beneath the girl's chin and tipped her head up, ignoring the snarl and pulling away in time to avoid the girl's furious punch.

"Does the Cap'n get a 'thank you' for that, maybe?"

Green eyes blinked, and she shrugged the question away. "His choice."

"And I will never understand it," Hannah muttered. "And worse, there's more." Waiting until she had Phoenix's attention, the nurse handed over a small packet of paperwork. "This explains your debt to Fleet, and various ways of paying it off. No, listen. The simplest, and the quickest, is for you to simply join up. You'll serve two years of training and four of active duty, and you'll be free. If you try and pay it off, since I'm guessing you don't exactly have this kind of cash lyin' around, it'll be a few times longer than six years. Now, and this is important so listen, you have two months until the year starts at the school, so you have two months to decide. In that time, if you want to not be a cripple, you need PT and regular check-ups, which means you need a safe place to stay. It can be here at the hospital, or it can be in an apartment of your own, but you have to choose one or the other."

Phoenix tossed the papers on the bedstand, not bothering to try stopping them from sliding the floor. "Oh, fuck off. The captain ain't gonna pay for a goddamned apartment. I choose the second payment slick, and I'm outta here."

"You can't walk."

"Sure I can." And it was true, in a manner of speaking. She just couldn't walk more than twenty or so paces, and she had to have a crutch. Only one, since one arm was still frozen in a cast, which made moving even more difficult. But she could walk.

"Okay, well, you can't walk well enough to survive the streets. Ashivded's a nicer town than where you're from but streets are still streets and we've got gangs too. Shush and listen. The Cap'n is willin' to look into apartments for you. Rentin' a place for a couple months, `specially if it's hospital housing, is a lot cheaper than staying in this room."

"Why the hell would the captain look into fuckin' apartments for me?"

"You'll have to ask him that. But there is a condition."

"Of course there is."

"You have to talk to him. No more passing messages through me. Let him come up here, or go down to meet him, whichever, but you have to talk to him."

"No."

"Rashiel," Hannah snapped, nearly at the end of a long tether. "He's done so much for you—you might try bein' grateful."

"He's a fuckin' trayplant barjin!"

"A what?"

"A stranger! What the hell do you want me to do?"

Anger flushed Hannah's face. "Say thank you!" She took a breath, cheeks flaming, and all the mild bedside manners fled. "He saved your life! I'm not sayin' you have to like him or even like Fleet, and I'm not sayin' you oughta enlist, but without him you'd be dead or crippled for life! The least you could do is show a little respect, damn it all to heaven!"

Phoenix went pale. She opened her mouth—and snapped it shut again, hands clenching around the edges of the laptop.

They stared at each other for a tense minute, silence thick in the air, and Phoenix looked away first.

"Thought so. You just think about that, now." Hannah finally murmured, and left the room. Behind her, alone now, Phoenix stared at the door, lips pressed thin, jaw clenched and hands turning to fists in the pale bedding on either side of the computer.

----

When Hannah slid the door open for Andren, Phoenix was standing by the room's small window, as far away from the door as she could get. At his entry she swung around to look, crimson hair swinging on either side of her thin face. She leaned heavily on her crutch, casted arm nestled protectively over still-healing ribs, and to Hannah's trained gaze, pain lined the girl's wary eyes.

Andren nodded a thanks to the nurse and walked in. When Hannah left, she left the door open.

Narrowed green eyes tracked his movement across the room. He stopped just a few steps in, seeing tension coil tighter in her body even with that small intrusion. "Hello. It's good to see you up and around. How's the leg?"

She swallowed, lips thinning, but after the hesitation she just shrugged. "It's fine." And she looked down, away from him, throat working and lips turned down. Andren realized that it was maybe the first time he'd ever seen her back down first. So he didn't say anything, didn't try to break the ensuing pause; and a few breaths later, she lifted her head, eyes going to the wall, flicking over to the bed, and then finally met his gaze for a half-second before flipping away again. "I—um. Damn, um." She cleared her throat, gaze dropping to somewhere near his feet. "Thank you. For—all this."

Surprised, he blinked and tilted his head before he nodded. "You're very welcome. Thank you for seeing me today."

"Don't make it sound like a fuckin' appointment."

"Sorry," he murmured dryly.

The crutch lifted an inch, shifted, came down again. She looked at the floor, then up vaguely in his direction. "I jus' don't get it, is all. Why you're doin' all this."

Ah. He didn't say anything, but he did shift stance to lean against one wall, hands going to his pockets. "Have you read about Magellan yet?"

His question provoked the expected hiss and eye roll. "Course not."

"Well, then." With a sigh, Andren briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. "Magellan is…a flight school for gifted pilots. We train them into effective leaders and lethal spaceborn weapons, and then we pair them up with the best flight technology available. But we're also…small. And our last few pilots haven't been any more effective than the average FleetMil trainee." She snorted, and he nodded. "Exactly. We're low on funding, support, decent applications. The school won't last much more than half a decade if something doesn't change. So I am desperate to sign up good pilots. Me and every other recruiter Magellan has in the field right now."

"Sounds like a personal problem." Her voice was flat and cold, and while he couldn't read the expression in her eyes, it certainly wasn't sympathy.

So he shrugged. "Maybe. Do you care about the war? At all?"

She snorted again and shifted her gaze out the window.

"Is that a no?"

"Damn right that's a no."

"The idea of being made a slave-state to an alien empire doesn't bother you."

"Nope."

"How about the fact that they've killed hundreds of thousands of us without cause?"

She shrugged. "Shit happens. Especially in war, I hear."

"And it doesn't worry you that you might someday join that list."

"Lissen, trayplant." Those green eyes darted to him and held his gaze for a piercing half-second. "Halvekor won' be any worse'n Fleet, far as a gov'ment goes, far as this hellhole of a planet sees. You want sympathy, go to fuckin' Fyrienne."

"Oh, believe me," he murmured, "we have. All right, then. I won't win you over with moral arguments or pleas to your loyalty to the species. But tell me something. Have you seen the planes you'd get to fly?"

Her gaze went from the floor back out the window. "I got an idea. I'm not blind."

"Or the salary of a typical Magellan graduate?"

Without moving, she stiffened visibly.

"Hundred thousand cred annually by your third year out. More if you're a cut above the rest, skill-wise."

And finally, finally, she turned to look at him with something like consideration in her eyes.

Andren allowed himself a breath of hope. He held up a flyer. "Read this. Now, what about a place for you to stay?"

Silent, she shifted unsteadily to face him more fully. One shoulder rose and fell.

"Hospital housing is the best option, I think, if you don't want to stay in this room for three months."

"I'd go fuckin' insane."

"Hospital housing it is. I'll get Hannah to bring you up a list of places. We'll add it all to your debt."

She studied him for a long, long minute before she nodded, just once, and turned away, back to the window. Taking the cue, Andren put the flyer on her bed and slipped out of the room.