It seemed Pip’s pulse was powerful enough to threaten his starched collar, but Ma still tightened the clasp at his throat. “You ready?” she asked. Her voice was soft, but her hands moved quick and hard as she ever was, brushing imaginary lint off the freshly pressed sleeves of his dress uniform. It had been laid out on his bed when he got back from the gym as if he wouldn’t have known to wear it, otherwise. Crisp and clean against his rumpled blankets. 

Ma did things like that. Soft things, when he wasn’t looking. Sharp things, when he was. 

Pip resisted the urge to loosen the collar.

“Yes,” he said, “Uh-huh.”

“Yes. Leave it at ‘yes.’ Unless you want to add a ‘Captain,’ cadet.”

“… Yes.”

“Ok. Good.” Her hands paused at his lapels a moment before she dropped them again. 

She was already wearing her own dress uniform. The clasps all glinted down her front, polished gold against the command crimson. Her own collar was tight, and he saw her swallow behind it, all of her cool crisp and pale in the dim light of his bedroom. Stark, yet she was the brightest thing there. 

He had, in the last year alone, gotten quite a bit taller than her. Neither of them seemed used to it yet. 

Ma let out a breath, a familiar line of worry making a shadow between her brows. “Look your Teach in the eye when she addresses you, up there. Don’t slouch, don’t–”

“I know. Ma, I know.”

She looked hard at him. 

He straightened. Then looked at her dark eyebrows, the only really soft part of her severe face. The corner of her mouth twitched. “… Uh-huh,” she said then, low and silly and it sounded like him. Pip couldn’t help it; he laughed, startled. Ma shook her head, let out a huff. “Come on, then.”

“You go ahead,” Pip said. She glanced at him but nodded, and left.

He breathed. Waited till the smack of her flats were a quick and distant heartbeat. 

Then, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling, flapped his arms quick and fast, ruffled his own hair, destroying her comb job in a single frantic burst. He shook his head and snapped his fingers. Then again, the friction of them tethering him, bringing him into his own limbs and he could be alive again, be a person, he could be a person for her, because he wanted to, because he needed to.

Pip opened his eyes. Flinched at his reflection in the mirror on the back of the door, all the not-like-hers dark features, chaos compounded on some frantic animal behind his eyes. 

It all welled up. His hand first to his mouth, but then he remembered her face when she’d seen the bite marks before, and he moved to the fat brown bottom of his wrist and ground his teeth on it, sinking to sit on his heels. 

He rocked, biting.

No blood, yet some poison was definitely bled free, when he did that. Some battery acid that dwelled in his brain, something that had to spark before it could leave. It left, though.

He looked again. Calm. 

Rose to his feet. Straightened his shoulders. Fixed his hair, dulled his eyes, and remembered to smile. Not too big–small. Friendly. As if it came naturally.

Followed after her.

***

It’s not that Pip’s Ma was never proud of him.

He had once scored highest in his class during a SkillDemo virtual immersion test, killing no fewer than eight Ophidians — essentially a whole nest — in a single run. She’d nodded once at him, after that. That had been great. She had told him later that he had flinched too much beneath the visor, but whatever. Bright colors and loud noises and inescapable: not great. Nodding: great.

As he rose to greet his Teach and was saluted, he saw Ma in the audience, just on the edge of the crowded atrium. She saluted, too.

Then he remembered he had to salute Teach back, and he saw the exasperation in Ma’s eyes, but whatever. 

“Do you now vow to protect the human souls of this great vessel, who done wandered far?” Teach said, speaking the ceremonial old twang of the Prophet who had come before them.

“I surely do,” Pip responded, a little less twangy, a little too quickly. Always too quickly.

Teach let the salute fall and placed her hand over her chest. She smiled. “Aye,” she said, and then moved on to Layal, the next cadet, leaving him behind: a soldier, now. 

A soldier. Just like Ma.

When it was all said and done and they were all five of them in his class soldiers and the families had burst forward, mingling with their cadets, Ma stepped close to him. Leaned in, and her breath smelled like the peppermint leaves she was always chewing, and he didn’t even mind having to look into her eyes at that moment, because there was something soft there he rarely saw. “Your old Da would’ve been pleased,” she whispered. 

The salute vanished into the periphery of his pride. He almost reached out to embrace her, but caught himself. She was just not the hugging type, his Ma. 

“Thanks,” he said instead, and let his eyes fall as he smiled, looking up again quickly. 

The warmth was gone, but he remembered it. Remembered it then, and later during the hubbub of dinner—a special dinner for him, despite the fact that he wasn’t of the same father, despite the fact he couldn’t always make the right face or the right words to fit in with these people. Color and bright and too-much, and he shut his eyes, and set the table by memory, and remembered the peppermint and the smile.

At the table, shutting his eyes wasn’t as possible. 

“I don’t know why you were the only one who could go! We all love Pip! He’s our brother,” Lil whined, and at the same time she was tap tap tapping her fork on her plate, pushing around the cow meal to avoid it touching her fresh tomatoes.

“An immature crowd wouldn’t have been wise,” Ma said shortly.

“Immature!”

“Yeah, you take that back!” the twins, Viv and Bib, in their practiced unison. They weren’t identical, but they tried–dressed the same, cut the same short dark bangs across their foreheads, and rushed to catch up with whatever the other was saying. Twins were holy in their faith, as the Prophet had been a twin left behind after His identical had joined God. Their effort exhausted him.

“Listen to your Mother,” said Zaz, Ma’s sister-wife. She passed a plate under his nose. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the scent of tomatoes. The lights overhead–despite being on the softest setting–thrummed and whined. Forks clinked. Mouths chewed. The chatter wore on. He loved these people.

He loved these people. 

Under the table, Pip’s fingernails dug into his legs to stop them from bouncing. He would not bounce his legs. He would not rock. He looked up. He would maintain eye contact. It was the hardest thing, but Ma had rules. 

There was suddenly a retch, and to his horror, Eevee spat out her cow meal. Right next to him.

Pip stood up. 

“I’ll get that, don’t you worry ‘bout a thing,” Aviva, the second wife said, and slapped him lightly on the arm as she passed. He could feel his Ma’s eyes boring holes through him, so he sat down again. Eevee giggled, now happily free of cow meal. 

“Shame,” Lil said, “she doesn’t like it.” 

“If you had to learn to chew on that lab experiment you wouldn’t be none too pleased, either,” Nan, the first wife, shot back. She was old, and kind of drooling–a withered reflection of Eevee in tightly bound elder robes. Pip tried not to look at her too often, especially when she was eating. “When are we gonna get some real meat?”

This question was directed at Lil. Her big dark eyes fell for a moment, and when she looked up her mouth was a tense line, “The chickens aren’t doing so well, Mam. We’ve isolated their illness, but it’ll be a while now before another slaughter.”

“Blasted ‘sustainability,’ feh!” Nan snorted, “What’s the point of this new fangled ‘sustainability track’ if I can’t kill a chicken when I wanna eat one?”

“In my day,” Viv started up, voice growly and low like Nan’s, “I killed a chicken every breakfast, dinner, supper, and it was great!”

Titters broke out, and Nan, bless her, threw her napkin at the accusing twin, and the kiddos were all laughing, and Pip laughed too, a little, but then caught Ma’s eye. She was staring hard at him across the table. His legs had started again, shit.

“We have these lovely tomatoes from that same ‘blasted sustainability track,’ thank you dearie,” Aviva said, returning to the table with a cloth and a tube of applesauce. Lil positively preened across the table at her mother’s praise. She’d been doing the sustainability track before the powers that be (namely: Pip’s Ma) aboard The Provider had made it official, and her garden had quadrupled in size since, even pushing its way into their quarters. Sprouts grew in the center of the table in jars. Squash blossoms hung around the sun lamps above the cabinets. Pip had seen her room, too, and there was hardly room for her sisters.

“I wonder how snake meat tastes,” Nan sighed out, and there was a stunned silence before the table erupted with laughter. 

“They’re called ‘Ophidians’ Mam!” Lil cried out, affronted, the only one besides Ma not laughing. 

“Ok, I wonder how ‘Ofidins’ meat tastes. You think it matters what they’re called? I’d like to eat one! I doubt with that notion in mind the dumb vipers would care what I’m calling them. Let me know next time they get on the ship, I’ll come with my knife and fork!”

“Shouldn’t be long now, after that last raid. We did find something of value, despite the inhabitants of the ship managing to evade us,” Ma said, but no one was listening. The twins were positively howling with laughter, the littles ran around the table giggling, Pip’s legs were jiggling again, shit, and–

“LANG!”

Silence.

Father, drooped down at the head of the table, his plate untouched, had looked up, and his normally dull eyes were alight. “Lang…” he said again, and then seemed to drift off for a moment. Bib giggled, a sound quickly silenced by Ma slapping down her fork. 

“Pip,” she said, and her voice had the sharp feel of an order, so he sat at attention, “why don’t you take Father back to his room and give him his medicine?” 

Pip was on his feet in a lurch that launched him directly into the overhead light, as usual. The twins were outright snickering now, and the wives and the older siblings who could all remember ‘before dementia’ Father all looked sad and worn. Pip quickly stepped around them all to Father, who looked up at him, mouthing like a fish. “Yes, Ma,” he remembered to say, before he grabbed Father’s wheelchair and pulled it back from the table, pushing it around to the door, which swished quickly open for him and then closed behind, and Pip let out a breath he hadn’t realized had been positively calcifying in his lungs. 

He took the hall to Father’s room slowly. The lights were dull tonight. One of the solar panels was currently out of commission and power had to be conserved, in case they had to do a hyperspace jump. Pip liked it better this way, though. The drawings and photographs against the stark white walls were a crowded mess of contrast: beautiful for sure, but like everything, too much for Pip, who tended to get overstimulated by a pin dropping. 

Father seemed to like it better too. He didn’t make another peep as they crept down the dark hall, and then into his room. Pip hooked the chair up next to the bed and it lifted and flattened, tilting Father gently into the blankets. Pip carefully adjusted him so he was laying in a way that looked comfortable. Then he turned to the window-wall, where Father’s medicine lay on the dresser before the stars. The stars, and the planet Heven. Which seemed to glow just as steadily, a gorgeous wash of green and blue. 

Pip’s hands stilled. He’d seen it before, but he always liked looking. This was what it was all about. All the chaos of the ship would someday fade. Someday, he’d be there, with his family. Once the Ophidians were indoctrinated, or at least contained, it would be their Paradise, and he wouldn’t have to be crammed like a sardine into a can of those he loved, constantly overstimulated and unable to get away. He’d be free.

“Language! Their language, their…”

Pip jumped, turning back to Father. Father was sitting up in bed, and his eyes were oddly clear, the milky blue seeming to reflect the oceans of Heven back at Pip. 

Pip grabbed the medicine quickly and went to sit next to Father. Father had never really spoken a full word in the whole decade or so since his Ma had married into Father’s family. “What was that?” Pip asked, and Father’s hand was suddenly on the wrist that held the hyposhot, and Pip had to shut his eyes for a moment lest he jerk away. 

“Language,” Father forced out again. “Their language.” Then nothing but a long silence and a gaping mouth. 

Pip sighed. He pried off Father’s hand, which stuck for a moment before flailing away, jumping once against the sheet. He pressed the hypo-shot into the port on Father’s chest, and there was a whshhhh, and then Father fell back, glassy eyed again and, Pip hoped, maybe a little relieved. 

“You shouldn’t strain yourself so,” Pip said, “your littles still need you.”

This might not be true. Most of Father’s own children were older now, and had their jobs and their lives. Several had married out of the family. The younger ones–while legally his–had questionable ‘Godfathers.’ The Mothers were doing quite fine without Father, and he knew his Ma personally must be glad he was not active, like the husbands on the ship who weren’t dementia-addled normally were. The last thing she probably wanted was another child.

He had questioned it at first; her marriage. Father hadn’t been quite this bad when they wed, but he was still one of the ones who had been to Heven and gotten sick, brought the Ophidian Dementia home before they’d developed a treatment for it. While the treatment worked on those newly afflicted, it could not reverse what had already been started in earnest, it seemed. So he wasn’t getting worse anymore, but he was already quite bad.

His Ma’s marriage had given them religious status and family, though. Which, as Pip knew very well by now, was the only kind of marriage he could imagine for himself, anyway. Since he was thirteen he’d known whatever in him that could love a wife in the way a husband ought to wouldn’t be capable of doing it ‘right.’

It made sense to him, now. Now that he knew love had little to do with these things, sometimes. 

Ma might not have been able to keep the captain’s chair as an unwed woman with only one child. Especially since that child was Pip–overstimulated, slow, deranged & deviant Pip. And while the chaos of said status and family were exhausting, Pip was grateful. Grateful, to not be alone.

Grateful to be alone now, too.

Father’s room was the best of all of theirs. Each wife had her own section of their quarters, and Pip’s wing with Ma was obviously the smallest, seeing as it was just the two of them. Perhaps he could sneak back there without going back to the table. Ma would surely be glad he wasn’t ‘acting out’ more than she was upset he didn’t go back.

Pip slipped out the doors, which opened almost silently for him. He touched the metal pillar outside Father’s room when he passed it, all the children’s heights marked, a mess of dizzying lines and names down at the bottom and then rising to his shoulder level, and then only one up high: Pip. 

He felt an odd pang.

Then, with a lurching lack of sound, the gravity and lights went out. Red lights flickered on. 

An alarm began to blare.