The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,56

tell him when she was ready, and not a minute before.

He spent his spare time watching the files from Captain Tucker’s log. Some were accounts of new members who’d joined the rebellion, or speculation about recruiting people with useful skills to join them. Some were long, rambling monologues detailing how they’d handle disagreements once on board, or upon reaching the planet. But when it came to information about the journey or the final destination, it was easy to hear the frustration in Tucker’s voice.

“My communications with my Li’Vin friend are stilted and hampered by a significant language barrier,” he said in one of the earlier logs. “Some of his kind seem to have mastered Earth languages, but not him. I get the impression he’s of rather low rank in the Li’Vin world. In truth, that’s part of why I trust him. He has nothing to gain by helping us, and yet he’s gone out of his way to do so.”

Denver learned that Tucker’s Li’Vin co-conspirator hadn’t intended to make the journey with them.

“He says the destination will be laid in. All we have to do is hit ‘go.’ I worry we won’t know how to fly it. He assures me it’s simple, but something that seems simple to the Li’Vin won’t necessarily be simple for us.”

Tucker was equally confused as the length of their upcoming journey.

“Some of what he tells me makes me think they have wormhole technology,” Tucker said in one entry. “Other times, it sounds as if the journey will take several months. He says it will be faster than human ships, but that doesn’t tell me very much.”

As to their final destination, what he found was sparse but still worthwhile.

“I’ve been told that the original inhabitants of the planet were wiped out by the Li’Vin,” Tucker elaborated in one video. “Again, time is hard to discuss with my friend. Whether it’s been months or years or centuries seems unclear, but he assures me the planet has had plenty of time to recover, so either it was eons ago, or the damage wasn’t extensive. He tells me plant life is plentiful, but seems confused when I ask about higher life-forms.”

The most interesting files were Tucker’s personal journal entries, where he talked about the ex-wife he’d be leaving behind, and the children she refused to let him see. He’d had thousands of devoted followers, and yet William Tucker himself had been a deeply lonely man.

It was a feeling Denver could relate to. By the second week out from Titan X on a ship so crowded he couldn’t take a step without running into somebody and often found himself waiting in line for the bathroom, he was lonelier than he’d ever been.

He blamed Laramie. Or maybe he blamed Ginn. All he knew was that he’d never been away from his brother for so long. He’d never felt his brother’s absence in his mental space for such an extended period of time. Every once in a while, he felt a ripple of emotion from Laramie—a moment of laughter, although Denver didn’t know what had caused it, or a surge of annoyance, although Denver couldn’t tell who it was directed at—but never more than those faint echoes of his brother’s life. There was nothing that felt like their normal connection, and Denver couldn’t help but wonder if this was how it would be from now on, both of them circling each other but never managing to find common ground again.

It broke his heart, thinking about it, so he did his best not to think about it. He told himself it’d all work out eventually.

It had to.

Whenever Denver wasn’t obsessing about his brother, or over what was bothering Marit, he obsessed about Spence. He tried not to be too obvious in his attentions, but the truth was, he was aware of Spence at every single moment. He knew where on the ship he was, even when he was out of sight. He heard him creep by in the night, on his way to the bathroom, and he tracked his movements to the cockpit on the rare occasion that Treesa wanted to look out the ship’s lone window. Denver began to feel as if he lived for the few minutes he got to spend with Spence in the kitchen, when their unofficial shifts for meals overlapped. But given the crowded living conditions and Treesa’s dependence on her big brother, getting even a minute alone with him was impossible, so Denver mostly kept his distance.