dependence

“How much do you know about Ice?” asked Caban, quietly. As if he was afraid she was listening. She might have been.
“Enough” I replied, wondering why he asked. They had worked together for nearly two years before I showed up, and I was never sure what had conspired during that time. What pacts had they made? Why did they stay with one another? As best as I can reason, they keep each other safe. If he is doubting her now, then these are hard times indeed. He’d asked me about our shared past before, I told him enough that he knows I left our crew and she hasn’t seen past that since. He was surprised by the admission, but took it to mean we’re watching each other carefully, which we are, more than he knows. “That is to say, Caban, I don’t know very much. She’s gone by enough names to make herself untraceable. Even if I did have Govweb tags on her, they’d be useless.”
“How many Govweb tags do you have?” he asked, and I calculated rapidly. My parents and my old captains, and a few folks I never want to run into again. “Enough” I said again, and he smiled.
“Well. I guess none of us really know where the others come from,” he said, and it was almost a lament, “That’s the way of it.”
“It is,” I replied, then ventured, “why are you wondering after Ice?”
“I’m worried. She’s stiffened up some, since before she got hurt, and now its worse.” He didn’t know that she had been haunting me, suspicious of a betrayal I wasn’t planning. A pang of guilt ran through me, that I had deceived this man who trusted to intensely.
“You’re worried she’ll take off again?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He shrugged and ran his hand through his now-shaggy hair, looking older than he’d looked in a long while. “Not sure I’ll be able to chase her down again.”
“Not sure you’ll need to. Ice takes care of her own. Blackthorn…he’s been a rustspot on her for some time. We’ve all got pasts, you know that. She’s done a fair amount of work making sure that hers never bothers her again.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and I heard the words before he said them. He wanted me to look at her, find her records, go delving where I didn’t belong. So he would know. Caban often asked me what I studied, those long space-nights when I would sit in the nav seat with a book or a pad, he knew that I had resources. He needed to feel that he could trust her, but anything I did would be a break in trust. I cut him off before he spoke, to save his dignity.
“What she does with it, then, is her business alone. She’ll back us.” His mouth snapped shut, then began to open again to ask me how I knew. At that moment, however, Oberon gave a shuddering flicker and I felt once again the sensation of slowly lifting from the ground, my blood and the food in my belly becoming as weightless as the void outside. Someday this will become too much for my bones. I looked over at Caban, who floated beside me, and he reached out to bat at the hair that surrounded my head like a corona. He was not angry that Em had turned off the grav yet again, and for a moment all age fell from his face. Caban looked at me and laughed, and I had no choice but to laugh with him.