I wish, by the great bird, that I could stop crying. It’s annoying more than anything, no one likes to be around someone who is crying let alone be them. They feel weird like they’re under some obligation to feel bad for you and give you that gentle rub on the shoulder. Or worse, an awkward, desperately uncomfortable hug. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I don’t feel sad but it’s like who asked you to get involved? I don’t need them to make me feel better. I need Helena back. I need to have her here, guiding the way, running the team, and making me feel safe. Making me feel wanted. 

It’s the practicalities that are the most frustrating. I’ve run out of my favourite mascara, this stuff I got on Starbase Bravo a few months back. It was just the right consistency to make it through a whole shift and an evening on the Sundeck; I’ve gone through 3 tubes having to reapply it with all the unplanned crying. I knew it was going to finish at some point but I didn’t imagine it would be this soon. I didn’t think it would outlast Helena. 

It was worse last week. The day we arrived at Trill and they loaded the empty coffin onto the shuttle for transport I thought I was going to shrivel up into a tiny blue raisen, that every drop of liquid in my body would be squeezed out via my eyeballs. I would turn into a little wrinkled thing, sitting in a puddle of watered-down mascara in the middle of the flight deck. I wasn’t entirely wrong. 

It’s getting easier, mostly. Astris pops in to check on me from the other side of the workshop but she’s got bigger things to deal with, she has to handle Merope. I’m just crying, she’s ready to punch a hole in the hull and let us all get sucked out into the void. I’ll stop crying eventually but every time I think the rivers have run dry, I think of Helena’s laugh, or the dimples at the edge of her smile, or the safety of a hug she gave me the night before she set off.

I wish that I could stop crying but I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I want to. 

“I mean this with love Circe.” Helena paused, taking in the figure of the small blue Bolian woman across the workbench, her lithe right arm shoulder deep, disappearing inside the impulse manifold of a Valkyrie fighter. “You might be the messiest person I’ve ever met?” she presented the table in front of her, a disorderly surface covered with tools and parts and padds scrolling with complicated, scrawled notes. 

“That’s not very nice.” Circe took a sharp intake of breath in the mock offence as she squeezed her eyes closed, hoping to improve the accuracy of her already dexterous fingers as they worked blindly in the small craft’s hull. 

“I said it with love.”

“That’s like wrapping a baseball bat in bubble wrap. It’s still a baseball bat mate, it’s still gonna break your arm.” Circe twisted awkwardly trying to get a better angle. “Speaking of which I think I might need some assistance in putting my shoulder back in when I finally get to this thing.” 

“What are you even doing back there?” Helena went to lean on the table but as she began to apply her weight a precariously balanced stack of half-drunk Raktajino cups tottered threateningly. Deciding not to tempt fate she returned to her standing position. “Merope’s Valkyrie was only scheduled for a thermal sensor replacement?”

“Turns out, it wasn’t the ODN block or the sensor that needed changing, it was working perfectly. As perfectly as it can when it’s getting false information.” Circe twisted again, her body rolling like a snake as she tried to discover the most opportune angle. Abruptly she stopped her serpentine writhing as she found a useful position. Finding herself facing the older Trill woman at the counter, her arm lifted ram rod straight above her bald head before arching almost 90 degrees behind her and disappearing into the Valkyrie. She bit her lip as she fumbled delicately out of sight. “It was…” A wide smile spread across her face as a crack rang out from the innards of the fighter craft. “…this.” She slowly removed her hand from the darkness of the manifold, revealing a palm-sized yellow-white crystal, veins of dark obsidian-looking material reaching out in spiderwebs from the corner of the crystal formation.  

“That’s beautiful.” Helena’s eyes were wide in wonder, the crystal catching the distant overhead work lights of the high shuttle bay, gentle rays of light dancing in the air as the crystal captured and redirected the lights into pale golden beams. At the edge of hearing Helena caught the gentle glissando of an imagined harp, mesmerised by its beauty. 

Circe put the crystal down with a thud on the workbench, the raktajino pile rattling threateningly once again before dusting her hands performatively. 

“That little bugger has been absorbing a fair whack of the heat generated by the manifold. It’s been throwing the sensors off and causing the overheat.” She tapped the top of the crystal with her nail causing it to emit a pleasantly pitched chime across the vast flight deck. Helena’s spine shuddered in response.  “It’s crazy how some hot sand can down a Valkyrie.” She gave the small craft’s wing a comforting rub. “Wouldn’t think it’d be so sensitive.”

“Where did it come from?” Helena was now squatting at the side of the workbench, her disk-like eyes telescoping through the flaxen crystal, the stacks of cups and pads reflected within its facets, creating a fast and fantastical cityscape contained in the translucent geometry.  

Circe’s attention was already back on the Valkyrie’s impulse array, the small vacuum in her hand emitting a barely audible whine as she collected the sand remnants that had caused so many issues. “It’s from that sand planet in the DMZ, the one where Mitchell’s uncle wasn’t dead?” 

“I don’t remember Merope flying into any giant rocks.” the Trill woman’s attention was fixed upon the gem, Circe’s lithe frame now twisting within its sharp angles like some giant monster of old cinema. 

“At least not this time,” Circe whispered mischievously, drawing Helena’s attention from the gem, offering her a cheeky grin. The young woman was the perpetual humour of the Heliades sisterhood, Helena adored her smile, a wide Cheshire cat smile of white teeth shining out from the dark indigo of her skin. “There was that time on Titan,” Circe continued as she tilted her head and pulled an awkward grimace. “Took me weeks to beat that dent out of the old girl.” She tapped the fighter craft’s wing as if clapping an old friend on the shoulder.

“You could have done it in minutes,” Helena chided. “All you had to do was pull out the sonic hammer…” She reached for the tool on the table only to find its slot in the small toolkit empty. “Though I suppose you would have needed to find it first.”

Circe lept across the short distance to the workbench and began lifting and shifting piles from their delicately balanced equilibrium in search of the tool. A stack of cups slid across to make way for an isolinear docking block, which in turn gave room for the dozen padds that suddenly sprung to life with unsigned mission reports. Circe began mumbling under her breath as the searching became more frantic, “Come out little hammer, come out.” A rectangular space was suddenly filled with a precarious stack of engine parts before she lifted the small toolkit on top of the pile. 

“Circe, it’s fine. I was only joking…”

“No!” she exclaimed, her voice bouncing off the nearby fighter and causing the crystal to ping again. “It is here, I’m sure it is. Just… Under…” She lifted a hastily bundled jacket from the desk revealing the long silver shape of the sonic hammer. Circe squealed in victory, throwing the jacket to the floor like dirty laundry as she grabbed the errant tool, before breaking into an air-punching victory dance as she waved it in front of Helena’s face. “See, not lost. Right where I needed it to be.” Another beaming grin spread across her face as her victory dance came to a finale. 

Helena couldn’t help but return a portion of the infectious glee. “Don’t ever change Circe.”

“I won’t as long as you don’t,” Circe promised, offering a long blue pinkie to the older woman; sister and mother, comrade and commander. 

Helena hooked her pinkie and began dipping it gently in a promissory shake. “I don’t plan on changing anything.”

The shuttle lifted from the flight deck with a barely perceptible hum as a whistle rang out and everyone present stood to attention, tears beginning to flow freely down dozens of cheeks, now untamed by discrete handkerchiefs that had disappeared behind dress uniform-clad backs. The two long banks of crewmen watched silently as the gleaming, silver shape of the shuttle began to ease away. The dull red impulse engines of the type-11 shuttle craft pulsing sadly as the tapered beak began slowly floating down the long flight deck towards the invisible forcefield at the forward portal. 

At the far end, flanking the open bay doors, the rising hum of two dart-like Valkyries filled the vast space as they lifted from their docks. The wet faces of Merope and Astris barely visible through the canopy, their copious tears masked by the slender form-fitting helmets. The room hung in silence for a moment, the hum of engine noise, barely shackled and desperate to leap out into the endless excitement of space suffusing every bone and heart and tear in the room. 

On the workbench, hidden by piles of half-finished Raktajino and a growing number of incomplete mission reports, the yellow crystal chimed a piercing wail, its own grieving keening that cut across the din. 

Then three sets of engines flared to life and tore away, a gust of wind rolling through the long flight deck, as the last light of Helena Tyll took to the skies.