Work Text:
The Sounds of Home
By Viridian5
6/2/03
"The guitars are clipping again!" Sio snarled as she adjusted settings on the console by hand and the wire connections to her ports.
"How many layers are you putting on it?" Harper asked, smiling.
"Apparently too many for this bucket of bolts--"
"Hey!" Beka shouted from the cockpit.
"--beautiful hunk of a cargo ship to handle," Sio finished.
"We don't have to mix the recording here," her brother said.
"I'm in Shay's way otherwise. I have to do something."
"You're fine," Harper said. Really they were. Just listening to them talk paid their way as far as he was concerned. Besides, he couldn't just leave them at Albuquerque Drift with a riot going on.
Beka didn't understand how he could get homesick sometimes. After all, Earth, a polluted rock ravaged by both Ubers and Magog, equaled hellhole. But he did. Trying to tell her how it was like the way she loved the Eureka Maru no matter what good or bad happened on it made no difference to her, prejudiced spacer that she was.
Yeah, the Maru was home for him too now, and he loved Beka and Rev and whatever environmentals person they had this week, but Siobhan and Shane Barrett sounded a lot like the people he'd loved in his childhood, even if their accents were close but not quite. Just slightly off, possibly from a Southern influence.
He remembered when he'd first met them. How could he not, when he'd been so incredulous that the Perseids had found someone in space who talked like him? He'd thought he'd never hear his accent from another person's lips ever again, since kludges didn't escape the Motherwell. Finding Earthers who'd not only made it out into space but came from Massachusetts and crossed their paths with his in this great big galaxy seemed impossible.
He'd been part right. After they'd all spoken and gaped at each other, he'd asked where they were from, and Shane had answered, "New Orleans, Louisiana."
Sio had amended that to "New Orleans *Irish*."
And there it had been. Despite being separated by what had to be several hundred miles and Uber-enforced isolation, an ancient common bond had led to similarities. Later he would discover some unique Louisiana slang, like "Motherfuckers" for Ubers since the Dragans had drained the bayous, but he felt that added to his vocabulary.
Harper had grinned and said, "I'm Seamus Zelazny Harper. Dunwich and Boston Irish. Massachusetts," then shaken Shane's hand. He'd automatically reached for Sio's too but stopped when she held up her right arm with the awkward prosthetic that capped it. She'd put her left hand atop his right and clasped it.
Today, years later, she worked with two hands, one of them partly designed by the Harper and even better than the natural one that had been chopped off by a Dragan. It made him proud of his
workmanship but also happy that he could help what family he had out here. Beka loved what he did for the Maru, but the Maru had existed before him and would keep going without him. Sio's
new arm wouldn't exist as it did now if he hadn't escaped Earth.
He knew their paths would diverge again soon--they were touring musicians, while the Maru shipped freight wherever Beka could find them a job--but for a while his space family had two more members living, talking, and snarking at home.
"Let me see if I can help," Harper said as he hip-shot her out of the seat.
"You think you can do better?" Sio asked.
"I *am* a genius."
"Oh, get on with you."
"You don't appreciate me."
"Of course I do," she said as she kissed his cheek. Shane sighed behind them.
Yeah, life was good.
THE END