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Courtland Gentry was never trained to love.
The CIA considered love useless in the business of eliminating threats to the United States. Everything the man learned through the Sierra program revolved around hatred and destruction, and nothing else.
Even so, if Court was incapable of loving anyone, then the closest thing he could offer was loyalty.
He had never questioned an order in his life. He simply lowered his head and kept killing whoever he was told to kill without a single complaint. It was part of his nature, something that had been with him since birth. His instructors had never tried to change that about him. Instead, they focused on correcting the flaws that could jeopardize a mission, carelessness, complacency, lapses in judgment. But they left untouched the dog-like loyalty that defined Court.
To the CIA, it was the perfect quality in someone meant to serve his country. There was no reason to change it. As long as they fixed the traits that lowered a mission's success rate, that was enough.
So Court had never loved.
But he had never betrayed anyone, either.
Whatever orders came down from the people above him, he carried them out without resistance. He was the kind of man who preferred to keep his head down, finish the job he had been assigned, ask no questions, and harbor no doubts. Following orders was enough.
So when the Astrophage crisis engulfed the world, and the CIA assigned part of its field agent to assist with the security of Project Hail Mary, Court accepted the order without protest. Even if protecting a scientist was far outside his usual line of work.
Sierra Six excelled at assassination, not protection. He preferred reckless, high-risk operations, not the mind-numbing boredom of standing guard outside a laboratory all day. But if that was what his superiors wanted, all he could do was nod and obey, just as he always had.
Whether it was good luck or bad luck, he still couldn't decide. Because while Dr. Ryland Grace was about as far from boring as anyone could possibly be, he came dangerously close to being a pain in the ass.
Although they were roughly the same age, Dr. Grace was different from him in almost every conceivable way.
Dr. Grace was a talker. He needed someone to bounce ideas and theories off of, and he hated the kind of silence that made a room feel awkward, especially after spending years surrounded by the constant chatter of children in a classroom. Court, on the other hand, barely spoke at all. Silence had become second nature to him, both on the job and in his personal life. He rarely talked to anyone, not even the other men in Golf Sierra, teammates who had survived countless life-and-death missions alongside him.
And Dr. Grace's nonstop talking wasn't their only difference.
The former science teacher didn't swear.
Court had spent years surrounded by rough men like the Golf Sierra team. Assassins and former soldiers were never exactly known for flowery language. Living with someone like Dr. Grace, who never uttered a single curse word, required a surprising amount of adjustment.
But that was only the beginning.
Their differences ran far deeper than the way they spoke. They saw the world through completely different eyes. Court had to get used not only to Dr. Grace's clean language but also to his optimism and his almost reckless willingness to trust people, qualities that couldn't have been further from Court's own.
And Dr. Grace was also hopelessly clumsy.
More than once, Court had to catch him before he tripped over absolutely nothing and cracked his head against the deck. After a while, he seriously considered wrapping the man in bubble wrap just to be done with it.
Now he understood why Eva Stratt, who had become another of his commanding officers, had repeatedly ordered him to stay glued to Dr. Grace's side.
Maybe the greatest threat to Dr. Grace, and by extension to Project Hail Mary itself, was Dr. Grace. And Court had no intention of failing a protection assignment because his target managed to trip over thin air and die from hitting his head.
In the end, they were simply too different.
Different in every possible way.
If the Sun hadn't begun dying under the assault of the Astrophage, threatening humanity with extinction, Court doubted their paths would ever have crossed.
Then again...
There was one thing they had in common.
Both of them had an uncanny talent for solving immediate problems with creative, wildly unconventional solutions.
It was the first thing that made Court think they might actually understand each other after all.
Dr. Grace approached scientific problems with creativity that bordered on absurdity. Some scientist whose name Court had long since forgotten had once praised Dr. Grace for exactly that. It was astonishing how the man could make the smallest adjustment, improvise with whatever happened to be available, and somehow arrive at the correct answer.
It reminded Court of his own early days working for the CIA, when he had been stranded during missions in Southeast Asia and forced to turn whatever happened to be around him into tools for survival. But their goals couldn't have been more different.
Dr. Grace's ingenuity saved the world.
Court's had never saved anyone but himself.
Perhaps that was the greatest difference between them.
Dr. Grace was one of the people trying to save the world through Project Hail Mary. Humanity's survival might very well depend on his work.
Court, on the other hand, had spent more than a decade with the CIA taking human lives.
If one of them was a savior, the other was a destroyer.
Maybe that was exactly why. Because they were so different, after spending enough time together, Court found that he didn't want anything to happen to Dr. Grace. Maybe this assignment was easing some nameless weight buried deep inside him, if only a little.
He didn't even know what that weight was. And he couldn't bring himself to call it guilt.
The CIA had trained him to be a machine. A machine incapable of love. A machine fueled by hatred. A machine that would never feel guilty.
So Court had no name for the heaviness in his chest. But perhaps keeping Dr. Grace alive until the Hail Mary launched would lighten it, even if only slightly.
That was why he did what he had always done. He devoted himself completely to the mission he had been assigned, never realizing that his reason for protecting Dr. Grace had quietly changed.
It was no longer just because it was his duty.
Nor was it simply an attempt to ease the weight he carried inside himself.
He just wanted to protect Dr. Grace. To keep him from getting hurt. To make sure he stayed alive until the day the world finally returned to normal.
Court didn't believe it was love.
People like him weren't capable of something like that.
He could barely remember what it felt like to love another human being, and he had no desire to figure it out. Not the warmth that settled in his chest whenever he looked at Dr. Grace, nor the reason he caught himself smiling because of him.
Maybe it was simply loyalty.
He was loyal to Dr. Grace.
It was different from the loyalty he felt toward the CIA or Stratt, but of course it was. Dr. Grace was nothing like either of them.
It wasn't love.
Just a different kind of loyalty.
And because he was loyal, when Stratt gave Dr. Grace three hours to decide whether he would board the Hail Mary, when Dr. Grace clung tightly to his arm and looked up at him through tear-filled eyes, Court made him an offer.
"I'll get you out of here."
"But..." Dr. Grace hesitated.
He didn't want to die, but even now he couldn't stop worrying about what would happen afterward. That was another thing that made Court realize how different they were.
Dr. Grace valued his own life. Court didn't. He had long since stopped caring about what happened to himself, and he couldn't even bring himself to care what happened to the world after he made his own choices.
"Come on," Court said quietly. "We're out of time."
"But if everyone on Earth dies because of me..." Dr. Grace's voice trembled. "I don't want to die, Six. Why do I have to die? I'm scared. It's not fair. Why does it have to be me? But if I run away, everyone on Earth dies because of me. And I... I can't bring myself to sacrifice myself either."
"Then you have to run."
"But Stratt..."
"To hell with Stratt."
Dr. Grace looked up at him. His glasses had slipped from his tear-streaked face some time ago. They were tucked safely inside Court's jacket pocket. Court had quietly picked them up without asking because he knew that the moment he handed them back, Dr. Grace would probably drop them all over again.
"And what about the CIA?" Dr. Grace asked, his eyes wide with disbelief, as though he had never imagined he would hear those words come out of Court's mouth. "They assigned you to work for Stratt. You can't possibly..."
"Then to hell with the CIA, too."
The answer came without a moment's hesitation. If the men from Golf Sierra had heard him say it, they probably would have assumed he was an impostor. But this was the real Court Gentry.
Court Gentry, loyal as a dog.
The only difference was that, in the end, this dog had chosen to give his loyalty to Dr. Grace instead of his official masters.
Dr. Grace continued staring at him. The unwavering certainty in Court's eyes seemed to calm him a little. He was still gripping Court's arm, but when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.
"I'm not going to run away without saying anything. I have to tell Stratt. I have to make her understand why I'm refusing. And I have to stay long enough to train a replacement volunteer. I don't want to die, but I can't just abandon everything like this."
Court raised an eyebrow at that.
"Dr. Grace, she won't listen to you. She's already decided that you're the only one. The moment you walk into that room, she'll find a way to get you onto that ship. This is your only chance to get away."
"She wouldn't do that! She'd never do that to me!"
Court fell silent. He had never seen Dr. Grace like this before. Never seen him angry enough to raise his voice.
Dr. Grace let go of Court's arm, awkwardly struggle to his feet on his own, then immediately brush aside Court's outstretched hand when he tried to steady him.
"I trust Stratt. We've worked together. I thought we understood each other. But what about you, Six? Can I trust you? I don't even know your real name. I don't know anything about you. And now you're telling me to run away? Maybe I'm not brave, but I can't just disappear without telling Stratt."
"Dr. Grace..."
"Now give me my glasses back. I have to go talk to her. The three hours she gave me are almost up."
Dr. Grace held out his hand. By instinct, Court took the glasses from his jacket pocket and handed them back, even as his mind remained fixed on Dr. Grace's words. Dr. Grace trusted Stratt more than he trusted him. Of course he did. That wasn't news. Court had always known that.
He watched the scientist's retreating back grow smaller and smaller until he finally drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Sierra Six pushed himself up from the floor and followed after him. What came next was another problem that demanded an immediate solution, one that would determine Dr. Grace's fate. Fortunately, if there was one thing Court Gentry excelled at, it was coming up with creative and extreme solutions under pressure.
‘I don't want you to die. I want you to live just a little longer. But now I understand that if you leave everything behind like this, then even if you never die in space, even if you get to spend a little more time living on Earth... you won't really survive.’
Not because of the Astrophage.
Not because the Sun was dying.
But because of guilt.
A feeling Court had never believed he possessed. Yet somehow, it had always been there, buried inside him as that nameless weight he could never explain. He had never felt guilty for killing bad people. That much he had always been certain of. The burden he carried came from something else. It came from failing to protect the people who should have been protected.
The innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. The teammates who died in the line of duty. It was the weight of lives lost because of his own hands.
He had spent years refusing to acknowledge it.
And if Dr. Grace ran away with him now, that same crushing guilt would eventually consume the other man whole.
In the end, there was only one choice.
Raised voices spilled out of Stratt's office. A moment later, Dr. Grace burst through the doorway, his face shattered with despair as he ran. Security staff hurried after him. While everyone rushed in the opposite direction, Court strode into the nearly empty office. He deliberately let his footsteps ring louder than usual, drawing Stratt's attention away from the pursuit outside the window.
"Sierra Six?"
"I'm going with him. On that damned Hail Mary."
The man known as Sierra Six continued walking until he stood directly in front of her. Then he spoke without the slightest hesitation.
"The truth is, I'd rather he stayed here on Earth. I'd rather he got to live a little longer. But if he stays, everyone will call him a coward. And if this mission fails, every government on the planet will blame him. He'll spend the rest of his life believing the end of humanity was his fault because he was too afraid."
"We don't have any equipment left for you," Stratt replied. "And your skill set has no use aboard that ship, Sierra Six."
Court let out a quiet breath.
"You don't know what's going to happen out there. And don't worry about the equipment. I have no intention of getting into one of those coma machines. While the other three are asleep, I'll handle security and whatever odd jobs need doing around the ship. I'll have plenty of time to learn. By the time they wake up, I might even be a better pilot than Captain Yao."
He allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile.
"Or maybe I'll get bored after reading through that mountain of pirated knowledge you've loaded onto the ship."
Stratt stared at him, one eyebrow raised, as though the CIA operative standing before her had completely lost his mind.
"Sierra Six... Mr. Gentry, Do you even understand what you're saying?"
"I'm asking you to let me die. You told Dr. Grace that if he stayed on Earth, he'd die along with everyone else. So, I'm just choosing the place where I want to die."
The place where Ryland Grace would be.
"If Dr. Grace has to die… then what's wrong with sending someone to die beside him?"
Stratt held his gaze. For a long time, neither of them spoke.
She narrowed her eyes, silently calculating the implications of adding a former assassin to the crew manifest.
Finally, she looked away first.
"I think this is the first time I've ever heard you say more than two words."
She sighed. Then she gave him a single, simple answer.
"Fine."
At that, the corner of Court's mouth lifted ever so slightly.
Courtland Gentry was never trained to love.
The CIA believed love had no place in eliminating threats to the United States. Everything the Sierra program had taught him revolved around hatred and destruction.
But today, on a world whose dying Sun was being consumed by Astrophage, while humanity struggled desperately to survive, Courtland Gentry finally realized something.
His heart had never lost its ability to love.
He could still fall in love.
He could love someone enough to leave the whole world behind without a single regret.
As long as, in the end...he died where Ryland Grace was.