It took some consoling before Jace was able to get ahold of himself. In reality, he realized, he didn't want to spend his last time with Stryker muted from pain and frustration. I'll mourn later. He thought to himself. So he put on a mask and smiled. Something he'd never done before, so it was unfortunate that it had to be fake like it was. Stryker and Sara understood the effort, so they took it at face value and appreciated happy Jace.
It turned out to be helpful in some way though, as, in his forced cheerfulness, he talked more with Sara than he had before, and they became sort of friends. Jace never found out why her name was so important, whenever he tried, she would clam up and change the subject. She somehow found out all about him though, about how he'd grown up on the streets with no particular place to call home, how he'd been chased from one place to the next because he refused to join a gang, and how he was always scrounging through the trash for his food. There wasn't much novelty to his life, so it didn't take her long to dig everything up.
Once they were done with him, they moved to Stryker. They were about as successful with him as Jace was with Sara. But they did manage to pry stories out of him though, stories told to him by the spacer who went through to get repairs. The stories were amazing! Of incredible places, daring adventures, and cunning battles. Jace was starry-eyed about it, and that seemed to excite Stryker. He would always get very involved in the stories, and you could tell when he was telling them that he was experiencing them in his mind, playing the pilot flying through the asteroid belt, or the pirate narrowly evading capture by the Space Force.
Jace remembered to ask Stryker about his bunkmates back on the ship. "I tried to bring 'em," he said, "but Patricia I think was done with all the running around. The look she gave me told me she was ready to make her final stand. Blumond stood with her. I think he's always had a thing for her. As for Spike, he was having far too much fun fighting the handlers. Took a couple down himself. I'll bet you he found a way out if no one else did."
Jace mourned their loss and prayed for their survival.
They were able to ignore Strykers condition for a couple of days, they lived off of the rations they found on the ship, which were meant to last two men a couple of weeks, so they rationed them out, not sure how long they'd be floating there. They weren't able to use the thrusters of the ship, as the life support also used fuel, so they had to conserve it. "Plus," Stryker said while they were talking about it, "We're more likely to be found in this wreck than just wandering on the blackness of space."
They found an old deck of galacticards, and Stryker taught them a couple of the games he knew, It got to the point where Sara was winning most of the games, so they stopped playing as much. Stryker also showed them the innards of the ship. At least the ones they could access without breaching the hull. He taught them a little bit about the fundamentals of how spacecraft worked and ran. He showed them how to drive the tug with its simplistic controls. It was more complicated than a hovercar, which Jace had seen the inside of before, but Stryker said it was quite simple compared to a freighter, fighter, or cargo ship like they had been on before.
But eventually, Strykers condition caught up with him, and he fell sick. He faded in and out of consciousness, with Sara doing her best to treat him, and Jace hovering over him constantly. They made a makeshift bed on one of the benches in the back out of the package padding found in a side compartment. Strykers spells of consciousness came further and further apart.
One day, when Sara was still asleep and Jace was watching over Stryker, The man opened his eyes weakly. He turned his head to Jace.
"Hey, kid." All the strength was gone from his voice. You wouldn't have recognized him from the man they'd seen only a few days before. Now he was sickly and weak. The yellow lights used when they were sleeping gave his already pale complexion a sickly pallor, and he couldn't move much at all.
Jace stood over him quickly. "How you feeling?" he said quietly. "You need more medicine?"
Stryker shook his head. "It won't do me much good now. I'm going, kid. I don't think I'll wake after this." he said. Jace gripped his hand firmly but gently, and tears came to his eyes.
"I'm scared." The young boy said in a whisper. "I don't know what to do now."
A weak smile came across Stryker's face. "Kid, I don't know what it is, but when I'm around you, I can tell you have the potential to do great things. You just need to apply yourself. You have no idea what is out there for you." The invalid looked behind Jace. Sara had silently come up behind them. "Take care of the kid, alright?" He said to her. Jace didn't see her response, but it must have been an affirmative because relief fills the older man's face.
Stryker turned to Jace. "Jace." He said. Jace's ears perked up instinctively. The old repairman had never used his name before.
"Jace, I want you to promise me something. I want you to live the life I never got to. I've seen your eyes when I talk about it, I know it's what's best for you."
Jace's mind was filled with mud. It took him a second to process what Stryker had said. Then he asked, "Do you think I can? I'm just a beggar off the street. "
Stryker smiled again. "I know you can kid. You just need to experience a little bit of life first, you'll find the steel inside of you. It's there, I promise you. Will you promise me you'll do your best?" He looked deep into Jace's eyes.
Jace looked away uncomfortably, then nodded his head, his vision blurred with unshed tears. When he looked back, Stryker was breathing peacefully, a smile on his face. He was conscious, but there was nothing more to say. They all sat there quietly for a little bit, just feeling each other's company. It was silent, but both Sara and Jace felt it when the man passed on. When the moment came, the flood gates broke. Jace's shoulders began to shake, and throat-wrenching sobs broke out of him. It was embarrassing to cry in front of Sara like that, but after a few minutes, he didn't care anymore. He just cried.
Sara awkwardly put her hand on his shoulder, wanting to comfort him but not sure how. He ignored her, but he was comforted slightly by the fact that she cared about him. He wasn't completely alone like he'd been before meeting Stryker.
They covered the body with some old boxes so they wouldn't have to be constantly reminded of the man they had lost. It didn't help much. Jace felt like he was walking around with an open wound when every he walked past the pile of boxes, which was impossible to avoid in the small confines of the ship.
Eventually, the tears subsided, but the heavy silence made no indication of leaving. Jace had no interest in talking and Sara made no attempt to. It wasn't an all-bad silence, they knew Stryker had died peacefully in the end, so they were glad for that. Jace felt like he was letting out a whole bunch of emotions that had been bottled up. It was nice, but it was also very painful. He knew he'd only known Stryker for a few months, and he didn't know anything about the man, and it didn't make sense that he attached so much emotion to him, but he had been the first true kindness aside from cursory, obligatory charity acts back home.
Jace had seen him as a father figure, an older brother. Basically to Jace, Stryker was everything good in life, having had very limited exposure to much else growing up, so losing him was like losing a major piece of his life. It's the only thing he missed because it's the only thing he'd wanted to keep.
It continued like this for a few days, though it felt like a month. Their days were filled with eating and sleeping. Jace would sit numbly in between these times, and Sara would stare outside, lost in the stars as well as her thoughts. Jace only ate out of his ingrained need for food from his street days, otherwise, he would've ignored the food.
Three days after Strykers passing, exactly a week and a half from the escape, their rescuers found them.