#original sci-fi

After our conversation with Jokul, he agreed rather quickly to meet with the Council.  I could even say - truthfully - that no threats were necessary.  Instead, Antoine and I had explained the level of concern Jokul and his group had eventually caused, the former cult-leader had offered to make amends and set the record straight.  The only point I had to convince him of was that the session needed to be recorded and distributed across the ship.  In the end, he conceded only for the reason that such a broadcast was the only way to regain any trust among the population of the Ark.

Two days after our meeting in my office, the Council was gathered in the same room where Arantxa’s trial had taken place. As this wasn’t a trial, instead of each Councillor having an administrator present, the six of us were joined by Jokul,  with Tyche, Antoine, Parvati, Simon, and Arthur as witnesses to attest to Jokul’s statements.

Pranav Ranganathan, as the most neutral member of the Council, opened the meeting. “Jokul Bjornson, you are here of your own volition to account for your recent actions.  To be clear, you are not on trial, there are no charges against you.  You have voluntarily submitted yourself to be questioned by us and to offer to make amends for the interruptions you and your group of followers have caused among the social structure of this ship. Do I understand that correctly?”

To his credit, Jokul was entirely unflinching. “Yes, Councillor Ranganathan. When I arrived on the Ark, I realized that humanity had endured Ragnarok, and our journey to Von was our way of emerging into the renewed world.  I never intended to start a cult, and did not realize that is what happened until very recently.”

It took everything in me to keep from cracking up laughing, just to avoid ruining the recording. The reality was, Jokul had nearly fainted when we explained to him that his group of ‘followers’ had a religious-level worship of him.  He was actually queasy at the concept, it turned out - sure he wanted followers, but he abhorred cultish behavior, ironically.

Without batting an eyelash, he continued. “I will readily admit, I am not the most socially savvy person.  The people I considered to be my friends rephrased every piece of information I received, either by providing it to me directly or by being of one mind in their conviction regarding the underlying meaning of what I learned independently.  In the end, I believed that Councillor Reid had nefarious designs towards not only myself but the entirety of people on this vessel.”

Pranav nodded. “And how did you come to realize that you were acting in bad faith?”

“Let’s simply say I had some sense knocked into me,” he managed to joke.  My chest hurt from restraining my laughter, and I was envious of the snorts Tyche and Arthur indulged in.

That, combined with the presence of witnesses who were not likely to lie for him, seemed to mollify the Council enough regarding his intentions.  Pranav took his seat, opening the floor to questions.

With an entire half-second of hesitation, Xiomara surged to her feet. “I’m sure it will come to the surprise of no one that I’m going to cut to the chase: How can we be assured that you and your allegedly-former followers pose no danger to the society we are trying to establish?  We have no jail to hold you in, our economy is currently calorie-based but we do not agree to any manual labor as punishment. How do we hold you accountable?”

He gestured to where I was sitting. “Councillor Reid is recording the entirety of these proceedings, with the goal of distributing them to the ship.  None of this will be kept in the dark, and everything I say and admit to here will be public knowledge. The entire Ark will be able to hold me accountable to my actions and promises.”

“And what are those promises?” Xio asked, refusing to give an inch of slack.

“One of the demands I made to Councillor Reid was that, should I win the challenge, she would be required to step down from the Council and would never be able to hold a position of leadership at any point in the future.  I feel it is only fair that I make the same commitment.”

My jaw dropped at this. This was a surprise, even to me, and so much so that the iron grip I was keeping on my composure snapped. The rest of the Council was in an uproar, demanding clarification.  Xiomara held a hand up, drawing attention to the fact that she still held the floor. “Please explain what you mean by ‘the challenge’, Mr. Bjornson.”

Jokul paled as he seemed to realize he slipped up. “Sophia Reid came to a gathering of my - well, followers, I supposed - attempting to parlay, so to speak. I refused to listen and made demands of her, insisting she step down from the Council. When I refused to take the path of peace, Arthur Farro agreed to negotiate on my terms, so to speak. He won, so Councillor Reid was able to have her parlay.” He waved to the room in general. “And here we are.”

That is NOT what happened, I thought to myself.  I was fairly certain I was scowling with the effort of not gaping at his explanation. He wasn’t exactly lying, but I had never seen someone throw themselves under the bus like that, much less execute an Olympic-qualifying swan dive beneath one.  Still, Pranav and Eino were looking at Arthur with suspicion, while Huynh smirked his approval at the underlying story Jokul hinted at.

Xiomara arched an eyebrow but said nothing, despite the fact that I knew she had the true story. “So, no holding positions of leadership in the future. And with this recording, you can be held accountable by the ship. Neatly done. That accounts for you. What about your followers?”

He nodded in acknowledgement. “They can only be held accountable if they are known.”

Silence roared through the chamber as my fellow Councillors weighed what he just said. “Jokul Bjornson,” Xiomara ventured carefully. “Please elaborate on what you mean by that?”

Rather than an explanation, the words that fell from Jokul’s mouth were names. One hundred and seventy three names, carefully enunciated and separated only by a brief pause. At no point did his eyes drop from Xiomara’s.  Hers only glanced away once she realized what was happening, and only long enough to confirm that I was recording this for them to refer to later.

After six minutes of names, Jokul finally finished. “Parvati Fletcher. She was only present at that last gathering, but the ideas she spread and comments she made give me reason to believe that she could be a potential traitor in the future.”

Xiomara blinked slowly, processing this information, before coughing violently. Tyche shook with silent laughter, and I was getting a headache from holding my breath to prevent laughing.  Arthur didn’t even try and rolled his eyes dramatically before dropping his head to his hands.

“I would strongly suggest keeping a very close eye on her in the future,” Jokul intoned, entirely serious.

The entire Council looked at a loss for words, unable to even start to explain the issue. 

Arthur, apparently, had no such internal battle, it seemed. “Yeah. Tell you what, we’ll leave that to Xiomara, I think.” How he kept a straight face eluded me. I made a mental note to ask Miys if there were superpowers involved.

“I am quite serious. I believe the entire ship should be monitoring her,” Jokul insisted. “Why would you limit responsibility of this to only one Councillor? I understand she is over Health and Safety, but even she cannot be everywhere at once.”

Delicately, Grey spoke up while keeping one eye on Xiomara. “Parvati Fletcher was part of the group who infiltrated your organization.  I recall she acted as a distraction to provide additional surveillance.”

“But her anti-establishment tendencies - “

“Joke-skull,” Arthur interrupted drily. “They’re lesbians.”

I could hear Jokul’s jaw snap shut from across the room as he turned an amazing shade of red. “Jokul,” he muttered in correction.

Unable to speak up through her laughter, Xiomara sat down, waving at Grey to proceed while shaking with laughter at the odd turn of events.

Entirely nonplussed, Grey stood. “You said that you never set out to create a cult. I ask that you provide insight as to how we can prevent such events from recurring.”  Jokul was clearly caught off guard by the question. His face scrunched in concentration, head tilted.

After two minutes of silence, I surrendered. “Have any of you heard of a post-turtle?” I asked, earning a giggle from Tyche, who was still propping her head up from the shenanigans around Xiomara and Parvati.

Jokul and Parvati were both clearly fighting smiles, but the rest of the room looked confused.  With a sigh, I forged on. “It’s literally a turtle on top of a fence post. You don’t know how he got there by himself. He doesn’t either. But both of you know: he doesn’t belong there, he didn’t get there by himself, and he needs help getting down.” Granted, my explanation was met by a combination of groans and dawning comprehension, but it was accurate enough that everyone clearly got the point.

With a nod of acknowledgement in my direction, Jokul finally spoke. “I ended up where I was because of isolation and a very narrow group of opinions.  I insulated myself in the familiar, and that led to all of my information and discussion coming from sources with an agenda.  To prevent that, I would suggest continuing to encourage that people meet and become familiar with people they normally may not.  Cultural sharing.”

I shook my head as I heard the man who tried to kill me for my actions actually encourage those actions to continue.

And then, he took it further. “Not only with entertainment, which is optional, although they are essential I realize. Take cultural sharing into account when allocating work assignments, which are not optional.”

The last person I expected to speak up defied my last tenuous hold on reality. “I would add class assignments, as well,” Arthur insisted. When I turned, eyes so wide I thought they would fall out, to stare at him, he shrugged. “What!?  You know as well as I do that we learn through the lens of our culture. Mix up culture, you get questions you would never get normally.  Is this dish from this planet halal? I don’t know! You don’t know! But I would love to find out.”

Damnit. He had me there.

“What about further surveillance to prevent clandestine meetings?” Grey asked, dragging us back on topic. 

Jokul firmly shook his head against the notion. “There is plenty of surveillance, and you cannot increase it without creating a police-state. Ordinarily - I guess ordinarily for humans? - travel is the enemy of narrow thinking. We are already travelling at light speed to another planet, but we also cannot go anywhere but this ship. The next best thing is spending a prodigious amount of time around people who are as different from you as possible, I would think. At a certain point, no matter how hard you try, that person becomes a person, and they start to matter to you. You start to care. And you learn whether you want to or not.”

Oddly, that seemed to be the answer Grey was looking for. “I concede the floor to Eino Wiitala,” they intoned officially before taking their seat.

With a nod of recognition, Eino stood. “You just mentioned adjusting our class rosters to provide a more diverse group of students in each class, which I agree with. From an educational perspective, what other flaws are lending themselves to situations such as this?”

Without hesitation, Jokul responded. “The only compulsory course we currently have is the Galactic Core curriculum, and I do agree - now, at least - that it is essential to our new start. However, there is no course in existence that covers the late 20th century through contemporary times. That would be a solid start… Divisiveness ruined our world, did it not?” 

Nods echoed around the table, as he had a solid point.  I had to admit, he thought through this far more than I had anticipated.

Suddenly, the tables turned. “But you - “ he gestured at the entire Council, “do realize that most people on this ship don’t actually know any of you?”

Again, silence filled the room. I felt horrible as the accuracy of his question hit home, but Eino’s infinite calm only went so far as to nod in acknowledgement and encouragement for Jokul to continue.

“One of the underlying flaws that led to all of the recent events, I’ve realized, is that I saw Sophia Reid as a foe to be conquered. And I believed it when others told me she had designs for sovereignty. Had I known her? Were she more familiar to me as a person?” He scoffed, and for once I didn’t get offended. The fact that even Huynh had to stifle laughter at the idea that I was plotting to rule supreme may have helped. 

Jokul spread his hands, gesturing at how absurd everyone found the idea. “Everyone close to her finds the concept of her seeking power laughable, it seems. Anything approaching what I thought of her would not be possible for more than a few minutes of rational thought if people on this ship knew any of you, beyond being the people in power.”

Eino nodded and started making notes. “A series of workshops or seminars, perhaps? Open forums where one of us can be asked any question, get to know people better?”

Huynh grumbled. “Or you snots could just eat in the cafeterias once in a damned while.” Everyone turned to him, stunned. “What? I know I’m the only one who eats with everyone else on the Ark on a regular basis.  Somewhere that I’m not ‘Councilor’ anything, I’m the grumpy Vietnamese guy in the corner who ordered whatever someone was eating that looked good when I walked in.”

Fair… I thought guiltily. It had never occurred to me that my love of cooking meant I rarely ate with people outside my social circle, and I realized that I had been the same way Before.

Xiomara nodded thoughtfully. “Cooking classes.” 

Almost everyone looked confused.  The only exceptions were the smirk Tyche threw my direction and the look of horror I knew filled my face.

Sure enough, Xiomara turned to me. “Sophia loves to cook. What if she did some cooking classes for people on the Ark? And had other people - not the Council - come in and teach her how to make something, as well as the class?” 

While that sounded marginally more bearable, the idea of hosting a cooking class in general flooded me with anxiety.  I decided in that instant that, if I had to host education courses, so did the other Councillors.  Either they would back down, or everyone would be in the same position. I could handle either solution, honestly.

Eino conceded the floor absently, intent on his notes. Pranav was next. The first thing he asked about was the proximity alerts, which Jokul shamelessly admitted to being something they found out by mistake. After Miys confirmed that they would have to replace the implants with some rated for higher electrical current in the brain, we moved on. “It is known that a significant portion of your perception of Sophia Reid stemmed from the similarity between her primary traits and yours.  However, this information is not publicly accessible. How did you obtain this information, and who among your group was able to provide her file? Educator Farro’s as well, for that matter, seeing as you are on record as referring to him as Sophia’s, quote, pet warlord, end quote.”

I was dying to know the answer to this question. I had been waiting for this question. Derek and Zach had been working around the clock for close to a month to find out the answer to this question, to no avail.

However, the expression on Jokul’s face screamed that I was about to be disappointed.

In what could only be described as extreme confusion, Jokul actually removed his data band and passed it to Pranav. “I have nobody’s file but my own. I’ve never had anyone else’s file. You are welcome to perform whatever test you need in order to confirm the truth of that.”

Taking the data band with a nod, Pranav continued his line of questioning. “Assuming what you are alleging is true, how did you obtain information you should not be privy to?”

I should have been clued in by the sigh from Simon and the subsequent look Tyche fixed him with. I should have. But, in that moment, I thought nothing of it. Like an idiot.

Slowly, as though wanting to ensure we understood what he was saying, Jokul answered. “I was freely given this information, when I first woke up on the Ark.”

My stomach dropped when Tyche kicked Simon, who managed not to yelp but tried his best to scowl at her.

If anything, the majority of the Council looked more confused. Xiomara, however, groaned loudly. “When you woke up, who did your initial interview?”

“Interview?”

“Who was the first human you spoke to on the Ark?” she clarified pointedly.

With relief, Jokul’s expression relaxed. “Simon Rodriguez. When he explained why I was on this ship, he stated that there was another person with similar attributes who they were searching for. One Sophia Reid.” He gestured to me. “When we discussed my history in the After, he also mentioned that his previous conversation was, ironically, with another warlord.” Here, he pointed to Arthur. “This information was freely given. Certainly nothing obtained by devious means.”

Recording, hell. The sound of my palm hitting my forehead was echoed around the room and punctuated by a loud crack. When I peeked around my fingers, I saw a smug look on Parvati’s face and bright pink mark on Simon’s face.

After a couple more minutes, Pranav stood hesitantly, all formality gone. “That.  That satisfies my questions? I believe so. Giang?”

“No questions,” he barked. “I will keep that suggestion in mind for the engineering crews,” he added, pointing at Jokul. “He has a good point, and we should listen to that.”

I never, in my life, thought I would wholeheartedly agree with Giang Huynh, but I found myself nodding hard enough to risk injuring my neck. When he turned to me with a pointed look, I realized it was my turn. “No questions,” I held my hands up in surrender. “All of my questions have been addressed, quite publicly.” I couldn’t resist, in the end.

Arthur smirked in satisfaction and reached for the hilt of his sword but managed not to stroke it. Jokul scowled deeply, but at Arthur instead of me.  I could live with that.

It was astonishing what I had just learned I could live with, it turned out.

We have a tradition, when a youngling is finishing up their apprenticeship, that they share their favorite memory with the whole ship. It’s a way of officially joining the adult community on board as a contributing member, even though by the time you get there you’ve been doing an adult’s workload for five years already. Practically all your free time is spent on it as soon as you pass the last general proficiency exam and prove you’re not going to fuck up and get everyone killed during an emergency.

My friend Yumi shared the time she helped her father repair the aquaponic tanks. Dmitri talked about the first moment he realized he wanted to study navigation. Sara wrote a song about her pride in our traditions and the legacy we have as spacers, the good things we’re able to do and the challenges we overcome every hour to live this way.

You get the idea. It’s supposed to be about us. About the Saratoga and the black and the way we work together as a community. But I didn’t care about that. I mean, I cared, but not the way I was supposed to. By the time I was ready to finish out my mechanic’s license I was 19 years old and I’d spent a whole trade cycle dreaming about a girl back on Freya. Sixteen planets, month after month of travel time and two ship-wide panics and I couldn’t get her out of my head. I’d even sent her letters, saving up my share in the databursts for a chance to keep up a connection on a planet I knew I wouldn’t visit again for years.

No one onboard wanted to know about her. I knew that. All my tapped out notes and oblique references to hey, maybe my favorite memory is something planetside got laughed off as jokes. Oh Astra, you’re so funny. Everyone knows how much you love being out here. Come on, starfire, no need to keep us all in suspense, aren’t we your friends?

So I lied.

I lied, and I said my favorite memory was reassembling the tertiary engine during a four-day Night. I told them I loved knowing we’d get to the next system safely, and I loved pressing my hands against a working engine and feeling it purr up through my bones, and I loved the sounds of the ship, of our home, always in motion, always acting with purpose.

I lied through my teeth and they applauded me for it.

By the time I was 25 I knew I had to get off the ship. By then I’d seen Naomi again and I knew I wasn’t getting over her even if I spent the whole rest of my life in space, but it was worse than that. Some clever engineer on Ra-Prime had designed a new engine that could convert energy from galactic cosmic rays as well as starlight, and every ship with a hope of maintaining its place in the inter-colonial market was installing it. Also, there were more bots on board every time we stopped, scurrying around and making small tasks easier. The Saratoga had to keep up with the times, and that meant new tech, new training, new goals. If I left it much longer, I’d be demoted to supervisor instead of engine mechanic. Everyone tried to pretend that sort of thing was a promotion, really, but I’d watched it happen to Neil and Yumi and Monica already and they definitely didn’t look happier to have their jobs mostly taken over by bits of scrap with computers tucked in. Feeling useful was the only thing I had left by then. If I couldn’t have that, I didn’t have anything.

So I stood up at the next ship-wide meeting, and I said I wanted to be the new planetary contact on Freya. I could learn from Helena now, I could build on her contacts, and maybe in a few years I could take over so she’d be able to retire the way she kept hinting at. I said I would be an asset, because I could keep up with the new tech better than she could. Because I knew what the ship needed now, what to look for now, not what we needed thirty years ago when she became our liaison. Because I was a spacer, and I’d lived my whole life in the black, and she’d only even been up to orbit.

They didn’t believe me at first, but I insisted.

They said, “Why do you want this?”

And I told them: “Because soon you’ll have no use for me.”

I told them: “I can do it better than any colonist ever could.”

Sara frowned at me and said, “This is about that girl, isn’t it.”

And old Henri leaned forward and said, “I thought you were going to ask her to come up. All those letters, you said you might ask her.”

I told them: “I knew that would make you happier. I knew that was what you wanted to hear. But she was never going to come, because I was never going to ask.”

Jerome shook his head and said, “We all know you, Astra. A handful of letters? Two visits in eight years? You know we know you better. You hate it planetside.”

I said: “No, I don’t. I never have.”

They looked confused. Surely this thing everyone knew was true? Surely they hadn’t made it up my whole life?

Monica said, “Why would you give this up? Your family, your home?”

I said: “Because I love her, and I love Freya, and want my future to be more than watching robots do my job and planning for every breath of air I take.”

They told me she’d be older if I went. That spacers live longer, that we age better. They told me it’d been months since the last databurst already. They told me she’d have found someone else.

I said: “Let me tell you my favorite memory.”

Neil snorted, rolled his eyes. “You mean that one about fixing the old engines?”

I said: “No, not that one, the real one.”

And I told them about the sun on my neck as I walked through Freya’s largest outdoor market, and the breeze on my face, the smell of food cooked over a real fire in my nose and the taste of cinnamon on my tongue. I told them about little gardens set on windowsills, with herbs sprouting in crooked rows and ivy growing up the walls crumbling walls that no one needed to repair because even damaged brick was good enough to keep out the mild winter. I told them I’d never felt so alive, so real, aboard the ship as I did after just a few minutes walking those streets.

And I told them: When I met Naomi that day, the fifth day since our first meeting, she had perfect red flowers stuck in the dark cloud of her hair. She wore a flowing yellow dress that would never pass shipboard inspection, and when she stepped into the sunlight she glowed like a goddess. I told them that when she smiled at me her eyes were dark and warm and the everything the black outside the viewports wasn’t. I told them that kissing her made me feel safe and whole. That she didn’t care if I was clumsy and slow in Freya’s gravity. That she caught me when I fell, that she held my hand, dark fingers twined with mine, and helped me stagger to a seat when I got tired, and let me sleep against her shoulder, so that I woke with her arm around me and her warmth against my side, nothing but soft cloth and the smell of flowers between us. I told them that I knew, then, that I never wanted to be anywhere else.

Neil said, “We need you for the new installs.”

Monica said, “We’ve all crushed on a colonist, Astra, you know it wouldn’t work.”

Jerome said, “You belong here; if you want to be with her so much, ask her up.”

On and on and on, and it all came down to no. No, you can’t stay on Freya, no matter how useful you’d be. No, we don’t want you to leave. No, we don’t care how you feel.

I didn’t say: You don’t know me at all.

I didn’t say: I’m not crushing on anyone.

I didn’t say: I don’t belong here, I never have. Isn’t it amazing how you can sit right next to me, breathing the same air and sharing the same space and still know so little about me.

I didn’t say anything.

But the next time we entered Freya’s orbit, I packed my things: a tiny little pile of souvenirs and gifts wrapped in the one of Naomi’s headscarves. I checked the engines one last time, made sure they’d hold for a while without intervention. And as everyone hurried around, getting ready for deceleration, for the landing party, for two weeks of contract negotiations and repairs and supply runs, I serviced the shuttles.

No one questioned it. It was part of my job. And it meant that when we settled into orbit, I was ready. As the main settlement came into range, I locked the door on number 3 and took the pilot’s seat. As Freya’s star rose on the planetary horizon, I depressurized the airlock. And when Jerome got on the comms to ask me what I thought I was doing, I said, “This isn’t about you.” I said, “You can have the shuttle back tomorrow.”

I said: “Don’t try to look for me.”

And I shut off the comms and took myself down, out of orbit, out of the black, to where even the night was never really dark and the cold of space could never reach me.

I left my people, and my ship, and my work, and Naomi took my hand in hers, and she smiled and said: “Welcome home.”

The glider fell away from the spire smoothly, and Skip let the momentum build for a moment. This was the best part, really. The biggest thrill she got anymore. That little frisson down her spine as the city rose up before her, sparks grounding in her elbows, her wrists, the joints of her fingers. She leaned to the left and fed the engines more power, pushing the nose down and around for the right angle with one hand and easing the wingtips out with the other. A clean sweep-and-roll maneuver and she was soaring back toward the rising moon, the bulk of New Tarel sprawling beneath her.

Fell caught her in the ribbon of airspace between First Spire’s reach and the legally convoluted domain above the commercial district, his own bird a blue-and-white flicker in her peripheral vision.

“Ready when you are,” he reported, slowing a little to match her. “So, where we going?”

“Darbinian solar arrays” she said, “They’re well ripe for harvest.”

Fell whistled, high and sharp enough to make the mic crackle on the edge of the sound.

“Darbinian? You got a premonition I should know about? Someone give you a lucky charm with your lunch today?”

“We can do it,” Skip insisted. “Low and fast, like the old days.”

“I ain’t saying we can’t do it, Skip, but you know that’s Karga territory. They catch us, it won’t matter what we did four years ago. Those punks don’t care who’s in their airspace, they make ‘em all dead.”

“So we won’t let them catch us then,” she squeezed the controls and flipped into a tight spiral, then snapped her wings out broad again: let ‘em try.

“You’re a regular thrill-chaser tonight, aren’t you,” Fell grumbled, but he dipped his wings in agreement.

“I learned from the best.”

They came up on the sky fields quickly. The panels gleamed in the twilight, each one steadily and efficiently collecting power for the busy offices, shops and homes below. Or they would be, once she and Fell cleared out the leeches.

They’d been beneficial, once. Fist-sized artificial mechanics to make sure the supports stayed stable, the power lines stayed undamaged and the arrays stayed free of any debris that made it up this high. The Coalition had made millions of the things. But a machine needed power, didn’t it? And some clever programmer or engineer, or maybe some not-so clever budget balancer, had looked at the little things and said, “Well, why don’t we power them from the array? They’re up there anyway, aren’t they?”

A year later, half the city was living in rolling brownouts and two districts barely had power at all. A good-size leech could drain a fully charged private grid in a day, suck up a speeder’s reserves in less than an hour, and stars help you if they latched onto your glider. Dead propellers and the weight of a few leeches in the wrong place could take an unwary pilot all the way down to real dirt-and-sand ground. But the Coalition bounty was a powerful lure. If you were fast enough, smart enough, lucky enough, you could make a salary-plugger’s monthly pay in a night. More, if you hit the right places.

She and Fell were careful; tempered glass storage pods, protective paneling, armored flight jackets. And they used the old hooks, wide, curving blades on the end of a meter-long stick. You could go faster with one of the new sticky-net scoops, but the overhead was higher, and Fell was afraid the leeches would adapt to the things in another month or three. Better to be slow and careful than fast and dead, he said. Taking things slow wasn’t one of Skip’s talents, but life under the Coalition’s strictures had taught her a deliberate wariness that worked well enough for circumstance.

“You sure this is what you want to do tonight?” Fell asked as they lined up on the narrow corridors between two arrays. “Poach Karga hunting grounds?”

Skip slid her hook out of its holster. The computer highlighted the closest targets, little bundles of pulsing energy in corner struts or clinging tight in the middle of a panel.

“You got a better way to get green-fresh credits before morning? Besides, I’m quicker than lightning, remember?” She couldn’t keep her grin out of her voice. “Just try to keep up.”

Fell sighed, low and long-suffering, but he didn’t argue.

The first leech came easy: sting, scrape, scoop. A rattle of metal on glass and a swipe of her glove and the capture pod sealed shut. The second settled beside it, then a third. At the end of the row was a stubborn one, larger than average and scrunched in on itself, rooted securely to the array

Skip took a few breaths, resettling her grip. It was no good stunning the thing if she couldn’t get it off its perch; any leech that fell would just latch on somewhere else, maybe somewhere that didn’t get its power renewed every day, or every week. And the Coalition only paid for whole leeches delivered in person.

She jabbed, missed and jabbed again. The leech hung on, waving a sparking bundle of wires at her and she twisted her hook, arm aching with the motion. She had to bob down a breath to catch it when it finally popped free, but she managed to get the seal on just before the leech reached the lip. She gave it a good glare to match its malevolent scrabbling and nestled it with the others. The next two were simpler, and she fell back into the rhythm of the job, moving from corridor to corridor methodically. Every filled pod was another handful of trapped sunlight pushing her name higher and higher on the waiting list.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” The corridor ahead was just as full as the previous one, and Skip leaned back to check her supply of storage pods. The horizon looked clear.

“That.” Fell angled his bird away and flashed his wingtips, pointing deeper into the solar fields. Skip looked closer, prodding her visor to magnify.

Movement, she could make out that much. Vague shapes her navcom gradually identified as other flyers, moving with purpose.

“We should—”

“Yeah,” Skip agreed, but it was too late. The Karga crashed over the arrays in a wave of orange and violet neon, the scream of tortured engines riding with them. Their gliders ranged from top-market single-jets and faux-flash kites to older bike-bird combos like Skip’s own. Some pilots didn’t even have helmets, just gas masks and the sort of manic keenness that spelled ruin for anyone else in their airspace.

“Go, go!” Fell shouted, making the radio crackle and spit in Skip’s ear. She turned and dove, folding the wings in close to minimize visibility. The glint of starlight off glider wings was a dead giveaway, and that wasn’t an exaggeration with New Tarel’s gangs. If they were lucky, they hadn’t actually been seen. She risked a glance back for Fell, but if he was there he was doing a good job of hiding.

Two orange-lit riders had broken off from the pack. They were gaining on her.

Thrice-crashed sons of a cud-chewer. She changed course, weaving through arrays as closely as she dared. No luck. Her pursuers were close enough for the navcom to pick up now, and from the look of it their gliders were fresh-charged and flash-modded. She’d be lucky to make it to the edge of the field.

What was down below over here? Offices? Apartments? Shops? She prayed for shops. They had the best parking balconies, and she was going to need one.

One of the riders was almost above her now. Nothing else for it.

The wings strained as she plummeted into sharp dive, and she cinched them even closer. Speed, that was the key. Get just enough of a lead to slip out of navcom range.

She eased the wings back out as late as she dared and skidded to a stop under a penthouse garden overhang. A moment later the Karga enforcers streamed past with a roar of over-juiced jets. She counted back from a hundred in her head, listening hard. When she reached 25 without seeing or hearing any more flyers, she ducked into open air again and jinked between buildings, dropping levels and merging with traffic where she could. After 5 full minutes with no signs of pursuit, she picked out a more deliberate course.

Fell was waiting for her at the bounty drop-off, polishing a wingtip and trying to look as if he hadn’t been tracking her approach.

“Worrying over me again?” she teased as she gathered her packs. Fifty-two leeches. Enough to put her in the running, maybe enough to push into the top percentages.

“Just wondering how long you were going to keep me waiting in the cold,” he shot back, hefting his own haul. “My bones aren’t as young as they used to be, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, suck it up old man,” she grinned at him. “Come on, let’s get you into the warm.”

The Coalition reps didn’t talk much, which suited Skip fine. She was always on edge at the drop-off, jittery in the presence of those green uniforms, sure someone would call her out even after the pardon. She pulled up the colony lottery feeds to distract herself. Fell settled beside her.

“You’re really going up.” His voice was tight and low, a reminder of the days when he’d still been her sergeant and she’d still thought New Tarel held a future she wanted.

“You know I am.”

“They could kill you, up there in the black.”

“They got no reason to. Not anymore.”

He hunkered lower, pressing their shoulders together.

“You’re the best thing here, you know? Without you, I might as well pack up the kid and Nadine and move in with her parents like they’re always asking. Get some corporate net-spider job down in the lower levels and forget I ever touched real sky.”

“You could come with me,” Skip said. “All three of you could. They like families. You’d be a sure thing.”

“No such animal,” he said. “Not in this lifetime. You and me, we know how fast that sure thing turns to vapor, don’t we.”

“Not this time,” she said. She grabbed his arm, staring intently at the numbers on her visor. Their pods must’ve been processed; there were new credits in her account. Shiny green energy credits, straight from the Coalition coffers, buoying up the pale, recycled ranks of her savings. On the passenger list her name flickered, then flashed green and started moving. Up and up, higher and higher, pushing right to the top of the waiting list. Giddy hope swelled in her chest.

And there it was. An actual ticket with her name and reservation number. Boarding time: 0600. All she had to do was grab her bag from the spaceport storage locker and show up. She tried not to hug herself too obviously. Months of planning, paperwork and interviews and she was finally, finally getting out. Away from crowded airspace and choking power restrictions. Away from shadows and smog, away from stale, recycled water, away from everything that’d been dragging like weights on her neck these last four years.

“It’s really happening,” she whispered. “Fell, I really—”

A flicker at the corner of her vision. Orange and violet lights, sweeping the byways above them. Getting closer.

Shit.

“Eyes on us,” she muttered. Fell squeezed her shoulder and stepped away. Go to ground, he signed, and she nodded. If they dropped a few more levels they’d be in Duster territory: risky enough, but safer than trying to dodge a dozen Karga at once. She slipped into the Phoenix in the half-focused state she’d run most of her old missions in. The tremble of the engine between her knees matched the buzz under her skin, the wings stretching out restlessly like extensions of her fingers.

She took the first gap in traffic she saw and didn’t look back, let her instincts take over. A left turn here, right turn there, down two levels and left again, some part of her brain tracking the flashes of orange and blue in her peripherals, flying by sight alone because the navcom made too much digital noise to go unnoticed forever. Fell would catch up, or he’d find her after. Take a few days to lie low in one of their old haunts and—

She didn’t have a few days, the glowing dream of the future reminded her. She had to be at the spaceport in a few hours.

She snapped back to full awareness. Karga lights were closing in on her left. She dodged away, climbed a few levels, dodged again and broke out of the old byways into a corridor she’d never seen before. Streamers and neon danced on every side, gang-signs scrawled over building after building.

She’d been herded into Karga territory. Idiot. She should’ve never let herself go on automatic. An orange glow off to her right was getting closer. She switched on the navcom, swept through a side corridor and banked up and left at the intersection, heartbeat loud in her ears. The navcom beeped: eight flyers, and Fell running before them.

She’d never shake them all down here. They knew the byways, they probably had traps at every corner. She needed proper sky. She gunned the engines and pushed straight up. Nine more levels to open airspace.

She made it four levels before they caught up, mocking whoops and roaring jets announcing them. Skip dodged around a modified Falcon and ducked as its rider swiped a hook over her head. Still she climbed, eyes fixed on the faint glow of moonlight ahead. Another glider swept towards her, a collision course, and she gritted her teeth and swept to the side, her climb slowing. The rider hefted a storage pod, grinned, and threw it just as she swept past. Glass shattered, and she caught a whip of wires and clinking aluminum plates in the corner of her eye.

No, nonono.

She toggled to autopilot and reached for her hook. The leech was the largest she’d ever seen, at least as long as her forearm and as wide as her splayed hand. It scrabbled over the wings, knocking out p-v panels and jamming up joints as it moved toward the power hubs. She jabbed at it, missed, took the hook in both hands and jabbed again.

“Use your damn eyes, Skip,” Fell growled down the line. She jerked around as he blew over the space above her, two Karga in his wake.

They’d stretched a sticky-net up ahead, a leech trap for the windfields but just as deadly to the average glider. And unlikely to show up on the navcom as an obstacle. She swept the stunned leech off her wing hurriedly and grabbed the controls, twisting into a spiral and pulling the wings in close. Just a little further…

Clear.

The power display dipped, red flashing across her visor. The leech, it had to be. The navigator flickered and went dark, the wing joints stiff and unresponsive; she was falling, uncontrolled, the glider little more than weight pulling her down. She toggled the controls, reached under the front cover and flipped the hard reset switch. Nothing. No power left at all.

“Skip!” Fell swooped back, circling toward her. “Try to steer for the apartments.”

“You always did have shit plans,” Skip retorted, but she was already shrugging out of her harness. No navigator. None of the delicate magnetic arrays that controlled the wings would respond. She reached down to pop her boot locks. The only way to right a falling bird without power was weight dispersal and manual control.

“Give me a heading?” she asked, pulling herself up behind the seat.

“2 points south, southwest, try to keep the Spire in sight.”

“Wind-blessed miracles, that’s what you’re asking for,” she muttered and pushed herself back over the storage pods. Her feet found the right positions and she stomped hard on the elevator pedal. The nose soared up. A little too high, but she’d drop again when she adjusted the wings. Her fingers curled over the wing-joint switches. She extended the tips and tugged on the flaps, fighting for every hint of drift and lift. The Karga were closing in again, a spiral of blurred masks and streaming lights.

She missed the first platform.

“Hold on Skip, I’m coming!”

She flexed her hands, breath hissing between her lips. She had to make the next one. She could see the warning lights of an abandoned landing pad. It was lower than she’d hoped, but if she kept falling she was definitely dead. Better a climb than nothing.

It wasn’t graceful. Even with the lift she’d bought and further slowing by snagged wing panels, the impact still flung her across the platform, screaming metal echoing in her ears and the coppery taste of blood on her tongue.

For a moment she just lay there, curled around her middle and running mental checks: toes still wiggled, fingers still waggled. Her whole right side hurt with the kind of deep, aching pain that stuck around for weeks in big dark bruises, but she could breathe. She leaned on her elbow to lever herself up and fell back as stars exploded behind her eyes. Her right shoulder was definitely in trouble. She took a few breaths and tried again, using her left hand instead, and made it to what could technically be called a sitting position against the guardrail.

Her hook lay just in front of her feet. She tried to clamp it under her boot and drag it closer on the vague idea of using it as a crutch, but had to give up when the attempt left her breathless and light-headed, sweat dripping down the side of her face as white-lightning pain crawled down her side. Stars and frostwinds, she was definitely in trouble now. If they came after her again…

A whirr of engines, broken messages streaming over her cracked visor. She held as still as she could, eyes half-open and unfocused. Her jacket should block most scanners. If she was lucky, an unmoving target would satisfy them.

A blur of orange and blue hovered at the edge of her vision. Her visor buzzed again, fragments of a freeze warning, but she held still, not looking, not blinking.

A shout, and what sounded like laughter, and the glider lifted away. She kept her breaths slow and shallow until she was sure they’d moved out of visual range.

She took stock again, widening her range of focus to include her Phoenix. The initial inspection was not promising. Both wings stuck out at strange angles, the photo-voltaic bands hanging loose or scattered over the floor. The armor plating was half-peeled off the nose and one of the propellers dangled from the tail shaft, cracked to reveal the wiring inside.

Something clinked. There was a screech of metal-on-metal and Skip realized something was moving. She scrabbled for the hook, heedless of the pain in her shoulder. The leech. It couldn’t be anything else.

A sparking wire snaked out of the wreck, closely followed by more clinking taps of metal legs and the dull glow of the main body itself.

Skip braced the hook against the corner where wall met floor and hauled herself to her feet. Her visor still had power, broken as it was. Her jacket had a battery. Her boots, too. And there were stories. Bodies found with a leech hooked into skin and bone. Unlucky mechanics and stupid kids taking stupid risks with bad equipment.

That wasn’t going to happen to her. She had her ticket. She was getting out.

She’d wounded it, at least, in their first scrabble. It was half-dragging itself along, not as fast as before. She jabbed with the stinger and it curled away, but a hook couldn’t kill a leech. She’d have to smash it. There were enough broken bits of Plastech and metal around, she’d find something. Something heavy enough to pin it down, or sharp-edged, for preference. Something she could wield one-handed. The running board. It was solid steel, as long as her arm. It had torn half off its mounting, held only by the last screw.

It took three more stinging jabs for her to cross the platform, and another before she could claw her multitool out of its compartment. She got the screw out just as the last sting wore off, and as the leech lunged she batted at it, knocked it skittering to the side and flipped it onto its stomach. She chased, bringing the bar down again and again, ignoring the twinges in her side until all the little parts were scattered and there was nothing but crushed rubber and spattered slime left.

Then she threw off her visor and toggled her wrist radio, rubbing at the gritty feeling behind her eyes.

“Fell?” she whispered, as if that would keep the transmission off monitors. “Fell, you out there?”

Silence.

She dragged herself back to her Phoenix and slumped against the fuselage.

“Fell, you better not be dead, you hear me? You are not dying on me now. Not today.”

She closed her eyes and waited, listening for anything but the sound of her own breath rattling in her throat and faint buzz of static. Nothing.

The medkit in her pocket was bare-bones basic but it had painkillers and antibiotics, and she needed both. The pain in her shoulder spiked when she reached for it, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through.

The timer display blinked as she peeled two doses of each off the squat blue and green stacks. 0400. Two hours to get herself to the shuttle launch on the other side of First Spire. The Phoenix was trashed. She wouldn’t be flying anywhere. She probably had an hour of leeway, maybe two before they gave her ticket away, but with miles of stairs and bridges to cross she’d still be walking then.

And she couldn’t leave without making sure Fell was okay.

She dragged herself to the navcom, the meds bitter on her tongue. If he wasn’t on comms, maybe she could still track him down.

“Perks of colony life, Fell, listen close. One, there ain’t no Karga there. Next best thing to getting disappeared for hiding, a whole new planet. Two, they got jobs with benefits. Retirement plans and that. They got me a shop all ready to go. Get to set my own hours, too, long as the work gets done.”

She took the back off the navigator and wired her boot batteries into it. It wouldn’t last long, but she didn’t need it to. She set the search grid to 1000 meters and settled in to wait.

“Three, the summer’s warm and lasts seven whole months. None of this snap-change weather like we got to deal with.”

Nothing. Not even a blip. Maybe the oncoming freeze was fritzing out the signal.

“Four—” she coughed over the crack in her voice, wincing against the throbbing in her side. “Four,” she repeated. “Four is, is I’ll be there, Fell, and I know it’d be better with you, okay, so you better answer me before I track you down in whatever mess you’ve—”

A crash, something heavy hitting something fragile, and the guide-lights on the landing pad blinked out all at once. The door at the other end of the pad shivered, then popped open.

“Skip? That you?”

Fell’s dimly lit face peered at her from the corridor. His jacket was torn and his boots scuffed, but it was definitely him and he was definitely alive. If anything, he looked better off than she was.

“Still kicking,” Skip said, the words half-strangled by the tightness in her throat.

“Sorry for the wait,” he said, tossing aside what looked like a piece of rebar. “I busted my radio, couldn’t get it to pick up more’n static. You alright?”

Skip nodded, swiping at her eyes surreptitiously. “Just waiting for you to get over yourself so’s I don’t have to be getting any angry comms from Nadine when I’m finally free of this place.”

She could see him chewing the inside of his cheek, nothing but friendly concern in his eyes.

“Skip…”

“I’m going,” she insisted. “I’m going if I have to walk the whole way and carry you besides, I am.”

“Okay,” he said. He sighed and dragged his hand over his scalp. “Okay. Well, staying here’s a no-go anyway. Temperature’s dropping fast; in a few hours we might not be able to fly at all. How’s your bird?”

She gave him a look. As if he had to ask, the way she’d crashed. He sighed again.

“You got any good propellers left? A few wing panels? Your navcom alright? I wrecked pretty good but we might be able to get her limping if you’ve got the parts.”

“I got…” she scanned the wreck again, looking for anything that might still be whole this time. “Yeah, I think I got all that.” She didn’t mention that trying to scavenge anything useful in the near-dark was going to be frustrating at best. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d made do with so little.

“Where’d you crash?” she asked instead.

“Old shopfront one bridge over. I had to scrape a wing and blow the nav to make it convincing, but they didn’t stick around too long after.”

She nodded. With a solid freeze on the way even the Karga would get in the warm. “Guess we better get started then.”

She wedged her helmet back on for light and started dismantling the navcom while Fell wrenched at the propellers. It was slow work, and the creeping chill slowed them further. The third time her tool slipped and she was left cursing at cold-numbed fingers, Fell took over that task, too.

“You’re just gonna hurt yourself worse,” he said, waving her away. “Tell me how you got on all this. What’s up there you’re so eager to get to?”

Skip grudgingly took a seat on a broken chunk of concrete.

“Ren sent me a message, said she’d drop my name. Must’ve been a good drop too, ‘cause it didn’t take them more than a week to process my forms. Part time security, part time mechanic. And she found me a little place to stay. It’s got real trees and a real river and she says there’s glider access less than a klick up the road.” She’d even had a permit for the Phoenix, but that was hardly important now.

Fell’s forehead scrunched up. “Well, it certainly sounds nice,” he said.

“But?” Skip prompted.

His hands waved denial. “You don’t need to hear it.”

“What else am I gonna do? You got something to say, tell me.” She squeezed her multitool tight against her palm, the edges hard even through her glove.

“Just keep talking, Skip,” he said. “You already know what I want to say.”

She did. He was going to say it sounded too good to be true. Her own personal idea of paradise, specially packaged to catch her eye. Too good. Too perfect. Nothing that nice ever happened in New Tarel. Not anymore. Not for people like them.

“They took Ren,” she pointed out. “She says no one up there cares what you did in the war. Just what you do now.”

Fell just shook his head and pulled the memory bank from its slot.

“Carry this,” he said, holding the jumble of computer bits out to her. “I’ll get the rest.”

He kept her talking all the way through the dim corridors, trudging onward with a stack of wing panels under one arm and two propellers slung over his shoulder while she did her best to paint the icy air with her words, giving all her hopes color. The shop, the open sky, the spread of farmland instead of skyscrapers.

“You really should come with me,” she tried as he shouldered the last door open, revealing his own crashed bird. It wasn’t as bad off as her Phoenix, but it wasn’t pretty. If they got her off the ground it’d be a wobbly flight at best.

Fell set down his load and stretched, rolling his shoulders.

“I got responsibilities to think of,” he said.

“Think on ‘em then,” she insisted. She dumped her tangle of parts into his pilot’s seat. “Think hard. If you see a future for little Eri here, you tell me, ‘cause I’ve been trying for four years and all I can see anymore is walls closing in. And I need to breathe, Fell, I need sky.”

He shook his head and didn’t answer for a while, slotting the propellers and p-v panels into place with half-muttered curses. Skip set to work on the shattered navcom, keeping her silence. Sometimes Fell needed time to stew over a thing, and opening her mouth too early never made him think any faster.

“The world won’t change if you run away from it,” he said finally, and for a moment Skip was plunged into memory: her old shop, five years ago, their roles reversed as he tried to convince her the future was worth fighting for.

She’d learned a lot since then. She’d learned nothing would bring back lost soldiers, or lost ideals, or a way of life that had died choking on dust and blood and the burning bile of betrayal. The world had changed.

“My life might be better,” she said, half whisper. Then, stronger, “How long do you want to spend pretending you don’t see the cage? We tried to change things. I don’t remember that going so well for us.”

Fell grunted, clamping the last panel into position.

“I’m tired of beating myself bloody against this place,” she tried again. “Maybe it’s time we changed something else.”

The engine cranked, sputtered, then settled into a low, familiar hum.

“You’re the only thing I got left here,” she said. “I need this.”

“You need your head checked.” Fell pulled on his helmet and started system checks. “Strap in,” he ordered. “We better get on, if you’re gonna make that shuttle.”

“You’ll take me to the shuttle port?”

“If I don’t you’ll just rag on me forever, won’t you?”

“Thank you.”

Skip settled her helmet for a better seal and clambered up behind him, making room for herself among the storage packs. Her boots wouldn’t get a solid lock, but she strapped her legs down and wound her arms though the tether loops.

“Ready,” she told him, nudging his elbow with her toe in case he couldn’t hear, and his head bobbed in acknowledgment.

The flight was a tenuous one, the wings vibrating through turns and the propellers buzzing. Fell was careful, dropping down layers at any hint of a nearby flyer and taking the warmer squirrelly corridors with grim determination while Skip tried not to flinch when the tethers dragged on her shoulder, tried to keep herself still and her weight well-balanced.

They reached the shuttle port approach just as dawn broke over the horizon, a muzzy glow through the clouds highlighting busses and larger hovercars ahead. The admissions area teemed with travelers and well-wishers, all moving in the complicated Brownian motion of farewells and checkpoints.

Fell slowed to a stop in the drop-off zone, engine still running, and Skip half-climbed half-slid to the slick pavement. She pushed up her visor and the wind stung her eyes with grit and cold. Frost-sharp air stuck in her lungs.

“So I guess…” she bit her lip. There was a jagged snag of guilt and fear in her belly, like an open wound. She hadn’t thought about this part, in all her planning. Somehow she’d forgotten that leaving meant saying goodbye.

After a moment Fell shut off the engine and shrugged out of his harness. The solid hand on her shoulder, she was almost expecting. The rough hug he pulled her into, his helmet bumping hers and the bitter smells of grease and sweat and charred rubber in his jacket, she wasn’t.

“You take care of yourself,” he said, eyes bright, and she nodded, wound her arms around his back and held on a moment longer.

“You too.” She took a long breath and stepped back. “I expect to see pictures of Eri’s birthdays,” she said. “And your bird, you gotta show me how you fix her up, alright? Take whatever you want from the Phoenix. And I still got some credit at the junkyard, if you need parts.”

He nodded, jaw tight, and she took another step back, and another, and finally stepped toward the storage lockers.

“Skip.”

She swiveled back.

“I’ll talk to Nadine. You get up there alright, you tell me there’s something worth doing there, I’ll try.”

It’d be two years in the black at least before she could start of offer any assurances, and another year after that before the next recruitment, but she clung to the chance anyway.

“I’ll see you there,” she said, trying for a smile. It probably didn’t look like much, but Fell smiled back anyway.

Misam, a yellow-orange giant, had a system of 9 planets that had first begun Human colonisation in 2115. This put it as one of the last groups of planets terraformed and colonised in the Diaspora, but the Human presence was still a good hundred-seventy-five years old at this point. It remained well-maintained, of course; despite Misam's location a class-3 Fold manoeuvr away from many of the other major systems, it was rich in resources to be exploited and not home to any sapient indigenous races, so the industrious Humans—who no longer lived on Earth in any capacity, and thus referred to themselves as "Extraterrestrials"—had spread over every terrestrial planet and most of the good-sized moons and dwarf planets as well by now.

Mickie Lane strolled through a small museum set within the Samarqand Spaceport on Acantha, Misam's fourth planet, skimming the plaques and inscriptions emplaced near surviving examples of the very first system settlers' tools and buildings. By now, all the original infrastructure was long gone—torn down after too many repairs and repurposed, or simply replaced with better materials as they became available—but everywhere Humans went, they erected memorials to their past, and always planned on keeping some early souvenirs anytime they began a new journey or settlement.

Many of the Misam system's first residents had been descended from nations originally living along old Earth's Silk Road, an ancient trade route on its largest continent, and this coloured the feel of much of the system's unique subculture; proud explorers and recorders, the people of Misam hoped to be the jumping-off point for further excursions deep into the galaxy and the discovery of new frontiers.

It was one such excursion Lane hoped to lead. A member of the Starforce military's Transspaceguild, the full resources of the Triumvirate government were made available to her branch for officially-designated jumpship trips out into unvisited solar systems; spacers often referred to this as simply "Tripping". She was on Acantha in the Misam system to pick up the last component needed for the upcoming trip, a hydrogen extractor to power the fuel-cells of the Fold engine in case of emergency.

Seeing nothing in the museum's modest gift shop she found worthy of purchase, Lane continued on across the polished silver-blue tile floor toward the Logistics wing. She had some time yet before her pickup was expected to be ready, but with little else demanding her immediate attention, a chance to sit for a while would be welcome.

As it turned out, she didn't need to sit long.

"Margaret Lane?"

Lane, in a seat near the front row of the waiting area, rose back to her feet; she raised a hand in the clerk's direction to indicate she'd heard. She locked the screen of the AmanuenSys she'd been reading a light novel on and tucked it back in her satchel before slinging it over one shoulder, taking several long strides toward the desk.

The clerk—a Celosian with an impressive bouffant of silver hair, an androgynous face, and a finely-toned triangular torso beneath their uniform—gave Lane a polite customer-service smile, scanning the readout in front of them. "All right, Ms.—sorry, Captain Lane—we have your extractor ready," they said in fluid, unaccented Hindi. "No payment is due. Please acknowledge here." They held out a sheet of digipaper, which she dutifully pressed one fingertip to in the highlighted box. Her full name in fake cursive sprinted across the empty lines in Romanic, Cyrillenic, Ji, Devanagari, Neodemotic, Enlili cuneiform, and Nyfuthark. "Lucky you. These don't come cheap," the clerk observed wryly, entering the last few bits of data required.

"Perks of government contracts," she responded. "We're SCC, scheduled for a Trip out toward an earmarked system a Class-5 Fold manoeuvr away."

"Es-see-see?"

"Ah—sorry, that might not be familiar. It's from the first letters of its name in English, 'Surveying and Charting Corps'. Explorers, basically." The clerk nodded, understanding. "Ah. I'm surprised that with a race as curious and wide-ranging as Humans that you delegate the exploration to just a single faction."

Lane laughed. "Hardly! But SSC are the ones with the Triumvirate stamp of approval, so we get to draw the official maps." She adjusted the strap hanging on her shoulder. "And we get the nice subsidies for things like hydrogen extractors. Water we can recycle on long trips, but hydrogen is a little harder to make shipboard." With a rueful smile, she added, "I know that's not how you folks or the Sekhtali do it, but sadly, not all humans are psionic enough."

The elf-like alien gave her a sympathetic smile, flipping over their digipaper. "What was your docking station, Captain?"

"Uh, Cerulean 571." The clerk nodded in acknowledgment, swiping a few fields on the digipaper and keying in a sequence.

"Thank you very much. We'll have that delivered for setup within two standard hours. I hope you have a pleasant rest of your cycle—and a safe Trip."