ROGUEHOUNDS [Space Opera/Comedy]

[SGMargrave]

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"Ramirex …"

In the unburnt half of the warehouse, Philomena relentlessly paced back and forth. Her fingers dug into her hips. Her head was tilted down and eyes swept the floor, hunting for the melted remains of her reputation as a businesswoman. She couldn't bear to look up. The embarrassing sight of the ruined room was too shameful.

"… this is all your fault," she said.

The tiny woman sat against the wall near her, cradling the stack of manga in her arms. As she stroked the spines, she rested her cheek on the top of the pile and nuzzled it.

"It's okay," Ramirex whispered to the books. "Nothing's gonna hurt you anymore."

"You hear me, Ramirex?!"

"Sure, Philomena," she said dreamily. "Absolutely. Whatever you say."

Burned scraps of paper littered the floor. Some of the writing was still readable. Mostly names, addresses, things that were shipped. But almost all the paperwork had gone up in flames. Just like her dreams were going up in flames, thanks to her dumb employees.

"I could've handled it just fine," Philomena said. "But you … You're the one who wasted all that water and brought them down here. You're the one who started a fire when I asked you to tidy the place up. You're the one who couldn't fix your own mess."

"That's right, Philomena," the other woman said.

"Ugh, I should toss you out the airlock, right now! Fire you, once and for all! Just like you 'fired' my warehouse!"

"You got it, Philomena," Ramirex mumbled. "Please punish me."

Philomena stopped pacing, squeezed her eyes shut, and rubbed her forehead. The people from the station were finally gone, but she still had the massive headache — and the massive bill — they gave her. Both throbbed inside her mind, ate away at her thoughts, filled her skull up with pain and dread.

How am I going to pay this?! she thought. What did I do to get stuck with these idiot employees? Why does the galaxy hate me so much?!

Suddenly the door started to open. She frowned at it, thinking, All the people from the station are gone, so who …? Then she noticed an unread message glowing on the intrapanel's screen.

Blaze Corvo and his stupid black leather jacket strolled into the warehouse.

"There you are. We—"

He dug his boots into the floor and pivoted in place, sweeping his eyes across the charred side of the warehouse. He stroked his chin, and then he waggled his finger at the scorchmarks.

"Something's different in here …"

As he continued to study it, he stood with his feet apart and put his fists on his hips.

"Did you guys redecorate or something?"

Philomena's blood shot through her body at the speed of light. Unable to control her shaking, she felt her rage reach the boiling point and send a superhot flush all through her chest and head. A thick red cloud seeped through her brain. Rumbling inside it was one single word, rolling like thunder and cracking like lightning:

STUPID STUPID STUPID!

She lunged at Ramirex and ripped the topmost manga volume off the stack.

"No!" the tiny woman shrieked, clumsily trying to grasp it while keeping a firm hold on the rest. "Please, don't! It's been through so much already—!"

As Corvo turned towards the shriek, Philomena flung the volume right at his stupid face with everything she had. It twirled through the air and nailed him right between the eyes as soon as they came to rest on her. The sudden impact made him snap back in surprise, and his stupid clumsiness made him stumble backwards and fall flat on his back with a deeply-satisfying thud that echoed through the warehouse.

Although she still huffed and saw red, she felt slightly better.

But only slightly.

Ramirex sobbed softly, while Corvo groaned on the ground.

Am I the only one in this business who knows what she's doing?!

Then, Rsh stepped into the doorway. He looked at the three of them, and then the warehouse, his expression as unreadable as ever.

"Did he tell you?" the Zantauran asked.

"Tell me what?"

Corvo sat up, the manga volume sliding off his chest and clapping onto the dirty floor. Ramirex, watching it happen, sobbed again. Rather than get up and fetch it, she hugged the stack in her arms more tightly.

His eyes shooting daggers at her, Corvo said, "About the rogue planet we found."

A cool, refreshing breeze blew through her head and whisked the red clouds away.

"The what …?" she asked, her eyes widening.

"The rogue … planet," Rsh repeated.

Philomena hurriedly shuffled across the warehouse to him, daring not to move too quick in case she banged something and woke up from this wonderful dream. When she sidled up to him, she grabbed the front of his red robe and stared up into the permanent snarl on his face.

"You found one?" she whispered, too stunned to focus on her poise as a businesswoman.

"Perhaps."

Dazed, she turned away from him and made a big loop around her three employees. As she smiled everywhere and yet nowhere, her heart somersaulted in her chest. It lifted her up into the sky where she could soar like a bird — despite the fact that space had no sky.

"Corvo," she snapped, "what are you doing on the floor?! Get up, we've got a planet to mine!"

She grabbed his shoulder and shook his arm, trying to make him hurry up and get to his feet, but it just made him sneer up at her.

"We cannot say it exists for certain," Rsh said. "We must search."

"Then …"

She turned away from Corvo and faced Rsh, whirling her arms in big circles. Scooping everyone towards the door.

"… let's get searching! We gotta start mining so we can pay off our bill!"

"What bill?" he barked.

"Doesn't matter. Come on, let's get going!"

"What bill?!" he roared, loud enough to fill the warehouse.

She gestured to the half-burnt room. "We had a little accident, and … now we need to pay for it. So … let's head out!"

His lips curled up in a cold sneer, and a throaty growl came through his clenched teeth. Then, after he had seethed for a bit, he shook his head.

"This is your business," he grumbled.

She folded her arms. "That's right," she said sharply, "it is."

"I meant … only you are liable for your debts."

"Well … whatever. As long as we alllll—" She scowled at Corvo, who had stood up and was dusting his jacket off. "—pull our own weight, we should be fine."

Rsh's lips stretched up and down like he wanted to spit out a reply, but he kept it to himself, which made Philomena very glad indeed.

"All of us pull our own weight already," Corvo said, adjusting his stupid leather jacket. "Except you."

She gasped at him. "I pull my own weight!"

"Doing what?"

"Making business decisions. And supervising you three."

Corvo rolled his eyes and half-turned away from her. "Yeah, sure, okay." Then he turned fully back to her, pointing at his own chest with his thumb. "But since I'm your mercenary bodyguard, in the end I carry your weight too. Carrying your ass out of danger, that is."

"That's what I pay you for, Corvo."

Not that you're any good at it, she thought.

Corvo continued complaining, "But. You also make me do all the mining too. So really, I carry twice as much weight as the rest of you."

"I mine as well," Rsh said.

"You don't have a space suit. Unless there's breathable air outside, you just sit on the ship doing your own, ahem, 'work' while I bust my ass being a bodyguard and a space miner."

Rsh spoke up, but this time he didn't have a snappy answer.

"I … survey."

Philomena stepped forward and narrowed her eyes at Rsh. "I don't say this a lot, but Corvo's right. Rsh, I'm not having you sit on the ship, doing your own stuff, while we're working our butts off."

"What would you have me do? I have no space suit."

She glanced around the room, looking for ideas. And then, she saw the one and only cardboard box full of paperwork that hadn't gone up in flames, sitting on a faraway shelf. With an "Aha!" she went over, gripped the handholds in its side, and yanked it off the shelf.

"You're going to— Oof!"

The sudden weight pulled her upper body down so hard she got whiplash. The cardboard box slammed into the floor, and no matter how much she strained her arms, they just wobbled around like wet noodles. Letting go of the handholds, she dusted off and then patted the lid.

"You're going to look through these," she said, pointing to the box.

"Why?"

"You're the one who said they might've been doing shady stuff here, right? There might be something handy in here. So go through them and put them into a batterdaze—"

"A … 'database'?"

"—and see if there's anything juicy … I mean, helpful. That way, you aren't wasting company time when you could be helping us."

Corvo couldn't help but smile at that. He ambled up to Rsh and clapped a hand down on the Zantauran's shoulder.

"See? Even she has good ideas once in a while. While the rest of us are plain-old mining … looks like you're going to be data-mining."

Stepping forward and rudely breaking out of Corvo's grasp, Rsh strode to the cardboard box and easily hefted it off the floor.

"As you wish," he said. "It is a good idea … I suppose," he added, sounding ticked off nonetheless.

He marched to the door. Corvo waited for him, and opened the door when he got close. Philomena followed the two of them out, and all three of them walked down the hallway to get ready …

Philomena lagged behind them until she stopped. Staring at the distant wall, she tried to work out what was nagging at the back of her mind.

"Wait a minute," Philomena said.

The other two stopped a few paces further down the hall and turned back to peer at her.

"Are we … forgetting something?" she asked.

Her employees shared a glance between themselves, eyes sparkling with curiosity as they wondered what it could be. But then, Corvo nodded deeply. A familiar, yet disappointed smile crossed his face, like he was kicking himself for not guessing the answer sooner.

He walked past them and went back into the warehouse.

Ten seconds later, he came back out with his hand around Ramirex's upper arm, guiding her into the hallway while she clutched the stack of manga volumes like they were the very last cartons of food in the whole universe.

Oh, right, Philomena thought.

"I'm taking them with me," she muttered. "Th-They're not safe here without me. I'm taking all of them with me."

As Philomena laid eyes on the pathetic sight, she scoffed and rolled her eyes.

As soon as she hits a little rough patch, she falls apart.

Why am I the only one around here who has it completely, totally, 100% together, huh?

Then, she turned around and headed through the office to gather her things.

This was a very long, annoying, painful day, but things are finally looking up! I am going to lead this company out into the stars, we are going to find that rogue planet, and I'm going to look stunning being the best chief executive who ever lived!

And then, I'm going to start gathering up the hottest harem of hunky boytoys in the galaxy!

She couldn't resist skipping down the hall a little, while she daydreamed about the future.

Look out, Milky Way! Ready or not … here I come!

---

Philomena Business Skills Arc
"The Inspection"

FIN​

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[SGMargrave]

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Consciousness was like a pebble that rippled the surface of the unconscious. As consciousness widened, there was still more unconsciousness beyond. There was always more, just beyond reach. [...] What was Norman's shadow side doing now? What was happening in the unconscious, denied parts of his own brain?
—Michael Crichton, Sphere
​

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ARC 3: "Descent"​

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"Did you find it?" the human asked over his shoulder.

"No," Rsh replied.

He sat awkwardly in the small bucket seat behind the main console. His program scanned the starfield and piped its output to the screen. As he watched closely for a sign it had detected something, he drummed his fingers on the console's surface on either side of its built-in mechanical keyboard. Its keys, sized for human fingers, mocked him with how tiny they were. The more the long seconds stretched to infinity, the more the program annoyed him. Its GUI was utilitarian and hideous, spelling errors were all over the place, the function calls needed another round of bugfixes for stability and efficiency, and missing files spammed the log with errors. The unnamed program got the job done, but it nagged him almost as much as the human looming behind him.

"How about now?" she asked.

"Still … nothing."

Philomena quieted, but he could practically hear her body vibrating uncontrollably. Full of energy, heated up with excitement, unable to sit still. In his head, he counted down the seconds until she pestered him with the exact same—

"Anything yet?!"

Six seconds, he thought.

"No, Philomena."

Long ago, he'd caged up his peoples' brutish instincts. But they still lurked in the depths of his mind, ready to get loose. They whispered in his ear, told him he could shut the puny human up permanently. Wrap his hands around her frail, squishy body and rip it apart, end that obnoxious blathering forever …

No, he thought. I will not listen.

Recently, Rsh had gone home for the first time in forever. And it had left him with … complicated feelings. He shoved the thoughts of his homeworld out of his mind and focused on the screen—

"Find it yet?" Philomena asked.

He growled to himself.

"Still. Nothing."

The human woman's foul mood had lifted completely. A sense of excitement and wonder, like that of a human child, took its place. The prospect of finding a rogue planet caused her to flit around the alcove behind him, like a tiny bird flapping its wings while it stuck its beak into the flowers in search of nectar.

Although Philomena was always … difficult to deal with, she had good days and she had bad days. In Rsh's estimation, the bad days came about when she unconsciously perceived herself as a failure. Her bizarre psychology attempted to protect her ego by retreating into a fantasy world where she could dodge any and all blame for her actions. On the other hand, when things were going well, she could delude herself into thinking she was a competent executive, and a sense of optimism prevailed in her.

Even then, she was still annoying. But her annoying traits were on the same level as what the humans dubbed a 'yappy dog.' That was their name for a pint-sized canine which barked endlessly, yet was so small and non-threatening they found it adorable.

Rarely … on the absolute best of days … she was almost tolerable …

"Come on!" she whined, grabbing his right shoulder and shaking it. "Find it already!"

Almost.

He brought his left hand up, reached across his body, and pinched the sides of her hand. His own movements were exceedingly delicate. If he squeezed just a bit too much, he'd pulverize every single bone in her hairless little meat slab. When he lifted it, the hand came up effortlessly. He moved it a foot to the side and then let go of it.

"Relax," he roared.

Tsking loudly, she stomped away from him. But, since the flight deck was very small, she didn't get that far before she was forced to turn around and stomp back to him.

"I'm just trying to run a business here," she snapped.

Rsh rolled his eyes at the blueshifted starfield in front of them.

The business would be much better off if they kicked her out. She contributed nothing of value — aside from her name being on all the documents and bank accounts, allowing him to spend the company's money as he saw fit while shielding himself from liability and risk. But she and Blaze had one of those volatile, passive-aggressive relationships where they argued endlessly even as they relied on each other like codependent parasites, while their sexual tension boiled under the surface. And Luci Ramirex also wished to pursue carnal relations with the woman, so if Rsh wanted cheap repairs, he needed to put up with Philomena and her stupidity.

Philomena herself only had eyes for exquisitely-handsome male humans. It was strange; by human beauty standards, she was fairly plain. Certainly not the 'bombshell' she imagined herself to be. But she was formerly rich, and from what he gathered she had used her wealth to surround herself with the finest specimens of male beauty in the galaxy. And her baffling psychology — probably wishing to protect her fragile ego — convinced her the 'hunks' were interested in anything besides giant piles of cash.

These strange hairless rodents, he thought, amused and annoyed in equal measure.

She opened her mouth and drew a breath.

"WE HAVE FOUND … NOTHING," he said.

Philomena sighed. "Why didn't you just … go look for it first, and then come get me?!"

He slammed his foot into the deck and swiveled the bucket seat to face her. The human hopped back to avoid his knees sweeping her legs out from under her. Stopping the swiveling by putting his foot down dramatically, he glowered at the puny pink human.

"So our mechanic may find us."

He nodded over to Ramirex. The tinier, darker human sat in the port corner of the aft alcove, on top of the sealed hatch that allowed them to climb down the landing leg. The ship was in flight now, though; the leg was tucked firmly under the ship's neck, blocking the hatch and securing the ship's integrity. Hardware interlocks made it physically impossible to open the hatch in space. When she noticed Rsh looking her way, she raised her head and glanced at them.

"If the engines should fail," he said to Philomena. "We would be stuck."

Philomena put her fists on her hips and raised her head. Aiming her chin at him while she looked down her nose.

"As the boss around here, I think we need to take some risks if we want to make money."

"The largest risk is … heeding your business advice," he said curtly.

After his clumsy mouth finished spitting out all those syllables, he paused to catch his breath.

The bullheaded human stared him down.

"I think you're a great businesswoman, Philomena!" Luci said with a dopey, simpering smile pushing up her cheeks.

Thrusting a hand at the dark-haired human sitting in her shadow, the redheaded woman gave Rsh a smug smile.

"See? She knows the truth."

He replied, "As reward for her loyalty … perhaps you should kiss her."

The tiny human shot to her feet, her features lighting up faster than a supernova. But grooves of disgust appeared on the face of the object of her affections, stretching her pink-white features into a grimace.

"I'm not interested in other women," she said.

Luci's face darkened like a black hole had opened in her heart and sucked up everything inside her.

The nominal boss stomped past Rsh, went down the short flight of stairs, and tromped onto the footpath around the empty pilot's seat.

Once she was out of earshot, Luci rushed forward until her flushed, fuming face was six inches from Rsh's muzzle.

"Don't toy with my emotions!"

"Do not feed her ego," Rsh grumbled back. "It is large enough … to attract satellites."

Luci straightened up. She folded her arms and turned sharply to the aft bulkhead, her cold shoulder deliberately thrust upward.

Humans! Rsh thought.

He spun the chair around and gazed at the blueshifted universe drifting towards them. Philomena stood at the fore of the flight deck, staring at the abyss beyond the ship's nose—

The program chimed.

His eyes zeroed in on the screen. Philomena, out-of-focus past the console, twirled to face him. Leaning over the tiny keyboard, Rsh rammed his ungainly fingers into its keys to look at the output. He sensed Luci hovering over his left shoulder. After she bounded up the steps, Philomena hovered over his right. His keen, predatory instincts sensed them as threats, but he sternly reminded them that the two women were just coworkers.

When it first spotted the rogue planet, the program isolated a large slice of the galaxy where it might be found. Rsh had set the flight computer to fly the ship perpendicular to the slice, hoping to catch the planet from another direction and triangulate its position.

And it appeared to have worked.

Onscreen, vector lines bracketed a star and an infobox flashed a message.

MICROLENSING EVENT DETECTED​

He hit the button to start resolving its position. The two humans edged forward while he sat back. As they shook, they brushed the coat on his cheeks. Neither seemed to notice, or care. The program showed an outline of the galaxy. The slice got narrower, reducing the search field.

A successful hunt. He allowed his keen predator's instincts a moment of savage triumph before he buried them again.

The humans struggled to control their giggles. But as Rsh watched the calculations running down the screen, he noticed something. He punched a few commands in and switched to a new screen. It was a dump of planetary data from across the starnet.

"Hmm," he said.

"What is it?" Luci asked.

"It is close to Egadoro."

"You mean the system with Croshaw-Morton?"

"Yes." His eyes scrolled down the data until he found what he was looking for and pointed to it. "Ah. The Egadoro system has orbital irregularities … consistent with a missing planet."

"So it got knocked out of orbit somehow."

Rsh ran a few more commands, and the program simulated the galaxy in reverse. Time unwound by millions of years with every passing second until Egadoro and the projected path of the rogue planet intersected. The simulation froze.

"Likely," he said. "Its proximity to our route … probably made it easier to see." Out of breath, he spat out one last word by way of explanation. "Parallax."

The program finished its calculations and presented a rough sketch of the rogue planet's path through the galaxy. He ran a command to calculate the optimal path to narrow its position down further, and then feed that data to the flight computer.

"It is close," he said. "Should not be long."

Philomena hummed happily. "Rsh, find us that planet!"

She puts no effort into doing anything, Rsh thought, yet she makes a simplistic comment and deludes herself into thinking she's in charge here.

Humans.

Philomena and Luci pulled back and stood up straight, right behind the bucket seat.

"Somebody get Corvo out here," Philomena said. "I need him … to sacrifice his life saving mine, if things get dangerous."

"Where is he, anyway?" Luci asked.

"Common room," Rsh remarked.

He minimized the astronomy program and navigated to the ship's operating system. From there, he entered the media system and effortlessly breezed around Blaze's laughable attempts to conceal what he was doing. Within fifteen seconds, he threw up the media file Blaze was playing in the common room onto the monitor.

Lesbian porn.

"Eww!" said Philomena, the woman who mentally undressed every hunk who'd ever crossed her path. "Pervert!"

Rsh looked over his shoulder at Luci. The tiny human stared at the screen, transfixed by the sight of the naked woman. Their writhing bodies reflected in her sparkling eyes.

"Umm … I-I-I'll go …" she blubbered. "Bring him out here."

Her boots thudded heavily against the deck as she clomped back, unable to tear her eyes off the monitor.

"But i-it might take a while … to convince him to stop."

She backed into the aft bulkhead while her excuses filled the flight deck. Once her body recovered from the impact, her hand crawled across the wall like a spider until it found the intrapanel. She tapped the screen, but since she wasn't willing to look down, she struck the icon to turn off the overhead lights by accident. Only the computers and the dim emergency lights lit up the flight deck now.

"Luci," he barked.

Yelping, she hunched over the intrapanel, turned the lights back on, and opened the door. Once it slid aside, she broke and ran out of the flight deck. It snapped shut behind her.

Limbs moving with a weary slowness, Rsh swiveled the bucket seat back to the console. He dismissed the porn and made the astronomy program come back up.

"What are you doing?" Philomena asked him.

Although she was prone to barking questions, this time she sounded genuinely curious. He answered her plainly, without exasperation or sarcasm.

"Altering our course … to better locate the rogue planet."

"Right," she said. "Well … I'll supervise."

"As you wish," he said, the sarcasm coming back full-force.

He punched commands into the main console and started to pipe the astronomical data to the flight computer—

"Type a little faster," she said. "We need to boost pruck-tivity."

Rsh growled under his breath. His irritation from the presence hovering over his shoulder mounted with each passing second.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

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The starship edged forward through the void, hunting its quarry like a bird of prey. The rogue planet was out there somewhere, supposedly. A tiny black dot in the darkness between all those shining stars. Philomena stood at the front of the flight deck, sweeping her eyes across the galaxy. But no matter how hard she stared, all she saw was her frowning face reflected in the canopy. Although her celestial body was an extremely precious treasure, it wasn't the kind of treasure she was looking for.

"I don't see it," she announced.

All three of her employees were crowded onto the flight deck, but none of them answered her.

"I said, 'I don't see it.'"

From the main console, Rsh said, "It is there."

"Where?"

"Keep looking."

She puffed her cheeks up and blew the air out. Her eyes darted across the starfield, flickering from left to right, sorting through the points of light filling the void …

Huh? What's that?

Philomena leaned forward until her forehead nearly pressed against the canopy, blocking the light with her head. Her reflection vanished. As much as she hated to admit it, her stunning looks were getting in the way of her making money. But the mirror image didn't disappear completely. Light leaked around her skull, creating a halo where it lit up her hair. Her face, though … that was still dark. A star-filled void ate away at her gorgeous beauty.

I'm empty inside.

When the thought popped into her head, she snorted and mentally brushed it off like dirt.

Um, no. You're not one of those … those pathetic losers with thoughts in the back of your brain you don't realize are there. You have total control of your mind. Everything in your head is on the surface, all the time. You're all surface! That's why you're such a great executive! You know everything, inside and out—!

Then, where Philomena's face should be, a black blob spread out and consumed the stars like an ink stain.

The rogue planet. Her rogue planet.

It was beautiful enough to make her gasp.

Not that she could see it. There wasn't any starlight out here to hit its surface. But her brilliant mind could vividly imagine all the precious jewels and gems and gold under the surface, just waiting to be mined out.

The ink stain continued spreading across the blank spot where her face should be. Now, in-between the halo around her skull, there was a big starless gap with nothing inside it. Although Philomena was in total control of her mind, and she didn't have one of those 'un-conscious' things other people said they had … something about the way the dark void gobbled up her face sent a shiver down her spine, and she wasn't sure why.

She stepped back and broke the illusion. As the light caressed her pretty face again, it lightened her mood too.

Think about drills, Philomena.

Thoughts of incredibly hard steel shafts bursting into supple ground filled her head. A tingly flush made her stomach boil. Licking her lips, she imagined all the vibrations, those intense vibrations that'd shake the ground so hard …

Oh … yeah!

Stick those hard steel shafts in, and …

And pound so hard …

Just dig those huge rods in and …

… and ride the vibrations until everything EXPLODES—!

A shudder ripped through her body. She quivered like the drills were pummeling the ground an inch away from her toes. At her sides, her flexing fingers itched to grab hold of … of whatever riches that planet down there had to offer.

And just think of what you can buy with all that money!

A video played inside her head. Like something shown in a loop on a retail store display screen. A stud stood on a pedestal, hands laced behind his head. He wore nothing but an incredibly tight pair of briefs studded with small, glittery gemstones. His abs were rock-hard. His thighs were like marble columns. Both of them flexed and rippled, helping to drive his hips forward like a jackhammer. The pedestal rotated him around and showed off the gem-covered glutes stuffed into the back of his briefs. Those two perfect spheres were as hard as the planet below.

She exhaled so hard all the air got pushed out of her lungs. Her voice rose up into a raspy moan as it trailed off. Her throat tightened and ached from the lack of air, but the incredible hunk had taken her breath away.

Hot hunks, hot hunks, she thought in a sing-song voice. Gonna get … so many … hot hunks!

Once she flaunted her wealth — and, therefore, her greatness as an executive — the galaxy's finest studly boytoys would all rush to her side. That was how the galaxy's corporate culture worked, after all.

Oh, I love being a chief executive!

The starship crept towards the massive dark spot. It took up half the canopy now. A huge chunk of the galaxy was just … missing, and it was really creepy. This wasn't her first time seeing a rogue planet, but this was the first one that didn't make its own light.

In the pilot's seat right behind her, Corvo muttered under his breath in a sing-song voice.

"Spuh-buh, spuh-buh … gonna get … so many … space babes …"

Philomena rolled her eyes.

Spinning sharply, she strode up the narrow footpath that circled the pilot's seat and hopped up the steps to the raised deck with the main console.

"Well?" she asked.

As the ship's scanners probed the planet, they created a gray model of its surface on the monitor in front of Rsh. Ramirex leaned over his shoulder and watched the computer fill in the details along with him.

"Based on its course," she said, "it's pretty likely it was part of Egadoro system. We can use Croshaw as a base since it's really close. Should save us some fuel. Hey, what's that?"

She pointed to the model of the planet. A huge chunk had been ripped out of its rim, which ate into its profile.

Studying the readout, Rsh said, "Perhaps … an impact crater. From the object that ejected it." He leaned forward and examined it more closely. "Excellent."

"How's that?" Ramirex asked.

"It cracked the surface open."

She tilted her head towards him. "So we can get at the minerals easier, you mean?"

"Precisely. It has done our work for us."

"Great! So … how many manga volumes do you think this thing is worth?"

After thinking it over, Rsh said, "At least ten."

Ramirex whistled. "Ay caray, that's valuable!"

Standing over her two employees, Philomena loudly cleared her throat and tapped her foot against the deck. Ramirex's head jerked up, eyes wide and mouth stretched out, like a kid who'd been caught stealing something from her mother's office. But, annoyingly, the bullheaded Zantauran brushed Philomena off and kept his eyes focused on the monitor.

"Are you two done making stupid jokes? Because I have a business to run here."

Rsh growled sharply at that. She knew him well enough to recognize the tone — it was his version of a snicker. 'Your business is the joke,' he meant.

Why, you …!

"Blaze, take us to the crater," he called.

"You got it, partner," Corvo drawled.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Philomena shouted.

Startled by her commanding presence, all three employees turned to her. These slackers, all of them needed the iron fist of an amazing leader to beat them into shape and get them to do their jobs the right way.

"I give the orders around here," she said.

When her booming voice finished echoing off the canopy, a deep silence filled the flight deck. Their beady eyes stared at her from below, piling the pressure to lead onto her. Though she was in the spotlight now, but she refused to give in to stage fright.

She pointed at the goofy idiot in the pilot's seat.

"Corvo, take us into the crater."

He stared at her for a moment, and she felt his petty rebelliousness start to emerge. But then he turned back to the HUD and tightened his grip on the control yoke.

"As you command," he said.

The starship descended towards the rogue planet, and she nodded in appreciation of her amazing leadership skills.

I sure showed them!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The steel steed soared over the empty wastes. The land below was an endless stretch of black that spread to the faraway horizon and curved around the world's surface. Unlit by sunlight, it was totally invisible to human eyes, except where it blocked the distant stars.

Blaze relied on the HUD to guide him. A grayscale terrain map generated by the scanners laid atop the blackness where the land should be. In the corner, a feed from the camera mounted on the ship's nose showed nothing but darkness. At this height, neither the exhaust from the engines nor the ship's running lights were bright enough to reveal the surface.

"Blaze, take us down," Rsh said from the console.

A sharp, annoying voice sliced through the moody, hushed silence.

"Ahem!"

Blaze and Rsh sighed in perfect sync with each other.

"Philomena," Rsh said. "We should descend."

The shrill harpy said, "Corvo—! Wait, are we going down or are we descent-ing?"

Blaze and Rsh sighed in perfect sync with each other.

"Your choice," Rsh said.

"Corvo, take us down!"

Easing the control yoke forward, he angled the nose at the ground. The steel steed dipped into the unknown territory below. Its engines resounded through the hull like lightning-fast hooves. The ship left the stardusty trails behind and wound its way toward the big rocky landscape, so that he could gallop across the dusty land like his earthbound ancestors. Too bad the terrain map didn't reveal any massive rock monuments like in those old westerns. The land under the ship was mostly smoothed-out hills. A hundred feet above them, he evened their flight out. The VM-84 skimmed over the surface, its running lights and engine exhaust brightening up the planet for the first time since it had left the Egadoro system.

Rsh activated the landing lights via the console. The bright beams, aimed at the ground, snapped on. Instantly, the drab gray terrain was flooded with light, though it didn't look all that different from the drab gray simulated terrain map. Blaze stared at the camera feed in the corner of the HUD. As their floodlights crossed over the hills, the shadows stretched far and swung wide. They circled the speeding starship like creatures scurrying to stay out of sight. Fixing his eyes on those shifting shadows, Blaze watched closely for any ominous shapes ducking away from the landing lights on purpose.

Is there something alive down there? Unhappy we're trespassing on its world? Leering at us from the shadows?

Nah, it's just a rock, that's all. A big giant rock in space.

But if something is down there … and it threatens the ship …

It's gonna be my job to keep the peace around here. That's what space cowboys do, isn't it?

He sat up and then settled himself in the bucket seat again, trying to get comfortable. But he was deeply unsettled by how paltry the splashes of light from the ship seemed, when compared to the eternal nightfall shrouding the rogue planet.

As a distraction, he thought about all the riches they'd find …

… and all the women who'd flock to his massive wealth, like moons captured by a massive planet. Hopefully, each one had two incredible moons of her own …

Hey there, little lady. Want to see my rogue planet? Just hop in and hang on tight.

It's got a diamond core.

What's that? Oh, sure. It's all yours, darling.

In his mind's eye, a video started to play. Like something you'd see on a loop in a store. A giant diamond six feet wide sat on a pedestal. A stunning woman draped herself over top of it. She was naked, but her smooth, flawless skin was warped by the reflections inside the massive gem. He caught tantalizing glimpses, small little squares that captured pieces of her erotic curves as they passed through the kaleidoscope-like interior, but her whole body was frustratingly — and alluringly — cut into jagged pieces. Her deft hands stroked the diamond's hard edges, moving with expert delicacy. Her touch was soft, but also strong. Her fingers grazed it lightly, yet there was a surprising amount of power in her skinny arms. Those dancing hands promised to do things to him, in return for the incredible glittering gift.

He grinned at the dance of light and dark on the HUD's camera feed.

"So?" he called. "What are we looking at?"

"No magnetic field," Rsh replied. "No tectonic activity. It may be coreless."

"Huh?" Philomena shouted. "You mean it's empty inside? There's no minerals?!"

"It has no metallic core. It is solid rock."

"But … they're valuable rocks, right?"

Rsh groan-growled. Like he was talking to a child, he said slowly, "The interior is iron oxide … which cannot form a molten core."

"How valuable is 'iron peroxide'?"

"How—?! How have you still done no research?!"

Rsh's roar bounced off the canopy and filled the flight deck. The dumb moron in charge of the company gasped like the words had stabbed her in the gut, while another pair of shoes — Ramirex — edged away from the shouting. The noise came over the console and rained down on Blaze's head, distracting him from the vast, dark landscape beyond the reach of the ship's landing lights.

"I am an executive! I don't keep track of the little stuff. I make the important business decisions!"

"Mining … is your business."

"I deal with the important stuff! Like gold, and jewels! I don't care about 'iron peroxide.' Nobody does! What am I gonna do, walk into a meeting and ask all the hunks, 'Do you want shiny pretty jewels? Or a bunch of "iron peroxide"?'"

The bucket seat groaned as loudly as Rsh did. His robes slid along its padding; his heavy body slid down and slumped on the cushion. It might've just been Blaze's imagination, but his ears seemed to ring from his idiot boss's shrill whining. It echoed in the air, in the silent flight deck, itching inside his ear canal and poking his brain.

"Iron oxide is rust," Rsh said quietly. "It is not valuable."

Philomena huffed at the air over Blaze's head. "You better pay off, planet!"

Suddenly, the deck shuddered. Like the planet had given the ship's keel a sharp kick in response. As the instrument panels rattled with the blow, he gripped the yoke tightly to steady the ship's wobble. A warning flashed up on the HUD.

"Corvo!" Philomena snapped.

"I didn't do anything!" His eyes scanned the message. "Power spike in the starboard engine. I'll set it down. How far to the—?"

Without warning, the land dropped away. His steel steed galloped over darkness again. The giant empty pit below ate up the ship's bright floodlights, resulting in a pitch-black camera feed. The terrain map had fallen off the bottom of the display, clipped by its lower border. They sailed over the unknown. A vast sea of shadows that might be concealing the most hideous and awful creatures mankind had ever encountered.

"—crater?" He gulped. "Um, Rsh? How deep is this thing?"

At any instant, some terrible lurking monster could lunge up from the deep. Rush at them … ram them … rip their life apart in the blink of an eye. Assuming their engines didn't give out first and send them plummeting to the bottom, where the things lurking down in the abyss could pick their carcasses clean amidst the broken wreckage of their ship. And unless somebody found a better way to detect rogue planets, the odds anybody would find this one were very slim. His corpse and the wreckage of his ship might lie down at the bottom of the crater, undiscovered and untouched right up to the end of the universe.

That won't happen, he thought. I'm a badass, I'll … I'll fight my way out of it. I can fight my way out of anything, so long as my fighting spirit doesn't die out.

Rsh shifted in his seat, probably inspecting the monitor more closely. The longer he stayed quiet, the more the ship wobbled from Blaze's shaking hands.

Stay cool, cowboy, he thought, breathing out with his mouth puckered like he was whistling.

"Rsh …? You gonna answer me …?"

Finally, a gruff voice overhead called down to him.

"Twenty miles."

Philomena wailed. Her voice came closer, and a thump sounded from behind him. He looked over his shoulder. She'd thrown herself over top of the console and wrapped her arms around its edges to brace herself. Like it was her only anchor during an explosive decompression. She squeezed her eyes shut and mumbled soothingly to herself.

"Hunks, hunks, hunks, so many hot hunks."

Blaze asked, "Should I turn around?"

"No," Rsh said. "Our course is stable. We should not stress the engines with a turn."

"Right. Uh, just what I was thinking. Good call … that I also had."

"I am sure," Rsh said sarcastically. "Luci?"

From near the aft bulkhead, Luci's voice came over the console. "You know, sh-she might need a gentle hug to help her calm down, so maybe I-I should stay here—"

"Luci."

Brightly, Luci called, "Hey, why don't I go check the engine, huh?"

"Thank you," Rsh said.

As the door on the aft bulkhead opened and closed, Blaze stared at the HUD and the darkness beyond it.

"How far to the other side?" he asked.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. 'Other side' sounded pretty morbid …

No, a space cowboy would embrace it!

"And I ain't talking about meeting the Grim Reaper! Ha haa!"

He shifted his weight in the bucket seat. Trying to get comfortable, despite the cold sweat and the shakes.

This isn't how we badasses die.

We die when we, uh …

We die, uh …

Well, we try not to die.

"Not long," Rsh replied.

The steel steed soared through the darkness … galloped across the void … raced above the unknown.

Sweating, he stared at the camera feed.

Just waiting for something to rush at them.

Waiting …

… and waiting …

… and waiting …

… and then, as abruptly as it disappeared, a rocky cliff face popped up under the ship again. It formed a sharp rim at the crater's edge, then sloped down and eased into smooth, hilly terrain.

Blaze let go of his pent-up breath.

"Setting us down," he said.

He grabbed the throttle and yanked it back to neutral. The ship's main engines cut out. The flight computer fired the retrothrusters to cancel their momentum and cranked up the hoverthrusters to keep their weight from plummeting to the planet. The sudden stop threw him forward, but the five-point harness around his chest pulled him back into the seat cushion. Behind him, he heard clattering as a tiny thing rolled across the console and fell to the deck right behind his headrest.

"Hunks, hunks, hunks," Philomena whispered to herself.

As Blaze trimmed the thruster output from the instrument panels, the ship descended. Deeper into the darkness, towards the bottom of the abyss. The floodlights brightened on the ground, and so did the flickering blue-indigo light from the engines. The blue hues rolled like lightning across hills which hadn't seen sunlight in millions of years, adding to the creepy aquatic eerieness. As they got closer to the landscape, the nearest hills blocked more of the light. Behind them, shadows flocked together, merged into one big shroud, and re-covered more of the planet. Taking it back from the light. Then, the hills hid the faraway lands. Leaving it to the shadows … and for whatever lived inside them to creep nearer and peer at them over the hilltops.

The closer the ship got to the ground, the more the comforting roar of the hoverthrusters died down. Blaze didn't want them to go. They were oddly reassuring. A familiar, human sound. Filling the silence, in the middle of this vast, empty world. If they disappeared … what would be left?

Space cowboys don't think about stuff like that, he told himself.

He pulled up a camera feed on the HUD. The camera looked straight down from the keel. Its wide fisheye lens warped the landscape at the edges. An outline of the ship, with markers for its landing legs, was superimposed over the ground. As the ship lost height, the splashes of blue and white light under them brightened everything except the void beyond the crater's edge. The shapeless nothing lurked at the bottom of the image, stretched thin and distorted by the curved lens. Shifting, as if alive. Waiting to rush out and grab them.

"Thirty feet," he called. "Landing gear."

From the console, Rsh lowered the landing gear. The deck vibrated as the landing leg under the ship's neck extended and locked rigidly into place.

"Twenty."

The landscape on the HUD stretched in every direction as the camera inched closer to its center. Beyond the HUD's glass pane, the hills lit up by the ship's lights slowly rose around them. He'd landed the ship plenty of times, but the eerie atmosphere of this mysterious lost world made the two conflicting views jag on his mind. Like he was having an out-of-body experience.

"Ten."

He trimmed the thrusters a little more. Pulling the reins of his steel steed, easing its slow trot into a stop. Slowly, the starship's weight inched toward the landscape. He braced himself for the shudder when the landing gear made contact. The moment the legs struck the ground, and Kestrel Mining surrendered themselves to the mysterious world. The moment they let its gravity well take over their lives, for the time being … or forever, if they were unlucky.

A little closer …

Just a bit more …

The planet thumped the ship from below. Blaze killed the thrusters immediately. The VM-84's hefty weight rested on its landing legs, teetered on the spot as it searched for the right balance between all three of them … and then it settled into place. The sound of the thrusters died away, and everything went still and quiet.

He relaxed into the bucket seat and wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, down low where the others couldn't see.

"Easy," he said.

"Hunks," Philomena murmured to herself. "Hunks."

We're here, Blaze thought. But … what else is here with us?

Ah, whatever it is, Blaze Corvo — space cowboy — can handle it!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The engine compartment was about three feet high. Even taking Luci's woefully short stature into account, the space was far too cramped to stand in. As for elbow room, that wasn't much better. The floor was just big enough for someone to lay down on. The cylindrical engine passed through the far side of the compartment, which was stuffed into the fuselage at the base of the wing the engine was mounted on. A section of engine's cowling had been removed, revealing the machinery inside the tube. The blue glow spilling out of it made the place seem like a tanning bed.

Luci didn't bother entering all the way. She poked her upper body through the access hatch while kneeling on the deck outside, and tried to forget about how the 'stuck in a hedge/wall/vent' situation usually went down in manga.

Unless Philomena comes up behind me …

'Mmm, ay caray! When you put your hand there, you really get my motor going!'

She shook her head.

Focus, Luci, she thought.

She swept her flashlight along the engine. The duracyoptic chain converters seemed fine, the Lovub plug was firmly in place and didn't look cracked, the nerbizulizer coils were lit up and shining. As she inspected everything with a wary eye, heavy footsteps shook the deck and stopped next to her legs.

"What is the problem?" Rsh asked.

"Everything seems … well, calling this thing 'flight-worthy' would stretch the truth more than taffy going into a black hole. But I don't see anything excessively dangerous."

What would make the pressure spike like that, though?

Her beam went to the Rodopo infuser, a small sealed box fixed to the outside of the cowling. Followed the black rubber hose plugged into it. Traced it along the fuselage, where a series of fasteners bolted it to the metal. She twisted her midriff so she could follow the hose across the compartment …

"Aha," she said. "Found it."

"What?"

"You know how this ship is a piece of crap, right?"

Outside the compartment, Rsh grumbled at her.

"Well," she said, "looks like — for whatever reason — when Tarkota-Deering put this ship together, they installed the Pulpsen pump backwards. I don't know if it's a design flaw or if they're compensating for some other design flaw, but …" She licked her lips as she studied the box attached to the bulkhead near the access hatch. "Because they installed the pump backwards, the hose needs to do a tight 180 and go back around the pump on its way to the Rodopo infuser. Normally it's not a problem, but one of the fasteners broke. The hose slips out of place, artificial gravity makes it pinch closed. Pressure builds up behind the blockage until it forces its way through. And then …"

"Pressure spike," Rsh said.

"Yeah."

"Is it dangerous?"

"On its own, not really. The bigger problem is if the hose comes lose and start flopping all over the compartment. If it gets caught in the turbine, it can do some real damage."

She stared at the electromagnetic turbine taking up a large part of the cylindrical engine's tube. The blades with metal wire coiled around them were still, since the engines were powered down. But in flight, they whirred incredibly fast. The turbines were the engine's workhorse, generating the thrust needed to propel the ship.

Luci switched the flashlight off and backed out of the engine compartment. The access hatch was on the starboard bulkhead of the octagonal hub. An identical hatch was over on the port side. She stood up and stretched her back.

"What would you suggest?" Rsh asked. His labored lips opened and closed awkwardly around the human words, and when they lifted up they revealed a mouthful of sharp teeth gleaming in the stark light.

"Scrap this pile of junk and buy a better ship," she said.

"Within our budget."

"Since when do we have a budget?"

The looming, seven-foot-tall Zantauran narrowed his shrewd eyes at her. Scouring the wry smile on her face.

"Can you install the pump … the correct way?" he asked.

"Probably, yeah. But I don't know why they did it that way. So if I do reinstall it, I might find out I need to reinstall ten other things. Then, after I'm done with that, I find some critical design flaw that means I have to take everything apart again and put it back the way it was originally."

"Hmm. That would be our luck."

"If you want to ask about it on some starnet forums, I'll take a look at what they say …"

"Starnet forums are no help … when it comes to this ship."

"What do they say?"

"'Scrap it and buy a better one.'"

Luci chuckled. "I can imagine. Plus, with QualMart out there, it's tough to get replacement parts."

Baring his sharp teeth, Rsh growled, "QualMart."

Apparently, just like Luci, he had his own contentious history with them.

As the biggest big box retailer in the galaxy, QualMart was a political and economic powerhouse. They waged constant war against the aftermarket for starship parts to protect their profit margins. The corporate culture frowned on blatantly meddling in the free market, so whenever a massive multistellar wanted to do dirty stuff without it becoming a huge PR disaster, they used 'consumer rights' as a shield. According to the rumors, QualMart had a massive spy network throughout the galaxy which kept tabs on all the independent dealers. As soon as they'd gathered enough ammunition, they whisked the dissatisfied customers to the galactic court system and organized a class action lawsuit on their behalf. Sometimes the complaints were legit, other times they were just driven by spite, or greed, or the desire to suck up to QualMart. QualMart didn't care, as long as they got the propaganda they needed. If the courts ruled in their favor, QualMart instantly sent mercenaries in to shut the dealer down. All in the name of 'protecting consumers'.

The galaxy's merchants were all paranoid and terrified of the day QualMart came for them. Many had already fallen. That was why her family business, Ramirex Interstellar Scrap Traders, died. Big chunks of their support network had been shuttered by QualMart, leaving her family adrift in the stars, unable to sell their scrap and scrape together even a measly living.

Ah, losing the family business hurts, but … I'm with Kestrel Mining now. And one look at Philomena's smiling face brightens the whole galaxy up.

Luci said, "Even if we ignore them — and I'd like to — getting the right parts might be tricky. You'd think putting a starship together with cheap components would make replacing them just as cheap, but some of these parts are old, rare, and off the market. Ironically, making them more valuable than when they were new."

"A conundrum," Rsh said.

"If you want a quick fix, we can just buy more fasteners when we head to Croshaw. They're pretty cheap. In the meantime …"

"… duct tape?"

Luci nodded. "Duct tape. I think probably half the ship is made of it by this point."

"Hopefully we shall avoid the fate of … Rashton Thrush."

Although Rsh violently barked the man's name out, that was probably just from his vocal cords running out of energy.

Her toolbelt rested on the floor at her feet. She fetched a roll of duct tape and held it up.

"'Duct tape is my one true love, and the bonds of true love are as strong as duct tape!'"

She glanced at him, hoping to see a spark of recognition in his gold eyes, but his cold, discerning frown gave her chills.

"'Cuckoo' Bakuko? From Galaxy Cross Unlimited? C'mon, she was only the best waifu in the whole anime."

"I am aware of it," he spat heavily, like he was being forced to admit something shameful at gunpoint.

As Luci gasped, her inner brow shot upward and lifted half her forehead. Her mouth flapped uselessly as it tried and failed to find words weighty enough to handle the grave injustice taking place.

"Don't … you … DARE saying bad about Rin Bakuko!" she warned.

"An awful character."

"Ah!" she wailed. "What—?!"

"She was reckless. Endangered the ship. Refused to accept blame."

"And …?! She had g-g-good qualities too!"

Wry, predatory amusement made his eyes twinkle. "Name them," he said coldly.

Although Luci's task was crucial, it was also daunting. So daunting that her mouth failed her at first. There was so much to say, so many wonderful things she had to list, so why weren't the words coming out of her mouth? It wasn't because Rsh was right, not at all. It was just … she didn't know where to start. Yes, that was the one and only reason why she was floundering.

Luci said, "She … was … feisty!"

"'Feisty.' Hmm."

"She didn't take guff from anybody! And she could blast a 'Baka!' like nobody's business!"

"So she is 'feisty'. Is that all? Just the one trait?"

"No! There was, um …"

The sparkle of amusement in his eyes brightened.

"Ah! She had red pigtails!"

"Not a character trait."

"Ay, caray," she muttered under her breath. "She, um, she … had a tattoo!"

"Still … not a character trait."

Cracking from the stress, Luci declared, "That means she's feisty! And-And her oppai bounced majestically at the slightest turbulence! And she wore that tight crop top! And those short shorts with the top button undone—!"

She broke off. Sucked air in through her clenched teeth to cool her overheating body. Her lips stretched out in a painful grimace like she was being blasted with air inside a wind tunnel.

Rsh replied, "Sexual appeal … is not a character trait."

"It is when you're thirteen!" Luci wailed, sweating and shivering as much as she had the first time she laid eyes on Rin Bakuko.

"She did nothing but … rudely bark at others."

Luci tossed her arms up and threw them around in a scattershot, flailing shrug.

"So what?! Isn't that why people watch anime?! To fantasize about being scolded b-b-by … beautiful redheads?!"

The twinkle in Rsh's eye shone like a supernova. He pressed his lips together firmly. Like he was giving her the chance to dig herself in deeper. Reeling from his smug expression, she rattled like a starship coming apart at the seams.

"Ah!" she said. "What about episode 16, when she and Hiro crashed the shuttle on that planet, and she admitted her mistakes and changed for the better?!"

"A hack writer gave her a sob story … that threw continuity out the airlock."

"That … was … character development!"

"Bargain-bin, cliched, tsundere trash waifu."

Even though he was speaking the way he normally did, every syllable that came out of his big mouth was like a slap to the face. How could he say such horrible lies? Was he trying to hurt Luci?

"You have no taste," she snapped.

"Says the human who consumes garbage waifus."

Huffing, Luci tore away from him and headed for the common room to cool her head. She threw her hand up and blocked his face as she walked past. However, when the door to the locker room snapped open, a glimpse of bouncing red hair caught her eye. She came to a stop and turned towards it. There, in the doorway, she saw a sight that immediately cradled her battered heart and nursed it back to health.

"Ramirex," Philomena said. "There you are. I have something I need you to do."

"Hai?!"

Her cheeks were still a little red, and she still looked a little shaky. But as she strode across the hub like a woman on a mission, her worries seemed to slip off and fall away from her, unburdening her determined strut. The closer she came to Luci, the more Luci shrank back till she hit the bulkhead. The boss stopped right in front of her, standing tall with her feet together. One hand was behind her back. When it started to move, fireworks exploded in Luci's mind as she got ready for her long-awaited kabedon …

"Here."

It was her space suit helmet. She held it upside down. A stale yet pungent whiff of old puke wafted up from inside it, turning Luci's stomach.

"Clean this out for me."

Wrinkling her nose, Luci asked, "What happ—?"

"Can you just do your job without asking a million questions?" the redhead scolded.

Luci straightened her spine so quickly the back of her head thudded into the wall. "Yes, ma'am!"

"That's what I like to hear," Philomena said, still looking pretty dour.

She thrust the helmet into Luci's chest. Once her startled arms sprang shut around it, Philomena walked over to the common room. Luci's head turned to watch the pretty chief executive pass by like a shooting star. Then Luci's head turned a little more and came to Rsh and his cold yet twinkling stare. Still saying nothing, waiting for her to dig herself deeper. The common room door slid closed and blocked Philomena from view. It was just her and Rsh in the octagonal hub now, and there was no reason for Luci to hang around that … that … Rin Bakuko-hater anymore. Hugging the helmet tightly despite the smell, Luci stormed away from him to clean it out inside the starship's small bathroom.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The airlock door pulled open, letting the bright landing lights spill into the small chamber. As the gap widened, revealing the universe, Blaze gave the land beyond a cold, stoic stare. The sheer size of the sunless frontier was daunting, but he refused to stand down. This space cowboy wasn't going to be cowed by space. Such a vast land demanded an imposing, swaggering personality who could match its epic scale. Somebody who could win a staring contest with the abyss. Take his incredible force of will, and brand the cosmos with the human spirit.

When the door opened all the way, and the path was clear, he fixed his safety line to the metal bar and gave it a tug to make sure it wouldn't come undone. Before he left, he took a moment to gaze through the doorway. Their starship was a piece of home they carried through the cosmos. Warm and bright and comfortable. Beyond the circle of its light, nothing could be seen. Only a distant rim of dark hills blocking the stars. A massive hidden frontier, tinted black by the sunless void, waited for him. Colossal and unknowable. Anything might be lurking inside it. Amazing adventure or horrible death … the possibilities were as endless as the universe.

What's out there? he thought.

He steeled his nerves for the descent.

Let's take a look.

His thoughts had the same tone as a man convincing himself to take a running leap off a waterfall.

Gripping the safety line tightly, he stepped out of the airlock. The rope ran through his padded glove. Friction slowed his fall. As he descended, the ground rose up under him. Coming to meet him, like an enormous predator rising up from the ocean depths. He dropped out of reach of the ship's neck, and the security of its hull.

The ship was a cargo hauler meant to ferry goods between starports. It wasn't really equipped for exploring the unknown. The only two airlocks were on the neck, a dozen feet in the air. The hatch on the flight deck was physically impossible to open unless the ship had a breathable atmosphere around it. And while the cargo bay could be depressurized, it was more of a hassle than it was worth right now.

But…

On the frontier, a cowboy made do with what he had on hand.

His boots slammed into the ground. As their soles settled into the layer of cosmic dust coating the planet, he braced himself for the inevitable moment something burst out of the land underfoot and tried to eat him up. Heartbeat quickening, he tightened his grip on the safety line.

Nothing happened.

Too scared to mess with me, I'll bet, he thought.

He unclipped the safety line and dropped it to the ground. The rope coiled like a snake in the gray dust. He raised his left arm and hit the button on its wrist control panel to open a comms channel.

"Hey, you hear me?"

In his ear, Rsh replied, "Yes. What do you see?"

"Ground's pretty dusty out here."

"Take a reading."

Blaze faced the distant horizon and scowled at whatever fearsome danger might be lurking beyond it. His arms tensed up. His hands hovered at his sides. His fingers curled around the handle sticking out of the pouch at his side. This rogue planet was out to get him, and he waited for his enormous foe to make the first move. Blaze whistled like the soundtrack to an ancient western film. His limber fingers stretched and tensed as they prepared to spring into action.

"Blaze," Rsh said wearily.

Ignoring the wet blanket of a voice in his ear, Blaze continued to whistle and stare the rogue world down. Just waiting for the right moment to spring into action, pistols blazing …

"Hi-yah!" he shouted.

His holler filled up his helmet and got his blood pumping. He gripped the handle and ripped it out of its pouch. Aiming the pistol-shaped device at the ground, he pulled its trigger. A beam of intense light shot out the front and hit the dust covering the planet. He held his tensed-up gunslinger's pose, finger pulling the trigger down, for a few seconds. Giving Rsh time to analyze the data.

Then he asked, "What's it say, partner?"

On the back of the handheld spectroscope, a little display screen outputted a rainbow spectrum with thin black lines missing from it. Showing the composition of whatever the beam of light landed on.

"I see nothing," Rsh replied, slightly more gruff than usual. "Try again."

Blaze took his finger off the spectroscope's trigger. The beam of light disappeared. Then, with another cry, he squeezed it again. The beam shot out and hit the dusty ground.

"How about now?" he asked.

"No."

Blaze eased out of his dueling pose. His finger fell off the trigger, making the beam of light disappear.

"What now?"

"Hold on. I am rebooting the program."

The seconds ticked by. Blaze waited next to the starship and stared at the darkness beyond the protective ring of light. He put his hand on his hip and tilted his head with a grim sneer, giving the darkness a taste of his impressive cowboy swagger. A shiver of fear went up his spine, but that just encouraged him to shore up his stance more. I'm not afraid, he thought, shrugging off that itch creeping over his shoulders and neck that made him feel like something big and ugly was rising up behind him.

"Try now," Rsh said. "Without the cowboy sound effects."

Tsking, Blaze raised the spectroscope casually and fired its beam at the ground like he was using a remote control to turn a screen on.

"Anything?" he asked.

From the extended silence, Blaze guessed it wasn't good news. He shifted his weight and felt himself sink deeper into the loose dusty surface.

"You will need to eyeball it," Rsh said.

"I don't know how to read a spectroscope!"

"We have no other choice."

"It worked when we tested it back at Point Pleasant."

"It did. There must have been a change … in the conditions."

The sound of heavy fingers slamming rapid-fire into the console's mechanical keyboard shot out of the speaker like blaster bolts from a rifle. But then, the sound abruptly cut off. As an eerie silence fell over Blaze, the itch on his neck got much worse. And, sealed up in his suit, he couldn't even scratch it. The helmet seemed tighter now, like it was collapsing around him. Trapping him within a few square inches of oxygen, in the middle of this gigantic airless void.

"Rsh?" he asked, tapping the side of his helmet. "Can you hear me? Hey!"

Suddenly, the comms channel opened again. He was greeted by a deep-throated growl.

"I have located the issue," Rsh said.

"What is it?"

"RDEX."

"Huh?"

"'Remote … Data … EXchange.'"

"What the hell is that?"

"A standard for wireless data-sharing invented by … the tech companies." He paused to catch his breath. "But, as is their way, they all 'improved' the standard. For 'convenience.'" Though Rsh's voice always got throatier and more aggressive the longer he spoke without pause, the angry growling seemed very fitting in this case. "RDEX Plus, RDEX Enhanced, RDEX Ultra. In their attempts to create vendor lock-in, the standard … is no longer standardized."

"So what does that mean?" Blaze asked.

"Your suit software uses RDEX Plus. The spectroscope software uses RDEX Enhanced. The OS has compatibility modes for both … but they cannot both be active."

Blaze scoffed. "So I can either talk to you or use the spectroscope?"

"That is correct."

"That seems like a really bad design."

"It is. The OS is outdated and past end-of-service." His voice turned sharply and poked Blaze like a spear coming through the speaker. "I recall many times requesting you save your money … for situations such as this. Yet you insisted … on going to the bar … and wasting it on … futile attempts to impress 'space babes'."

"Didn't you say our ship is so old and outdated it can't handle an OS upgrade?"

After a bout of wordless grumbling, Rsh said, "Still. It is … the wise thing to do."

Blaze sighed and stared at the gray ground. His forehead started to throb. Distracted by his thoughts, he raised his hand to massage it, but the hand just thumped against the helmet.

"Oh, man," he muttered. "So what now?"

"You shall need to read the output."

"No way, partner. I leave the nerd stuff to you. I just boldly venture into the unknown. That's my style. If I can't solve the problem with my blaster or my fists, it's not my area."

Another bout of wordless grumbling came over the comms channel.

"Hey, you're a computer programmer," Blaze said. "Can't you hack it so both RDEX whatevers are active at once?"

"Perhaps. But it shall take time. The starnet likely has patches … but we are not in range."

"What do we do in the meantime?"

After he asked the question, there were ten seconds of silence. Long enough he thought the comms channel had crapped out again.

"We shall need to swap," Rsh said. "Turn comms off, use the spectroscope, turn comms on."

"Should I just throw myself off the edge of the crater right now?"

"Wait thirty seconds. Take a sample. I shall reenable comms … in one minute."

The line went quiet, leaving Blaze all alone in the vast desert. He kept time by pacing, one stride per second, toward the crater's edge. Raising his leg with purpose, shifting his weight forward like he was the most unstoppable force in the galaxy, stamping his boot down into the dusty land so hard that his footprint would last until the end of the universe. He'd dismounted from his steel steed, but he wasn't going to stop riding tall, like a true gunslinger. Every stride took him a little farther across the massive land, and a little farther away from the light he'd brought with him. As he paced, whistling to himself, he claimed more of the land for himself.

The universe is gonna remember that Blaze Corvo, space cowboy, was here!

After twenty-five paces, he approached the crater's rim. The steep dropoff was at the boundary of the ship's circle of light. The view down into the bottomless pit tightened his stomach and staggered his stampede-like strut. As he inched closer, he turned sideways. Extending his left leg to test the ground, while leaning back so as not to put too much weight on it. Ready to turn and run, if need be. He wasn't scared, exactly. It was just practical. What if a chunk of ground dislodged? Being ready for danger wasn't the same thing as being scared of it. Not by a long shot. To make up for his backward lean, he craned his head and lifted it up to try and get a better look down into the darkness. But there wasn't anything to see. The light from the ship, and from his space suit's headlamp, it just … ended. There was nothing to shine on down there. The void in the crater was as dark as the event horizon of a black hole.

Standing on the shoreline of shadow, Blaze felt like if he fell down he'd go right through the planet. Gravity would pull him down and then launch him out the other side. Launch him so fast, he'd drift into space. The huge, dark rogue planet already made him feel small and lost. But out among the stars, he was just one tiny fragile little lump of carbon in an eternal universe …

No way! I'm Blaze Corvo, larger than life space cowboy!

If he found himself adrift in space, he'd hitch a ride on a passing comet or meteor and ride the stardusty trails to the end of space, time, or both. Old cowboys never died, they just rode off into the sunset. And outer space had a hell of a lot of sunsets. Crossing the cosmos like a shooting star, he'd soar past every single one of them. Yippie ki-yay! he thought, fortifying his courage in the face of the infinite universe.

'Blaze!' a voice cried. 'I'm falling!'

The voice echoed from the chasm. Not the one in front of him, exactly. And yet … it was the same chasm. All of a sudden, two different chasms — separated by spacetime — bridged together like a wormhole inside his memories. The darkness at his feet became the darkness of his past. He tried to keep his shoulders squared and his chin up, but the weight of the memory tore his swagger down. He staggered backward, trying to fend off the panic and fear crawling out of the chasm alongside the cry for help.

No! On that day … I swore I'd never be a coward again!

Filling his lungs with air, he straightened back up into his gunslinger's posture and brushed the past out of his mind like dust off his boots.

It's been thirty seconds.

His hand flashed to his side and ripped the spectroscope out of its pouch. Pivoting on his feet, he snapped his arm up. Fired the beam at the gray ground, feet apart, head raised. Flawless quickdraw posture, for his duel with this massive rogue planet. Blaze Corvo was no coward, and he was ready to conquer this dark frontier.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

Sprawled out on the common room's couch, Philomena rubbed her forehead and massaged away the stress of dealing with all of these idiots. I need a Galactic Swirlie, she thought. Her dried-out throat begged to feel the sugary, chilly slush slide down to her stomach, leaving a pleasant, crisp, numb cool to flow out from wherever it touched. And a hot hunk to hold it, of course. I'll relax in my pool chair, and he'll stand over me, holding my cocktail right next to his … Ooh, maybe get him to pour it all over his chest. Then I'll lick it all off his bulging pecs! Mmmm, yeah!

But before that happened …

While Philomena was, of course, stunningly beautiful, she was not some kind of unionizer who demanded other people give her things for nothing. She had to prove she was a great executive first, and to do that, she needed wealth to flaunt.

But her dumb employees were making it so hard. They ignored her, mocked her, treated her like a joke, threatened to kill her with their stupid decisions. Why couldn't they just see how much of a genius she was, and fall to their knees worshiping her business sense?

The door to the hub slid open.

She raised her head and stared past the couch's armrest. Ramirex shuffled into the common room. Both her hands cupped the bottom of the helmet she'd been told to clean. She moved carefully, like it was a precious offering filled with liquid and she didn't want to spill a drop. She stood over the couch. Annoyed, Philomena realized the tiny woman was in the same position as the imaginary hunk holding her cocktail.

"Um, I cleaned it," Ramirex whispered, in awe of her genius.

Philomena wasn't very fond of women her own age. Executives had to be experts at seeing through other peoples' lies to keep them from slacking off, and Philomena was an amazing executive. As much as those thieves denied it, every time she encountered another woman her own age she instantly picked up that vibe. That the backstabber in front of her would rush in and steal Philomena's hunks the first chance she got. Philomena wasn't scared, obviously. She was one of the prettiest women in the galaxy. Of course her hunks would stay loyal to her and her incredible success. But it was annoying to deal with, and she didn't want to. Some people said that was called 'being catty'. Why not be catty? Lionesses were cats, and they defended what was theirs with maximum viciousness. That was why they're the queens of the jungle.

She didn't mind Ramirex that much, though. As a lesbian, she wasn't a threat to Philomena's hunks. And she was as dumb as the other two, but at least she treated her boss with the awe and respect she deserved. Well, most of the time, Philomena thought, remembering Ramirex's little outbursts of attitude during Darrd's inspection.

"Tell me I'm a great executive," Philomena said.

Eyes lighting up, Ramirex said, "You're the best, Philomena!"

"See? Was that so hard?!"

"No! No, it wasn't!"

Sighing, Philomena went limp on the couch. "All I want to do is raise pruck-tivity, and those two morons just don't listen."

"Huh? 'Pruck-tivity'?"

"You know, when you raise it, and … and business gets better. You know!"

Philomena wanted to give the tiny woman a piece of her hard-earned wisdom, but it was hard to whittle a topic so huge down to the level an idiot like Ramirex could grasp. Most of the time, it was just something you felt in your gut. Something your incredible business senses guided you towards.

"Do you mean productivity?" Ramirex asked.

Philomena threw her hand up and waved it around while rolling her eyes at the wall behind the couch. "I don't know what they call it on Arcelona, but in the world of business we call it pruck-tivity."

"I … see. Wh-Where did you learn that word, exactly …?"

"It's something we executives pick up …" She continued flapping her hand in the air. "… in our lives."

"Oh."

Philomena peered into the helmet and took a whiff. It smelled like soap and it looked clean, so she took her hand and swept it toward the door.

"You can go now. Put the helmet in the locker room."

"You got it, Philomena."

Carefully carrying the helmet like it was the most precious thing in the galaxy, Ramirex left Philomena alone in the common room. After she'd left, Philomena relaxed her head on the couch. Her eyes drifted across the ceiling, and they ended up staring out the narrow window that wrapped around the ship's stern. The stars twinkled so high above them, glimmering like all the jewels and gemstones she hoped to find on this rogue planet …

'Your brother raised productivity by 12%.'

The familiar voice came from her memories, yet weirdly enough it also seemed to be whispering from the giant crater next to the ship. Seeping up from the infinite darkness to haunt her, like something lost in a vast sea rising to the surface. She quickly sat up, a shiver worming under her skin and chilling her bones.

Thanks a lot, Ramirex! Now you've even got my memories saying it wrong!

She glanced over her shoulder at the stars again. In orbit around all those points of light, there were so many planets and space stations making money all across the galaxy. And one day … they would all belong to Philomena, she was sure of it. Mining this world, and all the other rogue planets one like it, was the key to becoming the best executive in the whole galaxy.

And those idiots think I don't know anything about running a mining business, she thought.

I know all about mining!

---

Pickaxe in hand, Philomena trotted into the deep cave. She went right past all the stone. It was ugly and drab and she didn't care about that stuff one bit. Rounding a corner, she entered a cavern with lava rivers. No, what she cared about was …

Aha! she thought.

Gold! Gems! Jewels! Just sitting there in the cave!

She rushed forward, pickaxe at the ready. Chipped away at the ugly rocks to get the shiny stuff out. They needed to be free, to sparkle. She focused on mining so hard she barely realized her tongue was stuck sideways out of her pressed-together lips.

"Philomena?"

Raising her head, she asked, "Huh?"

A man in a lab coat stood in the doorway. But then she heard a splash and a sizzle from the tablet in her hands. She looked back down and saw her character had fallen into a lava river and died. The stuff she'd mined floated away on the orange liquid.

Aw, my gems! she thought.

Her face stretched out in a pout. She looked up at the man in the lab coat again. He watched her carefully.

"We're ready for you," he said.

He stepped aside and held the door open for her.

The chair was meant for grown-ups. Philomena's legs weren't long enough to reach the floor yet. She pushed herself across the seat until she slid off the edge. With her feet stuck out, the thump when she hit the floor didn't hurt too bad. She jumped right back up and hurried to the door, clutching the tablet tightly in her fist.

The man led her through the hallways to a big, empty room with two padded mats on the floor. Video cameras on tripods were pointed at the mats, and more people in lab coats stood behind the cameras taking notes on tablets.

"Hello, Philomena."

Her brother stood next to one mat. He was younger and shorter than her, but he always seemed so calm and sure of himself. He was like a little grown-up. It was kind of weird.

"Hi, Apollo," she said.

His eyes went to the tablet in her fist. Quietly, he said, "You should put that away.

"Why?"

He stared right into her eyes. "It's a test. You can't cheat on a test."

"Hmph," she said.

She stuffed the tablet into her pocket anyway.

A woman in a lab coat pushed a cart with a big plastic box over to them. Then, joining them, she stooped down so she didn't seem so tall. She smiled when she talked to them.

"Philomena. Apollo. We're going to do a little test, okay?"

"What do we do?" Philomena asked.

The woman smiled at her and started to say something, but before she could, Apollo spoke up.

"What are you testing for?"

His words made her pause. Her smile slipped, like a mask falling off and showing her nervous face underneath.

"We want you to build us a city."

She pointed to the box on the cart. Philomena and Apollo went over and peered inside. It was full of blocks. Black, gray, white.

"How do we build a city?" Philomena asked.

Smiling, the woman said, "However you want."

"That's the test," Apollo said. "They're testing our in—" For once in his short life, he seemed stuck. He frowned as his little lips worked through the words. "In—"

Philomena's cheeks tensed up as she tried to hide a smile. Her oh-so-perfect little brother almost never stumbled over anything, and seeing it made her very happy indeed.

Then Apollo turned to the woman in the lab coat. "'Intuition'?"

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That's right, Apollo. 'Intuition'."

Philomena's joy went away like a winter wind blowing every shaky leaf off a tree at once.

"Hey," she said. "I have in-two-it-town too!"

The woman smiled, but it still looked like a fake mask. "Everybody has intuitions, Philomena."

Then annoying Apollo butted in. "But you want to see how good ours are."

"Ahh … let's not think of it like that, okay? We just want to see what you come up with, alright?"

Apollo stared at the woman, then he said, "Alright."

"Okay," Philomena added.

The woman made them stand in front of the mats where the cameras could see them. Philomena took the lefthand mat, so Apollo took the righthand one. The woman in the lab coat and Apollo both stood up straight as they faced the lenses. Once Philomena noticed that, she stood up straight too. But it was annoying, and she couldn't stop her body from slowly slumping.

To the cameras, the woman said, "In this test, Philomena, age 4, and Apollo, age 2, have been instructed to build a model city out of monochrome blocks, following the standardized Bentu Hoopdou model of mental development." She turned around and looked at them. "You may begin."

The people behind the cameras watched them and took notes. She watched them right back, until she got a fright when her brother grabbing an armful of blocks from the box. I'm not gonna be left behind! she thought. As soon as there was an inch of space, she shot into it and scooped an armful of blocks out too. No, two armfuls! It didn't matter if she couldn't see where she was going, or that a few blocks tumbled off the top and nearly tripped her. Philomena was older than Apollo, and she was going to prove it.

I'm gonna build the best city in the whole galaxy!

A half-hour later, her city looked so nice. The people in lab coats circled the room, gazing in awe at what she made and taking notes on their tablets. Two of them whispered to each other. They were so far away they probably didn't realize she could hear them.

"Orderly, grid-based layout. Consistent architecture. Efficient clustering. Flawless road planning."

Philomena's heart swelled. Sure, she didn't know what any of that meant, but it sounded like praise. They saw how smart she was.

I love praise! Give me more!

Then, one whispered, "Now, his sister, on the other hand …"

"Yeah …"

Philomena's heart dropped like she was on a spaceship going down to a planet. Her smile turned into a frown. Annoyed, she glanced at her brother's city. It was as boring as he was. The buildings and roads were all in neat lines. White blocks used as windows, gray blocks used as metal, black blocks used as roads. Her city, on the other hand … Sure, the buildings were so tall they teetered. And they mixed colors with no real plan. And the roads were a little crooked, because she forgot to put them down for ten minutes and had to fit them into the gaps.

But …

She'd followed her heart!

And it was such a beautiful city, because she built it with her own two hands.

She stood on tip-toe and stretched her arm up to put the last block on top of a very tall building.

"Seems like she's overreaching," the man in the lab coat whispered to the other one.

Of course I'm overreaching! she thought bitterly. I'm not old enough to reach it normally yet!

Behind the man's voice, a more familiar one spoke up and made him gasp with fright.

"Is that your professional opinion?"

Philomena's heart skipped a beat. She looked over her shoulder at the two men in lab coats. Startled, they were both twisted around to look at the woman standing behind them. She was tall, bold, and a little bit scary. Her hair was the same red color as Philomena's, but cut into a bob. Hands on hips, she frowned at the men in lab coats and made them shake.

"S-Sorry, ma'am."

Philomena also shook, but from happiness.

"Mother!" she cried. "Mother, look what I made—!"

She spun around to show off her dazzling city to her mother, but her toe snagged a loose block. Suddenly, her foot didn't touch the floor anymore. It flew up in the air. She tilted forward and the world tilted backward.

This isn't even a space station, how come gravity is broken—?

Then she crashed down in the middle of her city. The tall, pretty buildings tumbled down. She threw her hands out to grab hold of something, but that just knocked more things down. The floor sped up and smacked her face and chest. Groaning, she went limp. A million blocks fell on her like frozen rain and poked her with their sharp corners. The ones that didn't hit her hit the mat. The clap of falling blocks echoed all over the spacy room. It seemed to go on and on forever, but when it petered out the silence was just as bad.

Cheeks burning, she raised her head.

Everybody stared at her. Nobody said anything, but they cringed so hard.

One final block fell off a teetering tower and thumped her square on the head. She grimaced, her eyes squeezed shut, as a fuzziness went all through her skull and made her dizzy.

Her mother scowled at the floor and rubbed her forehead. Then, she broke the silence by saying loudly, "Intensify Philomena's learning program." After that, she turned sharply and strode out of the room. Her footsteps echoed as loudly as the tumbling blocks did.

Philomena thought, Mother …!

Lying in her ruined buildings, she shot a dirty look at Apollo. He stood in the middle of his neat, boring, totally-intact city. It made her so mad.

---

Philomena glared daggers at the starry sky through the common room's window. Somewhere out there, in the dozens of star systems her dynasty did business with, Apollo was being taught how to run her mining empire. It belongs to me! I'm the firstborn, not him! But it wouldn't be long now before she proved that she deserved to be the heiress, not annoying Apollo. Once Philomena became the most successful businesswoman in galactic history all by herself, then her mother would be forced to admit the truth.

I'll prove it to you, mother. Once and for all!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

"What are we looking at?" Blaze asked.

The program running on the main console came with the handheld spectroscope. It was outputting the results of Blaze's hard work. In its window, the 3D model of a molecule spun above the rainbow band of its spectral signature. Rsh, still seated behind the console, tapped the arrow keys and went down the list of samples Blaze had taken.

"Regolith," he stated.

"Huh?"

"Loose material over bedrock. Basic silicates. Nothing of value."

Although Blaze felt a pang of disappointment, he brushed it aside. Standing tall, he squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips so his elbows stuck right out to the sides. The universe wanted to make him feel tiny. Defiantly, he pushed it back by taking up as much space as possible. His posture did feel a little clumsy and awkward, since he still wore his space suit, minus the helmet. But nothing would stop him from looking like the most confident gunslinger who ever ambled his way across the stars.

"Don't you fret none, hombre," he drawled. "This here cowboy'll find your gold for you, no sweat."

"I am deeply relieved," Rsh said, his deadpan sarcasm deader than finely-ground meat on a pan.

"What did Luci say about the engines? Are they alright?"

"They are fine … for now."

Blaze took another look through the canopy, at the dark world outside eclipsing the starlight that filled the universe. No matter how dark it gets, he thought, you gotta keep riding until you see the light again.

"It looks like this regolith stuff is all over the surface," he said. "I didn't see anything else when we were flying around. So … I guess we're heading into the crater, huh?"

"We must."

"Any idea what we'll find down there?"

"No. Ore may be deposited by meteor impact, so … potentially anything. Or nothing."

"Never say die, partner. Never say die."

Breezing through the door to the locker room, Blaze undid his gloves. He decided to leave the rest of his space suit on. No point taking it off for the relatively short flight to the bottom of the crater. He pulled open the locker that had his helmet inside and dropped the gloves onto the shelf next to it. Before he closed it, however, his reflection in the helmet's visor caught his eye. The world around him was warped by the curvature, but his face in the center was mostly undistorted. He stared into his own eyes, and at the look of doubt on his face. Then, with a confident smirk, he gave his image the same confident look he gave Rsh a few seconds ago.

---

On the display screen, Blastburn's steel steed dropped towards the event horizon of the black hole. Falling down, through the shining disk around the infinite black abyss. An orb of nothingness, floating in space. A massive dent in spacetime not even light could escape from.

"Blastburn!" a voice squawked on the radio. "Don't you dare get yourself killed, you hear me?! Don't you dare!"

He struggled with the ship's controls like he was reining a horse in. They exploded in a shower of sparks, but he barely flinched. The black abyss expanded in the windshield, but he gave it his most devil-may-care smirk. Although a trickle of blood dripped down his battered face, it couldn't drain the life from his vivid expression.

As the ship sailed towards almost-certain death, Blastburn spoke. The frantic brass quieted down and allowed a quiet, yet heroic swell to take their place.

"They used to say old cowboys never die. They just rode off into the sunset. Well, light can't get itself free of a black hole, so I doubt I'll be seeing a whole lot of sunsets if I fall in there. Got no plan, no options, no hope. But there's one thing I do have. One undeniable fact, as old as the moment our ancestors learned to crawl out of the muck."

"What's that?" the grief-stricken voice over the radio asked.

"No matter how dark it gets, you gotta keep riding until you see the light again."

Grin widening, he grabbed the controls like he was choking them to death.

"Yippie ki-yay!" he shouted.

The image hard cut to black. In the quiet moment before the end credits popped up, Blaise's apartment was reflected in the glass. Blaise himself sat in the middle of the living room. Close to the screen, so everything seemed more epic. The sight of Blastburn falling into the black hole had stamped a shocked look on his face, and it was impossible to remove it. Oh, man! he thought. I can't believe they ended the season there! Shaking from the excitement, he wondered what he was going to do until the next season came out. Aside from watching the whole series over again from the start, of course.

His mom trudged through the front door, a plastic shopping bag in hand. Her feet scraped the ground, and she swayed as she walked. Like standing up straight was too hard. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, but a few frazzled strands had gotten loose. Every breath she took came out as a sigh. She passed all the pictures on the wall, not looking at any. When she and Blaise's dad were still married, she seemed to smile more freely. Blaise couldn't remember a single time she'd ever smiled like that.

After the credits were done, he pushed himself off the floor and went into the kitchen.

"Um, mom?"

"Not now, Blaise," she said. "Mommy needs her coffee."

She sat at the kitchen table, too focused on her coffee to look at him. As steam wafted up from the cup, she tipped a bottle of her funny-tasting brown juice into it. Her eyes were fixed on it like somebody spotting a cake after a year without eating. When she was done pouring, she capped the bottle of juice and set it aside. Then, she raised the coffee to her lips, closed her eyes and shut the world out, and took a very long and deep sip. She slurped loudly, for at least fifteen seconds, and the sloppy wet sound filled the small kitchen.

Outside the window, the sun shone through the vivid orange skies of Nimbus, Blaise's homeworld. Some people lived on planets with solid ground below, but he lived in a giant floating city in the clouds of a gas giant. The city had been created to build starships. Big ones, that weren't meant to land on planets. It was easier to launch them from the atmosphere of a gas giant, people said. But they stopped building ships before he was born, and now the giant dockyards his mom used to work at were empty and decaying.

His mom lowered the cup from her lips, but she kept it up near her chin. Savoring the taste, she clicked her tongue and gave a loud sigh of relief. Her eyes snapped open. Twitching, they stared at the wall, instead of Blaise.

"Yes, Blaise?"

"Uh, at school, they made us write down what we want to be when we grow up. But when I wrote 'like Blastburn', the teacher said I had to redo it."

She took another sip of coffee and swallowed it heavily. Her eyes continued to stare at the wall.

"So what's the problem?" she asked.

"Well, I wanna be like Blastburn. I don't know what else to write."

She squeezed her eyes shut. The hand holding the coffee inched to her lips, but she stopped it from moving — with what seemed like an incredible effort, from the strain on her face. As her forehead wrinkled, she snapped, "Just put anything, Blaise." Then her voice softened, again with what looked like incredible effort. "All that, that's just … It's just meaningless crap they make you write. It doesn't matter …" Her hand wanted to go to her lips again, but she swirled it around a little instead. The tremble in her hand started getting really bad. "… in the long run," she said in a rush. Then she took another long, deep slurp of coffee.

"What other jobs are there around here, though?" Blaise asked.

The question made his mom freeze. Her eyes popped open, revealing her irises as suddenly as a ship coming out of FTL. They rolled over to stare at him, over the coffee cup covering the bottom half of her face. Slowly lowering the cup, she gave him the broadest smile he'd ever seen, even though her eyes looked haunted and hollow.

"You can be anything you want, Blaise."

She must've realized how sad her eyes looked, because she squeezed them shut. But she did it so hard it made her brow squeeze together too, and deep lines cut across her forehead that made her look even more uncomfortable.

"As long as you believe in yourself."

Behind her, through the window, the tall beams of the abandoned shipyards crossed each other and stood in front of the gas giant's cloudy orange skies like a cage.

Blaise asked, "'Anything'? Like wh—?"

"Anything."

She picked up her omnitablet. Moving her hand slowly and carefully, she used the app to turn on the kitchen's small display screen.

"Now, let mommy watch TV, okay?"

She started streaming the news from the city's worldnet while sipping her coffee. But her face soured when the first story turned out to be a report on the company that used to own the shipyards. Apparently, some of the people running it stole billions and threw wild 'aquarium' parties where they did things to underaged aquatic aliens. Blaise wasn't really sure what kind of 'things' they were talking about, but it sounded bad. Then, the report said, the company just covered everything up and lied to their shareholders about falling profits.

His mom turned the worldnet stream off. Took a deep sip of coffee. Lowered it and stared at the wall. The steam wafted up in front of her distant eyes.

"Let mommy have some alone time, okay?"

"Okay."

Blaise walked out of the kitchen, leaving his mom alone with her coffee, and went to stream Blastburn: Faster Than Light all over again from the beginning.

---

The door to the crew quarters started to open. Blaze snapped his head up and spotted Philomena walking into the locker room. The instant she saw him, though, she came to an abrupt standstill. They stared awkwardly at each other, like they'd caught each other doing something they weren't supposed to. The door timed out and closed after her. As the hub vanished from sight, the ship's neck was cut off from its body with the swiftness of a beheading. Everything felt so much tighter, more cramped. Suffocating, without the open space behind her.

As Blaze gathered his wits, a wave of smoothness washed through him. He closed the locker and leaned against it, his arms folded over his chest like a heartthrob, although the spacesuit made his posture feel stiff and unnatural.

"How's it faring, Philomena?" he asked.

She cleared her throat, then said, "Fine."

"Ain't found nothing on the surface, but we're just about to saddle up and mosey into that there crater. Hoping to find something worth our while."

"Good," she said brightly.

He nodded at her in reply. Both of them lapsed into silence, and Blaze racked his brain for something to say. Time dilation seemed to draw the awkward moment out for an eternity. He wasn't even sure how he felt about her. She had such a volatile personality. Sometimes, she was alright. But he never knew what'd set her off. It seemed like every time he felt himself soften towards her, she opened her giant mouth and filled the room with so much shrill screeching he wanted to gouge his eardrums out.

The door to the hub opened again, revealing Luci. Her eyes were fixed on some point a million miles beyond the flight deck. She took one half-step forward through the doorway before she realized there were two people in the locker room already, blocking her way. Her eyes flashed upwards. Took them in. With one foot still in the air, she got sucked into the bubble of time dilation that turned everything into awkward, eternal silence.

Then the door timed out and slid closed while she was still in the doorway. Although it stopped when it sensed an obstacle in its path, the impact was enough to make her teeter sideways. Blaze started forward to grab her, but Philomena was in the way …

Philomena threw her hand out and steadied Luci, who gasped at the hand on her shoulder like she'd just been gifted a billion valex in cash.

"Tell me I'm a good boss," Philomena grumbled.

"You're the best, Philomena!"

Philomena spun around and walked to the flight deck. As she edged past Blaze, her copper hair bouncing up and flaring out behind her, she eyed him while he resumed his casual heartthrob lean against the locker.

"That's what I like to hear, Ramirex."

She walked past him, opened the door to the flight deck, and breezed through it. Luci shuffled down the deck in her wake, moving like an awed, excited puppy.

"Get in here, Corvo!" Philomena called. "Find us something to mine!"

I guess maybe if I kiss her ass and suck up to her like Luci does, Blaze thought, I'll stay on her good side too. But … nah, that's not how Blaze Corvo flies. Like a true space cowboy, he strode into the flight deck and got ready to take the reins of his steel steed once again.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The deeper they descended, the more Luci balked at the darkness.

The crater was so creepy. Inside, it looked as infinite as outer space. But it didn't have any of the distant light that filled the universe. It was simply nothingness. Empty, yet claustrophobic. It gave her an unnerving vision of a cosmos without stars. Floating in a sunless void, unable to see the end, to see if there was anything around her, to see if she was alone. The planets seemed so stable and solid, but they all depended on nuclear furnaces ripping atoms apart for light. One day, all the material would be used up, and the whole universe would sink into darkness forever …

Once, her older brother told her about an article he read. It said the human brain wasn't built to comprehend outer space. That's why they made up imaginary beings who lived in the sky and executed people who pointed out simple facts, like that planets orbited their suns. They needed to make themselves the center of the universe as a coping mechanism for how tiny and fragile they were. One day, evolution might advance humans to the point they could properly process the enormity of the cosmos, but until then they were stuck with their primitive mammal brains.

Back then, Luci had replied with a grin. 'Sounds like people just need to get themselves some better waifus. It's impossible to be worried if you've got good waifus.'

Standing on the raised aft deck, Luci lifted her eyes and peered over the main console. She didn't believe in the old kind of gods, but she did have a goddess she worshiped. The tall redhead stood on the narrow footpath below, her back straight and her chin up. With her imposing posture, she lorded it over the pilot's seat and the guy sitting it in, even though the ship belonged to him. Luci's eyes went down Philomena's body, stealing a glance at her breasts. They weren't big — hovering somewhere between a B-cup and a C-cup. But what they lacked in size, they made up for in softness, fluffiness, comfort-ness. Luci admired the way they flared out from that slender torso. Aerodynamic curves, enhancing their owner's confident figure. Every time the goddess's lips sucked in air and then delicately breathed it out, her boobs rose and fell inside the bra poking through her T-shirt.

I just wanna … rest my head on them. Let her stroke my hair. Brush it until I'm good and relaxed.

The soothing fantasy went through her head and washed her worries away, leaving her emptied and cleaned-out.

Then Blaze Corvo fired the thrusters. The deck rattled underfoot, and it traveled up through her legs and rattled her too. Her muscles tensed. Her stomach clenched. Her curled-up fingers wanted to grab the console to steady the shakes running through her body. On the console monitor, that Rin Bakuko-hater had split the screen into four quarters. Each quarter showed a camera feed, all of them aimed at the gray ground surrounding the ship. Flickering blue light flashed across the rocky land. Tendrils of exhaust flared out of the thruster nozzles and kicked against the planet's gravity well. Her ears picked through the sounds of the engine exhaust. She didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

What if I'm wrong? What if the engines give out and we plummet to the bottom of the crater because I was careless? The machinery keeping us in the sky is so fragile, and … if one piece breaks, we'll be stranded in the darkness until we run out of food and starve to death.

Her fingers drummed on her cargo pants. Dug into the tough fabric. Loosened and relaxed. Drummed some more.

I don't want to go down there, she thought.

Come on, Luci. You've been to space a million times!

But this isn't outer space.

Blaze twisted the control yoke and banked the hovering ship to port. The deck tilted under their feet, and the dark horizon beyond the canopy tilted the other way. The ship's artificial gravity couldn't override the natural gravity of the planet. Luci's balance got knocked out of alignment with the world around them. She leaned to starboard to counter the suddenly-sloped floor, searching for the sweet spot that'd let her right herself. Below, as the ship swung out over the crater, Philomena teetered backwards like she'd slipped on a banana peel. She clawed at the empty air, her arms flying up, but then she hit the tipping point and toppled over.

Heart in her throat, Luci got ready to surge forward. Her hands tensed up, getting ready to catch Philomena before she fell over.

A vivid fantasy unfolded in Luci's mind. Slipping her arms around Philomena. Supporting Philomena so she didn't fall. Gazing in awe as Philomena twirled around and kabedon'd Luci against the canopy. Luci's squirming, sweating body became just a plaything in those commanding hands. They curled under her chin, forced her head up, ordered her to stare in astonishment at the tall goddess who'd decide her fate—

Before Luci could lift her feet, Philomena's shoulders struck the canopy. She whipped her arms out sideways and slammed her palms into the glass, bracing herself and breaking her fall. Giving Corvo a dirty look, she pushed herself away from the canopy and lunged for the pilot's seat. She grabbed the seat back to support herself.

Luci's now-useless helping hands went limp at her sides.

"Corvo, fly smoother!" Philomena said.

He brushed her off by saying, "If you don't like my flying, don't stand on my flight deck."

The ship swung out over the crater. On the monitor, the rim glided past the cameras and then disappeared. Now, there was nothing but darkness underneath. Darkness, forever. Nothing the ship could rest on, except the engines that Luci had okayed for flight. If those engines failed, they would be totally at the mercy of its gravity well, and drop towards a bottom she couldn't see. Into darkness so thick it felt like it would press into the ship like they were falling past the crush depth of a gas giant. The fuselage would crumple like a soda can, and they would all die when the broken steel crashed together and pulverized their frail, squishy little bodies. Her consciousness was like a little light, and it would be snuffed out and washed away on a tidal wave of blood-red agony, the steel tearing through her skin and bones—

Stop! This isn't like you, Luci.

It's this crater. It's doing this to me.

They say when you go into a sensory deprivation tank, your mind blurts out whatever to fill in the blanks. Humans aren't supposed to live in complete darkness. Even on the darkest nights, our ancestors still had starlight to look at. To wonder about. To keep them company.

But this crater is just nothingness, and …

She tore her eyes away from the darkness on the monitors and lifted them up to the flight deck, bathed in the artificial light humans made for themselves. Philomena and Blaze silently bickered over control of the ship through their body language; Philomena made her posture more aggressive, while Blaze made his own more relaxed to counter her. Meanwhile, at the console, Rsh growled to himself at the slapstick spectacle unfolding in front of him.

The starship hovered in the middle of the crater. The walls were so far away its landing lights couldn't shine on them. Black on black, its rim became part of the dark land stretching to the horizon. Then, Blaze trimmed the thruster output and lowered them into the void. Slipping into its mouth, the black ridge rose around them, eating away at the starshine. Although the artificial lights remained as strong as ever, somehow the shadow of the crater made the flight deck seem darker. Overhead, the hole showing the stars got narrower. Their only way out was shrinking. Through the canopy in front and to the sides, there was nothing but solid black.

For comfort, Luci gazed at the goddess she worshiped. But that comfort seemed to get lost in the abyss around them. Philomena's flushed apple cheeks and bouncy copper hair drifted out of Luci's feeble grasp until the black swallowed them completely.

She'll never love me the way I want, Luci thought.

---

"Learn how to fly a ship, baka!"

The subtitles translated Rin Bakuko's Japanese into Galactic Standard, but annoyingly the white letters got in the way of her magnificent bouncing boobs. Like two full moons, every bit of rough weather the ship sailed through made them swing like they were orbiting her torso. They lifted her croptop up, gave a peek at the fold of skin where they met her ribs. Jiggling and jiggling and jiggling. Luci's sweaty hands just wanted to reach out and squeeze them. Rest her head on those silky cushions. Let the redheaded goddess bully and berate her, then reluctantly offer to comfort Luci while her blushing cheeks turned as red as her hair. Breathing hard, Luci sat on the floor of her bedroom, her eyes glued to the display screen—

"Hey, Luce?" her uncle called through the door.

Luci shot forward. Her fingers fumbled their way across the screen until they found the button to turn it off. Standing in front of it, still shaken from the shock, she blocked it with her body even though it was blank.

"Yeah?" she called over her shoulder.

"Ready to go?"

"Go where?"

"'Where'? Ha, did little Luce get hit on the head by a star?"

He had a deep belly laugh, and the door in the way made his voice even deeper. Although 'Did a shooting star land on your head?' was a common saying, Uncle Ramon always swapped the words around and used lucero instead of estrella, just to make a dumb pun on her name. That was the kind of guy he was. She loved him, but his sense of humor was really annoying.

"The market!" he called.

Oh, I forgot all about that!

She ran to the door. Other worlds had these things called 'intrapanels' that let you open doors and turn on lights, but here on Asilo they still used old-fashioned manual releases. She twisted the doorknob and threw the door open, revealing her uncle. He was a tall, hefty man with a wide chest and big shoulders. His hair was slicked back. A long, thick, neatly-trimmed mustache crawled over his upper lip.

"I'm ready," she said.

As they left their apartment building and stepped onto the dust-covered sidewalk, she asked, "Did you hear anything from my dad?"

Her uncle glanced away from her, out across the arid, rocky land of Asilo. El Diablo, the red giant the planet orbited, filled the sky and cast a crimson glow over the distant ridges on the horizon. The buildings were bare steel, blocky and squat, with flat, angled surfaces. They were mostly long and low to the ground, though some went as high as ten stories. They wore their steel structures on the outside, like wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Imposing, hardy, and fortified. They weren't pretty, like other worlds she saw on TV. But she got the sense they'd never crumble, no matter how much the barren land tried to tear them down.

"He sent me a message on the starnet," her uncle said at last. "He's doing well."

"Is he … is he coming back home soon?"

"Ahh, we'll see, mija."

Sighing, Luci tried to make herself feel as strong as the buildings of her homeworld.

Her father and her uncle didn't really get along. Uncle Ramon was older, so he inherited the family business. Her dad got bitter and left home when he was a young man. Made his own way across the galaxy. That was not strange. Asilo was little more than a rock in space her ancestors had forced into becoming a home. Many Asileans ventured out to the wider galaxy to make money.

By the time Luci was born, he'd already returned home to Asilo. But, growing up, she sensed a weird wariness between them. A tense peace that was so easily shattered. Before her mom passed away, Uncle Ramon used to ask her what she saw in him. Sometimes he was joking, other times he wasn't. Sweetly, she would reply, 'He always tries his hardest to provide for his family.'

After she died, her dad demanded Uncle Ramon turn over control of the company to him, since — he said — he was the better businessman, and Uncle Ramon was running the company into the ground. Her uncle threw a lot of words back at him. Words like 'grifter' and 'con artist'. After that, her dad left home for good. To be an 'independent businessman,' he said. He asked Luci if she wanted to come with. Uncle Ramon refused, however, and her dad didn't put up much of a fight. So Luci stayed on Asilo, and went into the family business instead. Every time her dad came back home, he brought money with him, but Uncle Ramon refused to accept it. Eventually, he just stopped coming back home entirely.

"You know your dad loves you," her uncle said.

Staring at the dusty sidewalk, Luci said, "I know."

"He just … loves getting himself into trouble too. Haha!"

"Mhmm."

They fell quiet. Around them, the wind blew dust and carried the sounds of the city through the air.

"So! What were you all upset about last night?" he asked loudly.

"Huh?"

"After you came home from school. You moped so much I thought you were trying to season your paella with your salty tears."

"Nothing," she muttered.

"C'mon, Luce. You can talk to me about anything, you know."

She sighed. "There's this girl in my class, Maria. I asked her if she wanted to go on a date, but she said she doesn't like girls that way."

"Oh."

They walked in silence.

"Well, I said you can talk to me about anything, mija. Didn't say I'd have a reply though! Haha!"

Luci grumbled.

"Uh, are there any other lesbians in your class?" he asked.

"We don't keep a list or anything," Luci muttered. "Besides … she's got this long flowing hair and deep brown eyes and these pouty lips and …" She fell quiet, embarrassed to be talking about this with her uncle. "Is it weird to be a lesbian?"

"Course not. It's perfectly natural."

"Then why are so many girls not … like me?"

"Most people aren't left-handed, but that doesn't mean left-handed people are weird. They're just different, is all."

"But left-handed people don't need to find other left-handed people to fall in love with."

"Ahh … good point. Sorry, Luce, but you can't always get what you want. Everybody wants something different out of life, and you just gotta respect that, and … and look for someone who wants the same thing you do."

He stopped talking, and she didn't bother to start again. After a few minutes, they came to an open clearing with paved ground near the city's starport. Traders had set up stalls to sell stuff from across the galaxy.

"I got a message from a guy I know," her uncle said. "He said he's got a Pulpsen pump salvaged from a TX-58. Tonight, we'll head to the hangar and I'll show you how to install it. How's that sound?"

"Fine," Luci muttered.

"You want to come with me, or you want to look around?"

"I'll look around," she said.

They parted ways. Luci drifted through the crowded market. It was so tough seeing the stalls with all of these annoyingly-tall people in the way. But Luci was almost thirteen. Once she hit her growth spurt, she'd shoot up towards the stars and she wouldn't need to deal with this hassle anymore.

Any day now.

Aha! she thought. There we are!

She made a beeline for a stall selling anime stuff, fresh from Electric Heaven. Asilo wasn't rich enough to make its own shows, so most of the stuff they watched was imported from off-world. Anime was really popular, but Luci struggled to find stuff she was interested in. She didn't care about hot-blooded boys fighting everybody, and she didn't care about cute girls swooning over pretty boys.

Finding good anime is as rare as … as finding a date with a pretty girl! she thought.

Not that she had much choice, anyway. The stall had been picked clean already. There was barely anything, except a few stacks of manga sitting off to the side. She picked one up and gazed at the cover.

Cute girls, at least …

Huh?

A blurb went across the cover at an angle. She tilted her head to the side and read it, but there was one word, right before 'smash-hit sensation', she wasn't familiar with. Everybody on Asilo knew some Galactic Standard — they didn't subtitle stuff in Spanish, after all — but this word was new and exotic.

"Excuse me," she asked the merchant sitting behind the stall. "What does the word 'yuri' mean?"

---

The starship eased itself down into the darkness. The scanner showed the space beneath them was clear, but they moved slowly anyway. Giving themselves time to react, in case something ugly popped into view on the camera feeds. Covered in cold sweat, Luci watched over Rsh's shoulder. Half of her wanted to stick with the slow, cautious pace. The other half want to just cut the thrusters and hurry to the bottom so they could stop dragging this agony out. No, scratch that. 99% of her wanted to fire the thrusters the get the hell out of here. The other two options were split between the remaining 1%.

"Three miles," Rsh announced, checking the scanner.

"How many miles deep is this thing?" she asked.

"Eighteen."

Luci muttered, "Oh, man."

"My apologies. Eighteen remaining. Twenty-one … in total."

Staring at the black camera feeds, Luci widened her eyes. Hoping a little bit of extra vision would let her catch something onscreen before it rammed them. That tiny little monitor was their only window to the underside of the ship. The space below their feet was a vast unknown, hidden by the solid deck. Starship construction suddenly seemed very strange to her — how come most ships had flight decks that looked up at the sky? Wasn't the space under their keep much more important? After all, that was the direction they'd fall if their engines failed. Why hadn't anybody ever thought of that before?!

Relax, she told herself. You're going stir-crazy, that's all.

Tilting her head back, she stared up at the disk of stars. So far away now. The crater swallowed them like a mouth. She could stretch her arms up to try and climb out, but the surface was so far out of reach now.

We're alone down here, she thought. Alone in the universe.

"What was that?!"

Philomena's sudden, loud shout sent shockwaves through the thick, tense, gloomy mood filling the flight deck. The waves tossed Luci about, made her heart pump, threw her into the world and demanded she start running for her life even though there was nowhere to go inside this sealed spaceship. Past the console, Philomena was bent over the pilot's seat, pointing at the camera feed on the HUD.

"I saw something!" she shouted.

Blaze replied, "I didn't see anything."

"Did you have your eyes open?!"

Lowering his voice into a gruff drawl, as if a cowboy accent would add more gravity to his words, he said, "You listen here, Philomena. I ain't seen nothing, and I had my eyes on the HUD the whole durn time."

When Philomena's jaw clenched, Luci wanted to reach out and caress it. Stroke her soft skin until she calmed down. Press her dark olive hands to that pink-white face, warm with live, and whisper that Luci'd always be there to help her relax. Support her. Soothe the stress out of her. And then she'd pucker her lips and lean in for a kiss, and Philomena would surrender to the heat of the moment, recognizing the strength of Luci's love …

It will never happen, Luci thought, with a pang in her heart.

"I have eyes like a falcon," Philomena snapped. "And I'm telling you— There it is again, see?!"

Something gray did fall past the lens. But it was so close it was out of focus, which meant it was very tiny.

"It is dust," Rsh said. "Dislodged by our engines."

The beautiful woman below twisted her upper body to look at him. A sneer twisted her lips up. They opened halfway, flapping around while she thought of a retort.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes."

His guttural growl filled the flight deck, and she shied away from it. Instead of replying to Rsh, she turned back to the pilot's seat.

"Why didn't you just say it was dust?" she asked.

"I didn't see anything!"

Philomena's body motions got more aggravated and exaggerated. A tremor went through her, like she couldn't keep her arms still.

"Why didn't you see anything? Isn't that the pilot's job?"

Rolling his head to the right, away from Philomena, Blaze groaned out the starboard side of the canopy. The moment his eyes left the HUD, though, a nervous jolt went through her body. She snapped back, even though he hadn't made any threatening motions. Her elbows jerked into 90-degree angles, lifting her arms to waist-level and thrusting them out like she was trying to keep her balance. Her fingers curled down into claws, like she was desperate for something firm to grab hold of.

"Hey! Look where you're flying!"

"Ain't nothing down there, Philomena. You're just spooked, is all."

"And no more dumb cowboy accent either! From now on, you fly how I tell you to fly, and you stop when I tell you to stop, got it?"

"Let a man fly how he wants."

"I said, no more dumb—"

"SILENCE!"

Rsh's roar was so loud it boomed like thunder in the cramped flight deck. Being behind him, Luci just got a little startled and recovered quickly, but the humans below, who bore the brunt of his blast, both shivered with fright. Unfortunately, Blaze had his hands on the control yoke, and his terror was translated to the ship. It wobbled as his shaking hands pitched it violently.

"Ah, ah, ah!" Philomena yelped. She fell against the canopy again and grabbed one of the metal beams reinforcing it. "Corvo—!"

As Blaze tightened his hands on the yoke, he said, "Blame him!"

"Both of you, quiet," Rsh shouted.

Creases went down Philomena's neck, accentuating its slender shape, as she turned her gaze from Blaze to Rsh and back again.

Huffing, she said, "Don't blame me if something goes wrong."

"We've done been flying this here sturdy old bird since afore we even laid eyes on you."

Rsh's throat trilled wetly as another roar built up in his chest, and Luci braced herself for loud shout to pound her eardrums like a gong going off, while in her imagination she laid Philomena down and oiled up and massaged her back until all the stress and tension was kneaded out of her.

You will never find somebody to love, the darkness whispered to her. She breathed harder to fend off the weight crushing her chest, but it wore her down and tore her insides up.

"I don't need you looking over my shoulder," Blaze said, "telling me I don't know how to wrangle this here ship. We can spread our wings high and mighty just fine without your—"

Suddenly, the flight deck was plunged into darkness. The black fell over them like a shroud, burying them in the abyss. It wasn't totally dark; the dim emergency lights and the instrument panels were still online, and thankfully so were the engines. Blaze put an immediate stop to their descent. The hoverthrusters roared and rumbled the deck, reassuring Luci as much as they made her tremble. Blaze and Philomena craned their heads to look up at the unlit strips on the beams that reinforced the canopy, then looked over the console at Rsh.

"It's not my fault!" they said as one.

Then they glared daggers at each other.

You belong in the dark, a cruel voice teased Luci. It slithered right out of the near-total darkness like a snake and whispered right into her ear. You don't deserve to be in the light.

You're not good enough.

Cold sweat dripped down her face. Her hands shook at her sides. The darkness outside the canopy, it was all-consuming, it wanted to swallow them all up, but maybe that was for the best …

"It was Luci," Rsh said.

Although his voice had softened, it still made her flinch harder than if he'd bellowed right in her face.

"What?!" she asked, her face feeling like a swamp of sweat.

He was hunched over the keyboard, staring at the OS's event log on the monitor. "Earlier," he said, swiveling the bucket seat around to face her. "You turned the lights off."

She swallowed. "What about it?"

"When you turned them on … you set a timer."

Everybody was looking at her with disappointment in their eyes, even the redheaded goddess she desperately wanted to worship with her whole heart, and she couldn't deal with all their staring …

"Why don't I just throw myself out the airlock and stop being such a burden, huh?" she snapped. "Maldita sea."

"Rather extreme," Rsh said.

She was glad for the darkness now. It kept them from getting a good look at the waterfall of sweat streaming down her face. She swallowed a big lump in her throat, then shrugged in the darkness.

"Well, nobody's perfect, right? I mean, some people don't even like Rin Bakuko." Wryly, she asked, "Can you imagine that?"

Swiveling the chair around, Rsh pounded the mechanical keyboard and muttered something about humans under his breath. The flight deck's lights snapped back on. They seemed half as bright as before. She didn't know if that was true, or just her eyes playing tricks on her, but she did know she wasn't about to ask that Rin Bakuko-hater about it.

"We okay to keep going?" Blaze asked.

"I am," Philomena said. "I don't know about you."

The Rin Bakuko-hater said, "Yes. Perhaps it would be wiser if we … accelerated our descent. 'Take risks,' as our boss requested."

Philomena hummed merrily while she stood over the pilot's seat. However, Blaze got the last laugh when he trimmed the thrusters so much that the ship dipped violently, forcing Philomena to grab the pilot's seat before she got thrown off-balance.

Staring intently at the redhead below, Luci gripped the console tightly. The darkness outside the canopy whispered into her ear, You will never win her heart, ever.

"Four miles," Rsh announced.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The starship seemed like it was descending, but with no frame of reference Rsh couldn't be sure they were going anywhere. Surely, if he looked up, he'd see the stars overhead, but he kept his eyes on the monitor. Watched the camera feeds carefully, for the slightest sign of danger. According to the scanner, they were approaching the twenty mile mark. Just one more mile to go. One more, and then they would be at the bottom. Just one more.

His instincts riled up inside him. Made him want to get up and stalk around the flight deck. But he resisted the urge. He was in control of his unconscious, not the other way around. His bestial side was on a tight leash, which his higher intellect gripped tightly. Let it snarl and growl. His mind had more important things to worry about.

Behind him, Luci's shoes patted out an erratic rhythm on the deck. Underneath the scent of deodorant masking grease and oil, his nose picked out her nervous sweat. The smell of weakness. Her tiny frail body was vulnerable, and she was easy prey for a passing predator.

Over his shoulder, he growled, "Stop pacing."

Ignoring him, she continued to pace and breathe out in rapid puffs.

She's making me want to pace too, he thought.

Rsh wanted to stand up and force her to stop, but the camera feeds were much more important. His aggravated instincts did not know anything about human technology. Primitive animals did not have the ability to use tools. But his conscious mind was in control now, and he ordered his animalistic side to quiet down and sit still while he watched out for dangers outside which it could not comprehend.

"Twenty miles," he announced.

Blaze, hidden by the console, didn't respond. Philomena flitted from one side of the narrow footpath to the other, striding alongside the darkness without looking out at it. Although she passed it front of Blaze's field of view, nothing was visible outside of the canopy. He was forced to rely on the HUD to observe the environment, just as Rsh was forced to rely on the console.

The humans had built such incredible tools to sail between stars.

Yet these tools only seemed to highlight how incredibly fragile they were. How fragile life was. Like a feral animal backed into a corner, there were generally two responses a being had to being reminded of their own fragility: hopeless resignation, or fierce belligerence. Often in some confused mixture of the two.

"Philandia?" Philomena muttered. "Philoworld? Gotta name this place something impressive, because I'm impressive. I'm the best businesswoman, the best in the whole galaxy."

She stalked back and forth, moving in fits and starts in front of the darkness. Off in her own little world … as opposed to her own little world outside, covered in incredible darkness, which she seemed to shy away from.

Sighing, Rsh stared at the monitor, but nothing could be discerned from the infinite darkness.

---

The Zantauran sun was bright and harsh. Its light stabbed outward from the bright blue skies and glanced off the arid land, turning it into a dazzling shimmer. Slitting his eyes against the blazing fury, Rsh pushed through the pelt hanging over the doorway to his den. He went down the stairs, into the earthen entrance hall of the half-underground dwelling. In the middle of the hall was a stout beam made of thick wood from the bkssh tree. It was covered in claw marks. When a visitor entered somebody else's den, it was tradition that they tried their hardest to break the main beam and make the den collapse, while the den-leader watched and laughed. A strong den meant a strong den-leader, they said. It was the same reason why they hung the most impressive pelts over the entrance — to show their prowess as warriors to the rest of the village.

Savages, Rsh thought.

The humans who came from the stars had brought with them some incredible things. Not only technology, but knowledge. Things like the theory of evolution, and psychology. His father and all the other boorish idiots stampeding across this planet dismissed what they did not understand, but Rsh embraced knowledge from the stars eagerly.

The unconscious mind was the remnant of the feral animals they'd evolved from, and consciousness was built atop it to allow them to figure out solutions to problems and increase their odds of survival. Random mutations gave organisms traits which might allow them a better chance to thrive. He had never fit in on this awful planet, but now he understood why — he was more evolved than these terrible bullies. They had their niche, to stampede across the surface of this mud ball and kill each other with rocks. But then the humans came, and opened up the wider universe. Now, evolution had gifted him with a more refined, human-like intellect. In earlier eras, someone like him would languish and die. But now, he had the galactic niche to let his traits flourish. He was superior to these crude cretins. While they let their feral side run rampant, he'd buried his. He'd spent his whole life being beaten and bullied, but it was he — not them — who would thrive in the wide, wild galaxy.

He heard racuous laughter from the living room, and cut through the kitchen to avoid it. He brushed through the pelt hanging over the earthen archway. However, when he saw his brother Tahkha cutting up a gash-tah on the kitchen counter, Rsh stopped in the doorway. Tahkha's bloody claws raked the slain beast, separating its skin from its muscle. Gash-tah lived in the wildlands, the grassy savannah beyond the arid plains, where his people went to hunt and fell bkssh trees. This one looked bigger than the one hanging over the archway to Tahkha's bedroom, which meant it would soon be replaced.

Rsh didn't care in the slightest.

Forcing himself to move forward, he headed for the pelt hanging over the other archway. Normally, he was beneath his family's notice, and he was eager to keep it that way.

"Where were you?" Tahkha asked. His claws continued to rip the gash-tah apart.

Rsh halted, halfway to the far door. He hated talking to his family, but to ignore a direct question would just invite their anger, and he didn't want to get beaten. Not that he wouldn't relish beating them up — he wasn't strong enough to impose his will on them through physical violence. That was how things worked on Zantaura.

"Gathering bkssh," he said.

"You? In the wildlands?"

"Just offcuts."

He'd gathered up little pieces of wood discarded by others. They sat in the pocket of his robe, weighing it down.

Scoffing, Tahkha asked, "What good are offcuts?"

"They have their uses."

"Whatever. Can't even skin a gash-tah."

Once, his father forced him to skin a gash-tah he'd caught and killed, in an effort to 'toughen him up.' Rsh made a botch of it and ruined the pelt, earning him scorn and a beating from his father, who then pointedly ignored him out of disgust.

"Pathetic excuse for a Zantauran," Tahkha said with a heckling snort.

Hearing that makes me happy, Rsh thought.

He swept through the pelt hanging over the doorway and entered the hall. At the left end, it opened into the living room. His father and friends were gathered around a display screen. Like the electric lights on the ceiling, the screen was an out-of-place human artifact amidst the traditional earthen den's beige walls. He'd heard that, in the cities, the buildings were much more humanlike. But human technology was slowly making its way out to rural villages like this.

Good. That brings me one step closer to leaving this mud ball.

"Ah!" his father cried. "It's happening!"

The face of a squinting human actor filled the screen. The man was long-dead, but he lived on through his films. Although there was nothing imposing or impressive about him in the least, his father and friends gazed at the stony alien visage with rapt attention. 'The Clint,' and the aspects of human culture he represented, was a source of fascination on Zantaura. Something they admired about the people from the stars. The human was — dare Rsh say it? — kawaii.

Then, with a flurry of activity, the squinting man drew his gun and blasted it, eliciting roars from his father and his friends. They bellowed out the stupidest, most obvious remarks, the human words rolling uneasily off their tongues.

"The Clint! The Clint fired his gun!"

Morons, Rsh thought, heading up the hallway opposite them.

Rsh came to his bedroom, although calling it such was too generous. It was a narrow, drafty storage room his family had shoved him into. Out of the way, where he could be ignored. At least until they needed him to make some new piece of human technology they'd bought work, which was very likely the only reason they tolerated his presence. All the furniture inside was made from old human cargo containers, and the plastic tarp hanging over the doorway had come from one of them. As he trudged inside, he pulled the offcuts from his robe and dropped them onto his 'desk'. They landed in a pile with some other offcuts, next to a half-finished human figure.

In anime, characters seemed to amass vast collections of anime figurines, but they didn't sell any anime merch on Zantaura. So, Rsh was forced to make his own. The figure was crude and ugly, but compared to his crude and ugly homeworld, it was a thing of beauty. Right now, his hands felt brutal and savage. Like they would break any delicate piece of anime merch they touched. He wanted to file his claws down so they looked more like human fingers. However, he was forced to make his crude anime figures with the materials this brutal and savage world provided, and that meant keeping his claws. His body had evolved to fit this niche, even though his mind had evolved towards the stars and the human civilization that spanned them.

It was frustrating, but … there was nothing he could do about it.

Nothing except keep going, and hope he thrived in his new niche.

He dropped onto the low bed and stared at the earthen ceiling. He didn't feel like working on his half-done figure right now. His family were going to leave soon, and he'd timed his return to coincide with it. He could snatch a few hours of time to tune into the anime the humans broadcasted. Most of the time, they showed the kinds of films his father liked — starring the Clint. But, like evolution itself, the human broadcasters inserted random mutations into their programming. Gauging the waters, to see if tastes had changed. The anime itself probably seemed like an afterthought to them, but it had shown Rsh a whole new galaxy. A galaxy where he felt like he belonged, where he could be respected. A new niche, which he could possibly thrive inside. Now, all he had to do was find a way off this rock.

A handful of thin books were piled atop the cargo crate he used as a shelf. The human mining companies were eager to train them how to read and write Galactic Standard, so they could work at the facilities that dotted the landscape. Rsh swiped a pamphlet off the top. The cover showed an illustration of a proud human and Zantauran, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, staring boldly at the distant horizon. Inside, it told him about a training program on a nearby planet called Nimbus. They meant for him to come back and work on Zantaura, but he intended to get out of that however he could. He didn't know much about the various human skills they offered. But this one anime had made hacking look like fun, so he had settled on computer programming.

Sighing, he put the pamphlet aside and stared at the ceiling. Biding his time, waiting for his family to leave.

And, further, waiting for the chance to leave his worthless homeworld.

Soon, he thought. Soon …

---

"Rsh. Hey, Rsh, answer me!"

The dark monitor had become a screen he could project his memories onto. He'd been staring at it so long his eyes went out of focus. Blurring the pixels. Obscuring reality. But when the shrill cry roused him, he abruptly straightened up. Turned his head towards its source. Philomena perched on the stairs going down to the pilot's seat. Her hands gripped the console's edge so she could hunch forward, leaning over its surface, to look him in the eye. Strands of copper hair swung in front of her eyes, which insistently searched his face for answers.

"What?" he asked.

She sighed. "I said … 'On a scale of one to ten, how amazing does the name 'Phye-topia' make me sound?'"

Still thrown for a loop by the daydream, Rsh struggled to keep a sneer off his face.

"You're awful confident this here planet's gonna be named after you," Blaze called. "How about we name it after the hombre who actually found it, huh?"

The urge to shut these humans up permanently made Rsh's arms tense up at his sides.

"I'm the boss, Corvo," she replied. She barely turned her head towards him, instead raising her voice so it carried through the flight deck. "You do what I tell you to do, so I get the credit."

Rsh clenched his fists and dug them into the armrests, forcing them to relax. No! he thought.

"And, uh, how's about them failures, huh?" Blaze asked. "I reckon that's just about 99% of your business. You taking credit for that, too?"

Rsh shouted at the feral beast deep inside his mind, I am not my father. I am not my family. I am not … not a Zantauran. I am a civilized being!

Philomena pushed herself off the console and crossed her arms. Her mouth orbited around her lower face like she was searching for the best angle to spit venom. Then, looking toward the aft bulkhead, she called out over Rsh's shoulder.

"Ramirex."

Behind Rsh's back, the tightly-wound bundle of nerves exploded in a flurry of motion. The wind she made raked the coat on his head and neck, aggravating the beast lurking in his instincts. He heard a manga volume slip out of her hands and thud on the ground, eliciting a sharp gasp.

"Hai?!" Luci yelped.

"On a scale of one to ten, how amazing does the name 'Phye-topia' make me sound?"

"Eleven," Luci said with no hesitation. "No! Um … twelve."

With a smug, beaming smile, Philomena nodded in agreement. "That's what I like to hear!"

"Yes, Philomena. A-A-Anytime, Philomena."

The arrogant human faced the ship's fore with her hands on her hips. "I hereby declare this planet Phye-topia!"

The absolute darkness on the monitor taunted Rsh. They were sinking into rogue planet's depths, where the light of the universe couldn't reach them. Couldn't provide any illumination for those lost in shadow. There was nothing but black. Nothing to distract him from his own mind … and the predator dwelling inside it. They were all lost, and there was no way to find the light again—

Suddenly, faint flickers of light and shadow stirred on the monitor. His muscles stiffened as he sat up straight. His hair stood on end. Leaning forward, he swept his eyes back and forth across the pixels. Trying to see if it was a problem with the monitor, or …

The rocky bottom of the crater emerged from the darkness, lit by the bright landing lights and flickering blue engine exhaust. An alien land, unlit by sunlight since it drifted out of its solar system. Dislodged dust floated down around them, falling through their paltry sphere of light. Beyond its reach, darkness eagerly consumed everything without mercy.

"Contact," he called.

Blaze boosted power to the thrusters. The exhaust rumbled the deck underfoot and stopped the ship's descent. Rsh pulled the scanner up and observed the grayscale terrain map it was generating, while the ship hovered several dozen feet above the bottom of the mysterious land. They tried to fill the abyss with light, but the darkness proved more powerful. It pressed up against the ring of illumination from the ship's landing lights, looming sinisterly, waiting for a chance to rush at them and pounce. Drag them down and keep them here, at the end of the universe.

He felt Luci hovering behind him, keeping her distance. But when Philomena hopped up the stairs and looked at the console over his shoulder, Luci found the courage to trudge steps forward and join the other human. They crowded behind him, making his instincts flare up. He was tense and uneasy. Being hemmed in didn't help, even if the humans were so pathetically weak he could rip them apart easily.

"Anything?" Blaze asked.

Holding his breath, Rsh studied the scanner closely. Observing the broken land below, waiting for a radar contact to the rush from one of the ridges and knock them out of the sky. In his last moments, he would bring his strength to bear on the attacker, but it was useless, all his power was useless, he was totally at the mercy of this human deathtrap, and he couldn't fight his way out if the ship crashed here. He would either be crushed or vented into the airless surface, and die horrifically in either case.

"I see nothing," he replied.

He pointedly did not mention anything about it being safe.

Blaze said, "So … what now?"

For a moment, the silence was as deafening as the night outside was deep.

"Um, Corvo," Philomena said. "You, um, hop out and see if it's safe. If it's not, we'll all fly away and, um, remember your sacrifice."

Blaze barked tense laughter. "Sure, but I think you should come out too. To … watch my daring frontier spirit in action."

"Ramirex," Philomena said.

"Hai?!"

"I'm making you my COO for now. You, um, go out and supervise Corvo in my place."

"Hai?!"

"I'll watch from here."

"Um, I-I think I'll need you to supervise me too. To m-m-make sure I'm doing a good job."

Philomena scoffed, but the tremor that went through her vocal cords betrayed her nervousness. "Do I have to do everything around here?" she asked, although her voice, rather than maintaining its typical edge, drifted off into the distance, like she'd gotten distracted by a faraway spectacle.

"All of you are leaving," Rsh declared, in a tone that rejected all arguments to the contrary.

Philomena piped up, "Excuse me, I am—"

He swiveled the chair and stared at her. She leaned away from his growl, her arms fidgeting upward to protect herself, even though hadn't moved at all.

"I shall throw you out the airlock … suit or no suit," he said.

She gulped. Twitching and blinking, she looked over his head at the darkness outside the canopy. "I guess I'll just have to—" Her voice broke into a frightened squeak. "—do everything myself." Then she gulped again and cleared her throat. Probably trying to save face, she loudly added, in a flustered, blustering rush, "I'm the greatest businesswoman in the galaxy, and I'm going to … get it all done myself. Yup!"

"Any idea where we should land?" Blaze asked.

Rsh panned the terrain map around and zoomed in to examine it closely. He noticed a large crack in the crater wall. The terrain map faded to nothingness inside it, implying the crack went deeper into the planet. In front of its opening, a relatively flat stretch of land would allow the ship to land … in theory. He wasn't sure how firm the land was down here. He set a marker at the designated landing spot, and then sent it to the HUD. It appeared on the glass pane in front of Blaze.

"There," Rsh said.

"You got it."

He jetted the ship forward, and it glided through the darkness. The landing lights briefly filled the cracks in the land with illumination. Then, as the ship sailed past, the shadows circled around them and took the crevices back. Like a swarm of insects avoiding the light. Angered by the intrusion into their homes. Biding their time, just waiting for a chance to rush out into the darkness and swarm freely again.

The hovering ship approached the crater's side. Most of its landing lights were tilted downward, and at their height they only lit up the lower half of the opening. The jagged rocks created sharp shadows and rays of light that stabbed into the interior like daggers. The top half of the opening was mostly steeped in darkness. The starship's weaker running lights could barely offer it any illumination. He stared upward at it, and he sensed the others doing the same. The arched top of the crack rose above them, dissolving into the darkness hiding the crater wall, far below the circle of stars.

What lurked up there, waiting to fall and land on whatever unlucky bastard dared enter the cave? Fractured rocks? Massive stalactites? Or … something alive, hibernating upside down on the cavernous ceiling?

Even the beast in his subconscious balked at the idea of finding out.

I have no space suit, so I can't enter. How unfortunate for me.

The starship descended, seemingly shaking more than usual. Rsh couldn't tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him, or if Blaze's hands were shaking and making the yoke wobble. Whatever the reason, Rsh gripped the console tightly while watching the feeds from the cameras chronicle their landing. The humans behind him gripped the console and the back of his seat to steady themselves. Their trembling bodies brushed his coat, incensing his already-tensed nerves. The beast inside him wanted to lash out and knock them away.

Normally, he kept his savage side under control. But this place …

The ship neared the ground. Its sphere of light brightened the land under the keel while also contracting towards their landing site. In its absence, the darkness crawled across the ground towards them. Closing in on the hull, concealing whatever hid inside it. Stalking towards their tiny, fragile habitat.

"I am unsure how stable the land is," Rsh warned. "Keep the thrusters on … for now."

"You got it, partner," Blaze said.

The landing legs, which they'd kept extended, touched down on the ground. The crunch of impact traveled through the hull and made all of them flinch. The ship's weight settled as the planet shouldered it. For one queasy moment, he feared the planet would give way. Drop them into a pit, bash the ship to pieces in the ensuing landslide, and breach the hull and kill them all. Rsh's grip tightened; the console's casing started to dent. His breath issued through his clenched teeth. The two humans behind him heaved for air, their small frames shuddering and brushing against his coat more quickly than before, and it was rousing his anger.

Stop that, he thought.

But as they waited, the ground remained steady. Piece by piece, his worries eased themselves and slipped off his tight shoulders.

"Well?" Blaze asked.

Peeling his hands off the console, Rsh sat back in the bucket seat and forced his tense muscles to loosen up.

"It appears stable," Rsh said.

Blaze made a noncommittal grunt, fell quiet for a few seconds, and then piped up in a swaggering pompous voice. "I meant, uh … you can apologize for doubting my flying whenever you want."

He killed the thrusters, and the rumble from the engines ceased. In the silence that followed, all of them froze. Waiting. Listening for the telltale shudder of the ground giving out. Or perhaps something rushing out of the darkness at them, ready to tear the ship apart.

The eerie stillness continued.

"Is it safe?" Luci asked.

"It would appear so," Rsh replied.

Blaze climbed out of the pilot's seat, stood in the narrow footpath, and threw his arms up. He stretched vigorously, twisting his body sideways. Grinning, he called up to Rsh and the two humans on the raised deck, pulling his arm behind his head.

"Whatever's out there probably took one look at my badass gunslinger attitude and ran the other way."

"Yeah," Luci said, "to laugh its ass off."

Philomena snickered at that, and Luci emitted a little delighted gasp in response. From the sound of her mouth, she'd turned her head to look at the woman next to her — probably with awe sparkling in her eyeballs. But Rsh was too busy staring at the scanner on the monitor to care about their little mating dance.

Nothing, he thought. Nothing at all.

To join them on the rear deck, Blaze stomped up the steps. Rsh swiveled his bucket seat around to face the herd of humans. It was very crowded in the alcove in front of the bulkhead, as they faced each other and tried not to swing their elbows into each other. But none of them seemed in any great hurry to leave. Awkwardly, they looked at each other and then looked away. Crowded in by all the hairless rodents, Rsh felt his hackles rising.

"The money," he said, by way of reminder.

"Right!" Philomena cried. "The money!"

"And the manga it'll buy!" Luci said.

"And the space babes we'll impress!" Blaze said.

"And the space babes!" Luci added.

The three humans psyched themselves, steeling their nerves for the EVA. Then they turned to the bulkhead and left the flight deck with an awkward shuffle that betrayed their contrived enthusiasm. At last, peace and quiet, Rsh thought, sinking down in the bucket seat. But before the door closed, Philomena planted her hand on the doorframe to hold it open and poked her head back inside. He felt his hackles rise again.

"And Rsh! You're not goofing off and watching cartoons when we're working, got it?" She pointed to the cardboard box full of paperwork sitting in the corner. The invoices left over from SwiftShip. She then swung her finger around and aimed it at him. "Batterdaze it, understood?"

"'Database'," Rsh said, his teeth grinding together.

"Whatever. Get it done quick."

She stepped back through the doorway, keeping her finger and her stern eyes aimed at him. The door timed out and slid shut on her. Alone again, he heaved himself out of his chair with a groan. Knelt down to pick the box up. Carried it to the console and set it down. He took the lid off and rifled through the faded, worn printouts. The first thing that stood out was the utter lack of standardization among addresses on frontier worlds. He sensed he'd be writing a lot of code to parse and format them into a database. Grumbling, he rubbed his forehead.

Just leave them, the savage beast in his unconscious mind said. Take this metal thing and leave the puny humans behind.

For ten to fifteen seconds, his growling throat trilled wetly.

I'll think about it, he told it.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

"Well, Corvo?" Philomena said. "Push the button."

Her face, shielded by her helmet's faceplate, was only a foot away from Blaze's. He saw her mouth move, but her voice came from the speaker inside his suit instead of her lips. Normally, that wouldn't bother him, but the frontier outside made it seem more unsettling. He felt an urge to tug at the lapels of his jacket, straighten them, smooth them out. But he was stuffed into the cramped airlock, which didn't have much elbow room at the best of times, with the two women. Also, he'd taken his jacket off and put it in a locker, so it was a moot point anyway. His urge was doomed to go unfulfilled.

I ain't scared, he thought. I can take on whatever the universe throws at me.

When he turned to the control panel, the lack of maneuvering room made his suit jostle against the others'. The soft bits scraped and the hard bits clanged. The women shoved themselves against the far side to try and get away, but with the tight confines, they could only move a few inches. Through the mic, he heard Philomena grumble to herself, but she kept her mouth clamped shut — for once.

Right before he hit the button, he had a horrific vision of a monster lunging out of the darkness and ramming its head into the airlock. Eating a snack right out of the tin. His finger hovered in front of the control panel, unmoving.

Time to saddle up and ride!

Blaze hit the button. The air hissed as it cycled out of the airlock. He stared at Philomena, who was shoved against the opposite wall, and she stared right back at him. She kept her face stern and rigid, but as the air got sucked out, her eyes widened at him ever-so-slightly. Her head bowed, Luci stared at the floor. She was so short, at that angle Blaze couldn't see her face through the faceplate. But every so often, her mumbling made it through the noise gate on his helmet. It sounded like she was … singing a song in Japanese?

Anime nerds, he thought.

All the air had been sucked out. A heavy mechanical thump came through the fuselage as the door unlocked and started to slide out of the way. The landing lights spilled illumination into the cramped airlock, but beyond the pitifully-small perimeter they made on the ground, it was complete darkness.

Snorting hard, to expel his hesitation, he gripped the doorframe and leaned out. The horrific image of something rushing out of the dark still haunted him, but he shoved it aside. He craned his head around, taking in the sights. The crater wall was right in front of the ship's nose. The landing lights struggled to reveal anything about it. It was dim shades of gray, barely visible in the shadow. Outside the splash of light the ship shone on the ground, the wall dissolved into the steep black filling the crater.

"Anything?" Philomena asked, her voice rising impatiently.

"Coast looks clear," he replied.

"Go on down, then."

He started threading a cable through the bar at the top of the doorway and anchoring it to the handhold.

"Sure thing," he boasted. "Of course, first one to step outside gets to name the planet, don't you know?"

Her eyes lit up and her nostrils flared like a charging bull. She said, "Wait, Ramirex."

"Hai?!"

"You go down first … and name the planet after me."

"H-Hai?!"

He finished securing the cable. "Actually, I already did an EVA at the top of the crater. So I guess I get to name it anyway."

"That doesn't count!" Philomena snapped. "It doesn't count unless it's at the bottom of the crater!"

"Says who?"

"Me, your boss! Ramirex, tell him that doesn't count!"

"Hai?!"

Gripping the cable, he prepared to step off the edge of the airlock. Seeing the fluster on Philomena's face gave him a boost of … not courage, exactly. But it eased his fear a little.

"I think I'll name it … Blaze's Trail?" he said.

Smiling, he hopped over the threshold. His hand trailed along the rope and slowed his descent. He didn't look up at Philomena. Let her watch me brave the unknown, he thought. His boots struck the ground. The shock of the impact traveled up through his body, but he tensed himself and absorbed it. Letting go of the cable, he spun around and scanned the darkness beyond the ring of light.

Nothing launched itself at him … yet.

He briskly strolled forward, but the severely limited vision his helmet allowed made his hair stand on end. He felt confined by it, boxed in and about to be ambushed. His feet settled uneasily on the rocky land. Using his wrist control, he activated his helmet's headlamps. They snapped on, piercing the darkness on either side of his face. The light splashed down on the ground, but in every other direction the black swallowed it up. When he edged beyond the perimeter of the landing lights, the beams probed the shadows and brightened a small circle of the dimly-lit crater wall. He inched up to the sheer cliff, sensing the massive height towering far over his head.

Here's hoping there's not gonna be an avalanche, he thought.

He reached out, touched the wall, and trailed his hand along it. Felt solid enough. Turning back to the ship, he looked at the airlock. A red-pink spacesuit leaned out to follow his progress, while the olive green one was probably huddling out of sight.

"Nothing's eaten me so far," he said, shrugging.

"Is there any good news?" Philomena replied.

"Ha ha. Gets funnier every time you say it."

"Ramirex, you're next," Philomena said. "Go on down there and … make sure Corvo does his job. I'll supervise from up here."

"Ehh …"

"Go on, go."

A tiny olive-green figure crept to the edge of the airlock door. After waffling on the threshold, Luci leaned out, grabbed the cable and stepped over the drop-off. She hugged her lifeline tightly, sliding down like she had her arms and legs wrapped around a metal pole. As she held on for dear life, her head darted from side to side. She sailed to the bottom, but even after her feet touched down, she kept hugging the cable tightly and refused to let go. Above, a figure in a red-pink spacesuit carefully leaned its upper body out of the airlock and peered down at her.

"You coming down, or what?" Blaze asked her.

She angled her faceplate towards him. Her voice crossed the airless distance instantly and sounded inside his helmet.

"I can supervise just fine from up here," she said.

"And, uh, what are you going to do if I refuse to work? Chuck rocks at me?"

Philomena barked, "'Refuse to work'? What are you, some kind of unionizer?"

"No. I'm just a guy who thinks we'll cover more ground with three people instead of two."

"I'll come out when it's safe."

"When's that going to be? Point Pleasant?"

"I pay you to work so that I don't have to, Corvo. That includes dying for me, too."

"You don't pay me anything. We work for a cut of the profits."

"And my amazing business skills are what make a profit, so … get to work."

Shaking his head inside the helmet, Blaze strode back to the ship. If her name wasn't on the business loan, she'd be right out the airlock, he thought. He turned off his headlamps as he reentered the sphere of light. Ahead, Luci still hugged the dangling cable like she'd fall to her death if she let go. He clapped his hand on her shoulder, making her jump and yelp. But as she looked up at him, her blinking eyes and quivering lip visible through her faceplate, she relaxed just the tiniest bit.

"Let's go, Luce. Looks like it's just you and me."

With a gulp, she let go of the rope and stood up like she was about to be marched to her execution.

Blaze leaned back and stared up at the airlock above. "I'll say, this here planet — Blaze's Trail — is looking mighty fine today!"

"We're not naming it that!" Philomena snapped. "Ramirex, tell him we're not naming it that! She's supervising you for me, so you have to listen to her."

Through chattering teeth, Luci said, "N-N-Not …"

Blaze turned on his heel and strode back towards the edge of the light.

"Time to get to work … here on Blaze's Trail," he announced.

He turned his headlamps back on. The beams of light shot forward and illuminated the crater wall. Smiling to himself, he waited to see what the obnoxious harpy would do next. The noise gate kept most of her seething grumbling from being audible, but every once in a while they got so loud the sound slipped through and hissed in his ear.

"Ramirex, get out of the way. I'm coming down. I trusted you to put my foot down for me, and you failed, big time!"

Luci muttered, "I … I can …"

Blaze turned back and watched the woman in the pink space suit slide down the cable. She hit to the bottom and nearly fell over. Bending her legs, she crouched to recover her balance from the unwieldy descent, then popped back up and regained her footing. She grabbed Luci and dragged her stiffened body away from the ship. Staggering along beside Philomena's whirlwind pace, her legs stuck rigidly out and didn't bend in the slightest. The two women stomped away from the ship's light and joined Blaze at the edge of the darkness.

"We're calling it 'Phye-topia', got it?" she barked.

He rolled his eyes, but he didn't argue.

Shoulder to shoulder, the three of them walked to the massive crack in the crater wall. Their headlamps probed the darkness, but did not get very far before they faded into the darkness. The opening arched high over their heads, lost in the shadows. There was something eerie about it, and yet alluring too.

"Is it just me," Blaze asked, "or does this seem kind of …?"

The two women beside him stared at the vaulted slit that opened into an infinite tunnel.

"'Kind of' what?" Philomena said, her voice sharp.

He thought, Hmm, maybe not the right person to ask.

Then, her voice softening and growing uneasy, she said, "I wish we could mine some … some massive, throbbing stone pillars fifty feet tall, or something."

Definitely not the right person to ask.

But Luci stepped forward with her head tilted all the way back. She still looked a little shaken, but the shakes seemed to be dying down.

"I kind of get what you mean," she said. "It's creepy, but also kind of alluring. You just wanna … stick your hand inside and see what you find, am I right? Heh heh."

"Weirdos," Philomena said.

Luci asked, "So … d-d-do we go inside, or …?"

The three of them stared at the bottomless hole carved into the crater wall. Its darkness hiding who knew what. Blaze tensed himself up to move if one of the others moved first, but judging from the way their bodies were canted forward, they were waiting for somebody else to move first as well.

Dropping his voice into a gravelly tone, Blaze said, "Say, why don't we, uh, mosey around out here first?"

"S-Sure," Luci said.

"Good idea, Corvo," Philomena said haughtily. "Let's look around out here first—"

"Qué fue eso?!"

Luci's shriek got Blaze's heart pumping. Her head and upper body swung around so she could look behind them, sweeping her lights across empty space. The darkness ate them up, revealing nothing. She made herself taller and shifted her weight like she was getting ready to run. Her hands hovered at her sides, rigid fingers flexing. Philomena sidled up to Blaze's side, her head twisting erratically as she too searched for danger. He yanked his pistol out of its holster, raised it straight up until it was at eye level, and then thrust his arm out. At that point, he realized he realized he wasn't holding his pistol — which was hanging in the ship's locker room — but the handheld spectroscope instead. Still, his instincts needed something firm and reassuring in his palm, so he waved the spectroscope around just the same. Pointing it at the encroaching darkness that loomed all around them. It was their enemy, and it was waiting for a chance to descend on them and snuff their bright lives out.

"What is it?" he asked. As the words went through his throat, they passed the pumping arteries in his neck. "Luci, what happened?!"

"Th-There's something out here," she said. "Ay caray, I saw it!"

"Where?!"

"I … I don't know!"

Their headlamps swept the darkness, but they didn't stumble on anything lurking out there. The adrenaline drained from Blaze's body. His hand sagged to the ground, dropping the not-pistol.

"I swear, I saw something!" Luci said.

"Like what?"

"A-A shadow!"

"There's shadows all over the place, you idiot!" Philomena shouted, her cheeks glowing bright red like her hair.

As the woman at Blaze's side berated the tiny Asilean, Luci's face cracked like somebody had smashed it with a sledgehammer. Lines cut over her anguished face. A choked gasp got stuck in her throat.

"I … I saw it …"

Blaze holstered the spectroscope again and took a deep breath. The air bounced off his faceplate and brushed through his hair. It felt so cramped inside this damned suit, he just wanted to tear it off and run free. He knew it was crazy, that there was no air on the rogue planet, but his instincts were like wild horses, and they wouldn't listen to common sense.

"It was nothing," he said.

Luci moaned. "But—"

"It was nothing," he said again, talking to himself as much as he was talking to Luci.

"Yeah, Ramirex!" Philomena added. "Don't spook us like that!"

The 'boss' stood right next to Blaze, her space suit brushing against his. He turned away from her, but something felt odd. Clunkier than usual. Like he was being weighed down by something. He glanced down at his arm — the opposite arm from the one he had drawn his not-pistol with. The arm that was right next to Philomena.

"What's this?" he asked.

She turned her helmet towards his and blinked at him through the faceplate.

"Huh?" she asked.

He raised his wrist to her eye level, showing her that her hand was locked around his wrist tighter than a docking clamp. She stared at the sight like it was an alien artifact. Then, scowling, she ripped her hand away from his and pulled it back behind her body, leaning away to put some distance between them.

"I was just getting ready to throw you into danger so I could run for safety."

Although she was flustered, her voice sounded totally sincere.

Blaze stepped away from the women and stared at the dim crater wall. I'm not scared, he thought. Badass space cowboys don't get scared. He took a moment to collect himself. To adopt his badass gunslinger swagger. He had to be bold. Stride across the frontier without hesitation. For the women. Sure, one of them might be a lesbian and the other one had a cry so shrill it could shatter glass, but … it was just practice. Braving this rogue planet, acting like a cocksure cowboy for the benefit of their watchful eyes, it'd all help him build his rep and steel his nerves. Just think about that, and … and get to it.

"Let's ride," he said, his voice low.

He strode forward, angling himself at the crater wall beside the cave. From the light of their headlamps, he knew the women were following in his wake — although Luci's kept sweeping around to look back behind them. Pulling his spectroscope out, Blaze stepped up to the sheer stone wall and got ready to fire it …

Luci stood two feet next to him, her own spectroscope in hand. He glanced sideways at her, and she, flinching with every blink, faced him in return.

"You know," he said, "we'd cover more ground if we spread out."

Her gulp was so loud it passed the noise gate and sounded in his ear.

"Is … is that so?" she asked.

"That's right," Philomena said.

She stood behind them, not lifting a finger. Though she had her own spectroscope, it was still holstered. It would probably stay holstered, until it was time for her to swoop in at the last minute and check his work.

"Ramirex, you go over there." She pointed past the cave, at the cliff face on the other side. Into the pitch-black darkness. "I'll stay with Blaze, since he needs to protect me. With his life, if necessary."

She just loves reminding people what their job is, doesn't she? Like we're going to forget if she doesn't bring it up ten times per minute.

Luci stammered, "But … But …"

"Get going, Ramirex!"

"Happy trails," Blaze said. "If you need me, give a holler. I'll come running, guns blazing."

"After you get me to safety," Philomena added sharply.

Exiled, Luci trudged into the darkness. Her arms dangled and her head sagged. Though she carried her own light with her, it shrank into a tiny dot in the steep darkness. They were at the very edge of the starship's light, but if they continued along the cliff face, they would quickly be swallowed by the absolute darkness.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

'Kuro cross-u … hoshi e mukatte ikimasu!'

As the lyrics to Galaxy Cross Unlimited's first theme song went through Luci's mind, her throat moved slightly. Sounding out the words, even though she wasn't singing aloud. Your throat always did that when you were reading or thinking to yourself.

What was that big panic a few years ago? she thought.

She grabbed onto the idea and let it lift her up and away from this torturously-slow shuffle into absolute darkness. The ship's landing lights made the cliff to her right slightly brighter than pitch black, but not by much. It was so easy to get lost in the shadows.

Oh, yeah. Some data harvesting scam company said they invented a way to read peoples' thoughts by watching how their throats moved. For 'marketing', of course. It's scary … your body betrays you like that, and then the people who run these scummy companies exploit it to crack your mind open like an egg.

Her upper body was slumping forward, so her headlamps shone on the ground in front of her feet. Part of it was so she could watch her step. Another part of it was fatigue and fear sapping her will to go on. And yet another part was so that she didn't have to stare into the pervasive darkness blanketing the crater. The beams of light were small, but at least they were bright. At least they gave her vision something to absorb. At least their gave her something to occupy her brain with, instead of the vast nothingness.

Good thing it turned out to be overhyped garbage that didn't work, and that company collapsed.

But … maybe one day …

You can't ever close Pandora's Box. If tech companies want to push ahead with their spy technology, it will happen. We can't stop them. We can only sit back and let them harvest every piece of data about us … or cut ourselves off from society entirely. Go out to the middle of nowhere and give up on interacting with anybody, ever.

She reached the cave entrance. The cliff wall to her right gave way to the ominous darkness. It pressed closely around her. She found it very hard to decide which option was less appealing.

But then we're forced to make our own food, our own clothing, hope we don't get found out and murdered by stray mercenaries … unless we head to some rogue planet nobody will ever find, ever. But there's no way to grow any food or anything, so we'll need to ship the stuff we find where they have a use for it, and collect our money, and then we're right back to square one. Part of a society that wants to harvest our every thought.

I've been listening to my brother too much, she thought wryly. He's the smart guy. I just … fix engines and try to get by without making any waves.

Plodding into the unknown, Luci shoved the disturbing thoughts out of her head and searched inside herself for something else to distract her mind.

What are 'thoughts', anyway? Why do we need to move our throats just to make words pop into our minds? It's like we evolved to speak out loud first, and then we evolved some more to speak inside of our heads. But evolution didn't do a very good job optimizing it, so we still need to speak out loud even when we're just thinking. It's weird — you see a pretty woman and think 'She's perfect.' But all of us are just blobs of DNA, full of poor engineering, that somehow got jury-rigged into a functioning state.

What is life? Where does consciousness come from? Who decides which body 'I' get to inhabit when I'm being conceived? Why do we get tied down to one specific time period, and not a million years in the future when maybe evolution has ironed out the flaws?

A bleak chill worked its way through her body, as she continued her slow march into the darkness. Not even the small pool of light she brought with her could keep it at bay for long. It lit up the ground in front of her, but it didn't do a thing about the black space behind her, where she couldn't see.

She was just a dot in the vast void.

She'd retreated into her thoughts to escape it, but the void had snuck up behind her, taken her unaware, and wormed into her mind.

I wanna watch Galaxy Cross Unlimited again, she thought. Anime will fill the nothingness.

Her trudging feet dragged on the ground. She stared intently at the center of the beam, shutting out the darkness around it.

I wonder what my brother's up to now? We used to work together, for the family business. But now that it's went out of business, I haven't seen him in forever. I don't think I've ever gone this long without talking to him.

Her heartbeat started to quicken, and so did the loud breathing that filled her cramped helmet.

What if I die here? What if something eats us? H-He'll never know, nobody will ever know what happened to us. We'll have just sailed off into the black of space and vanished one day. Lost in the dark. These rogue planets are impossible to stumble on, so nobody will ever know where our bodies are rotting, and—!

Knock it off, Luci!

She continued plodding into unknown territory. There was nothing outside her tiny pool of light, nothing to occupy her mind. Thoughts streamed through her head unfiltered, and she had no distractions to shift her attention toward.

… I wanna watch Galaxy Cross Unlimited again, she thought.

Craning her head, she stared upward. The distant starfield filling the universe had shrunk to a disk twenty miles overhead. Like this place was some dark dimension, and she could only see her home through a wormhole. Come back, she thought feebly. I want to be in the light again—!

A shadow darted past her.

Digging her heels into the ground, Luci twirled in place. Her lamps swept in a circle, probing the black for any sinister shapes, but her space suit was so bulky, there was no way she could ever get out of danger in time … Her head, trapped in this tiny box, buzzed badly. She could barely see, her eyes vibrated so much. Skin crawling, she trembled as she imagined whatever that thing was shoving her to the ground and ripping her skin open. Exposing her to vacuum, sinking its teeth into her skin while her blood vessel burst—

"Luci?" Blaze asked right in her ear, like he was right behind her.

She jumped so high she nearly made it into orbit. When she touched down again, she bent her knees like she was getting ready to spring out of the way of danger. Held that pose, rigid and tense. Waiting for something fearsome to rush out of the darkness at her.

But, with every agonizing second that passed, she realized nothing was happening.

"Y-Yeah?" she asked.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Philomena had yelled at her for getting spooked the last time, so …

"Nothing," she lied. "Just, um … walking."

"Hurry up," the goddess in question said. "Stop wasting company time."

Luci gulped. "Yes, ma'am."

Maybe if you do what she says … she'll be so happy she realizes she loves you!

The dark crater was silent and ominous, and her optimistic thoughts dissolved into the void like air venting out of a hull breach.

It could happen! she lied to herself.

She passed the cave entrance and came to the cliff wall. Her headlamps were two bright splashes of light on the gray rock. The sheer face seemed so impassable. How was she supposed to make any progress with this thing? And, worse, where was she supposed to run when monsters rushed out of the darkness at her?

There's no monsters out here, she thought.

Her limp voice falling flat, Luci said, "I'm in position."

"Corvo, she's in position."

Philomena's voice slipped into Luci's ear like a shapely finger and tickled her brain, so bad she shivered as the sensation went down her spinal column.

"I can hear her, you know," Blaze said, his voice low and gruff, doing nothing at all for Luci.

"Then why aren't you scanning already?"

"Because we need Rsh to turn off our comms first."

As one, Luci and Philomena shouted, "What?"

"He explained it to me. I don't know tech stuff, but the software for our space suits and the software for our spectroscopes can't be used at the same time. So we've got to turn one off to use the other."

"How does that work?!" Philomena asked.

"I just said, I don't know tech stuff. Something about … Re-Dex?"

"You mean RDEX?" Luci asked. The groan that escaped her mouth filled up the inside of her helmet. It was a brief burst of noise in the emptiness of the outer space. A scream in the void, trying to keep it at bay and failing miserably. "Maldita sea."

"You know about it?" Blaze asked.

"A bit. I picked up bits and pieces here and there from the starnet. Mostly from flame wars whenever anybody releases software that relies on RDEX to interface with engine hardware."

Staring at the rock face, babbling about faulty tech … It felt normal, reassuring. She could almost forget she was stuck at the bottom of a dark pit floating in the middle of space, light-years from the nearest human settlement.

"Ain't got much of a choice but to grin and bear it," Blaze said, adopting his dumb cowboy accent again. "Hey, Rsh?"

But the line was silent.

"Rsh, hey! You hear me?!"

The line remained silent.

Luci waited in the darkness. Lost. Alone. A creeping sensation went up her back. Itched up her neck. She was sealed inside a space suit, on a world without an atmosphere, but she still felt something huge disturbing the air behind her. Making goosebumps sprout from her skin. Why wasn't she turning around? Why didn't she care about the danger? Why wasn't she running for her life? Her body screamed at her to protect it, and no matter how much she ordered it to be quiet, it made adrenaline pump through her and got ready to fly for safety.

There's nothing out here, she thought.

But something was slithering up behind her. Looming over her. Its jaws widening.

I'm not gonna look, because there's nothing behind me—

It growled right in her ear.

Her back arched. Her muscles tightened. Her heart pounded so hard her chest ached. She rocked onto her toes, getting ready to rush, but there was nowhere to go, the cliff face was right there, and soon it'd ram her from behind and rip her apart …

"I am here," Rsh growled.

She slammed her hands against her chest, to massage her surging heart. But her gloves just clapped against her chestplate. She was severed from her own skin, wrapped up in this heavy thing … All she could do was breath hard and wait for the shakes to go away.

"What do you want?" Rsh asked.

"Hurry up and do the thing," Philomena said.

"What 'thing'?"

Philomena clicked her tongue. "Weren't you listening?"

"Not closely."

"What're you doing up there?"

"Data entry, remember?"

"Well … do both from now on."

The two sharp voices dueled like crossed swords, but Blaze's awful-sounding cowboy accent stepped between them and put a stop to the fighting.

"Listen up, Rsh. We're about ready to get going with this here spectroscopin', so … if you'd be so kind as to turn the comms software off?"

Over the ominous growling from Rsh, the sound of mechanical keys clicking came over the speaker.

"Ready," he replied. "Wait ten seconds. Then scan. Comms will be back … in twenty seconds."

"Don't go disappearing on us, partner," Blaze said.

"Do not tempt me. Comms offline."

Sarcastically, Blaze said, "Somebody's—"

Then the comms channel cut out. The line went dead, and there was nothing in her ear but eerie silence. Her hard breathing was the only sound of life in the whole universe now.

One. Two. Three.

Their suits had to be routed through the ship's comms subsystem, so the three of them outside couldn't even talk to each other. The suits' manufacturers made up a bunch of nonsense about securing voice channels through encryption, but it was an obvious ploy to get you to install their software, which only worked with their space suits.

Four. Five. Six.

You get what you pay for, she thought. And we didn't pay very much.

Ten.

She raised her spectroscope, aimed it at the crater wall, and pulled the trigger. A beam of concentrated light shot from the barrel and hit the rock. The tiny dot glowed intensely. It wasn't much, but she was grateful for the slightest bit of light in the darkness.

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

She imagined Rin Bakuko was with her. Peachy pink skin, flaming red hair. Shouting 'Baka!' at the top of her lungs. Insulting Luci for being scared of the dark, while glancing nervously at the shadows, like a hypocrite.

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

The short-tempered tsundere was right behind her. Luci's back was on her stomach. Head nestled right between her massive mounds. Relaxing into the soft, squishy pillows. Oppai, she thought. Oppai! Moaning to herself, she sealed the blast door on this dark and silent world. Hid herself away for some alone time with a top-tier waifu. And Rin would scold her, but then she'd flip-flop and do it anyway while pretending she was doing you the biggest favor in the galaxy.

'So you better shut up and enjoy it, baka!'

"Yes, ma'am!" Luci mumbled.

Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen …

Twenty.

She let go of the trigger and lowered the spectroscope. Any second now, the line would reopen and Rsh would say what she'd scanned. Then they'd move down the crater and do it all over again.

Fine by me. More alone time for me and Rin.

The seconds continued to tick past, but all she heard was silence. Her pumping heart grew louder. Like it was echoing inside the tight helmet, creating a feedback loop. Pounding against her skull, rattling her brain, slicing away at her nerves. So much blood pumped through her body. Pressurized, like a space ship. But if something ripped her open it'd all spray everywhere—

Stop!

Still silent, except her own body making a racket. Like it wanted to fill the soundless void. Keep the dark at bay. There was nothing else in the universe, nothing but a pathetic lump of meat. She couldn't see anything, she couldn't hear anything. Everything else was gone. It had all faded away. She was down here, nowhere. Trapped in a pocket dimension. There was no light and no escape.

There was just … nothing.

It's fine, it's fine, everything is fine, she thought, gasping for air.

She nearly dropped the spectroscope, her hand was shaking so much. She stuffed it back into its holster.

Her headlamps splashed the crater wall with light. Brightening the tiny circles in front of her. Making it so hard to tell if some sinister thing was creeping up behind her and shadowing her tiny figure. Eating up her own pathetic shadow with its humongous figure.

Nothing is there.

But something was there, lurking in the shadows where she couldn't see. The monster was going to shove her from behind. Dig its claws into her. Rip her flesh off. Fill its stomach with her insides. She was going to become a pile of shredded, blood-soaked meat and bone. Her life would be snuffed out, the electrical signals in her brain and spine would spark into the air like a static shock , and then she — the electrical shocks that somehow made up a human being — would disappear forever. Spilled into the void, unable to find their home again.

Her chest heaved and crushed against the chestplate. It was so cramped, why was it so tight in here? And the helmet, it was so damned close around her head. She was caged, and she wanted to be free. To be safe.

Why?

The shadows around her headlamps' beams seemed to creep closer, consume more of her field of view. Like she was blacking out.

You're pathetic, Luci. Hopelessly in love with a woman who'll never love you back. Too cowardly to find a woman who'll love you back … or too afraid to realize that nobody ever will.

Despite such bright light hitting the rock wall, all she could see was the darkness around the beams. Her eyes were bone-dry. She was too afraid to close them and let darkness take over her vision. But, open so wide, they sucked all that shadow in, like two black holes, anyway. There was no light anymore; everything was dark.

Is there any point struggling against it? It's not like you're much use to anybody anyway.

Ignoring the cruel thought, she turned to the ship. Peer through the flight deck canopy. The lights were on, but she didn't have the right angle to see inside. Did the monsters get in? Did they kill Rsh? She had no way of knowing. The thought of heading into it and getting eaten made her shrink away until her back was literally against the wall. The rock knocked against the back of her chestplate and rattled her oxygen tanks. The hard hollow strike seemed to make her very bones vibrate with fear.

I can't, I can't, I can't …

The ship, her only beacon of light, might be crawling with creatures from the dark. She couldn't, she didn't, she hadn't … Her mind went along in a panic, picking up and then tossing away half-done ideas. Her instincts moved her body for her. Sliding along the cliff wall, it put as much distance between between her and the light as possible. Edging sideways along its sphere of influence. It looked so inviting in the dark, and yet …

BANG!

Something heavy hammered the top of her helmet. The impact echoed through the tight space caging her head. Screaming, she broke into a run.

You knocked a rock loose, that's all!

But her instincts weren't listening. They made her pelt across the rocky land, heading for the two beams of light past the huge cave opening. The space suit made her clumsy gait even clumsier. Her arms sagged, her legs dragged. But her stubborn body, dreading its death, refused to ease off. Soon, she wasn't 'running' so much as throwing herself forward and hoping her legs caught her in time. She sank towards the ground with every awkward step. It felt like some terrible thing was jumping on her back and pushing her down so it could bite her head off. The whole galaxy tilted crazily around her, and she could barely get her bearings.

Somewhere along the way, her gasping turned into yelping. But she was all alone inside her helmet. There was nobody to hear her desperate screams. Comms were gone, no atmosphere. Nothing but her own flesh, which the monsters in the shadows wanted to eat.

As she hurtled towards them, Blaze and Philomena both twisted to face her and blinded her with their headlamps. She head and upper body snapped back from the intense, searing light, but her legs and feet refused to slow down their stampeding. As her top half went one way and her lower half went the other, she toppled backwards and fell. The padding on her suit absorbed most of the impact, but the blow still struck her skin and traveled through her bones. Pain and numbness spiraled throughout her body.

Unable to make her feet work right, Luci lunged at the nearby legs inside a red-pink space suit. Threw her arms around her goddess's midriff and hung on for dear life. She was so tall and strong. She had so much confidence, and Luci wanted to borrow just a bit of it. Maybe if she basked in Philomena's presence, her shine would rub off on Luci. She had to hope so.

Philomena slammed her hands on Luci's helmet and tried to shove her away, but Luci's instincts were in complete control of her body and she didn't have the strength to overrule them . All she could do was whimper, hold on tight, and hope that Philomena would make the cold darkness go away with her warmth and her light. Then the hand pushing Luci curled into a fist and banged on the top of her helmet. But that just made Luci hang on tighter, since that meant there was somebody else in the universe who was still alive.

"—off!" Philomena yelled. "Get off, Ramirex!"

Luci's sobbing ended with a gasp. Her eyes popped wide open. The tears of panic dangling from her lashes fell off when she blinked in surprise at the sudden human voice issuing from her speaker.

"Rsh!" Blaze shouted, his stupid accent gone. His headlamps shifted as he turned back to the ship. "What the hell happened?"

On the other end of the line, Rsh cleared his throat. The three of them, stuck outside the ship in their space suits, kept silent as they waited for him to speak.

"The software crashed," he said quietly.

Blaze shouted, "Oh, that's just great! Did you get the data, at least?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Silicate. Nothing valuable."

Luci and her two fellow humans groaned loudly.

"We're just mining a planet!" Philomena shouted. "It can't be that hard!"

Blaze barked out laughter as he swung around to face her. "Says the woman who doesn't even lift a finger."

"I do too!"

"When?!"

"When I raise my hand and point out where you should mine!"

A long string of wordless grumbling and mumbling came over the radio from Blaze's helmet. Then, after a calming breath, he spoke in his dumb cowboy accent again. "I reckon we've got it just a wee bit harder than you, Philomena. Considering we're the ones doing all the work, you hear?"

"I have it hard, too! I have it so hard!"

"How's that?"

"Do you know how long it's been since I've had a Galactic Swirlie?!"

Blaze took another deep, calming breath. "Anyhow."

Hugging the space suit tightly, Luci felt the woman inside it turn away from Blaze and back towards her. She planted her palms on Luci's helmet again and tried to pry her off.

"Ramirex, let go!"

Moaning, Luci relaxed her arms. They slipped off of Philomena's waist. Her legs folded and she sat down hard on the ground. She would've loved nothing more than to stay at Philomena's feet, but the goddess turned away from her and faced Blaze and the ship again.

Blaze asked, "Rsh, you reckon that software's going to give up the ghost again?"

"I cannot say," Rsh said bluntly. "Likely, yes."

His voice bitter with sarcasm, Blaze said, "Well, ain't that just fine and dandy?"

"So wh-what do we do now?" Luci asked from the ground.

The three of them peering at each other, so close and yet divided by their faceplates and the vacuum between them.

"Um, get to work?" Philomena said impatiently.

Her legs still numb, Luci picked herself off the ground and stood up. The suit weighed her down, but under Philomena's watchful eye, the strength to endure it slowly came to her. But what was she going to do when it was time to march off into the darkness again …?

Pulling her spectroscope out of its holster, she darted forward and stood right beside Blaze as he, also, unholstered his spectroscope. His head snapped towards her. His eyes narrowed as they watched her closely.

"I-I-I'm sticking with you," Luci said.

His eyes stayed on her for a few seconds more, then he shrugged and turned to the cliff wall. "Don't you fret," he said. "This here gunslinger'll keep you safe and sound, you hear?"

Luci was so relieved, she didn't even mind that he'd doubled-down on his stupid accent.

Sighing, Philomena said, "Just work twice as fast, then." She clapped her hands, but there was no air for the sound to travel through. "Now hurry up and get back to work."

They moved along the cliff wall, scanning the rocks. Although the software didn't crash again — that day, anyway — every time the line went dead, the fear it wouldn't come back online gripped Luci tight and didn't let go until she heard her companions' voices again.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The human body had evolved to stay awake for sixteen hours and to sleep for eight, to match the rhythm of sunrise and sunset on their faraway homeworld. But, in outer space, their star was just one of billions. The orbit their homeworld traced around it meant little in this timeless void. 'Time' was just a number on a computer screen, counting away the seconds towards … nothing. All they could do, in deep space, was keep moving and wait for their bodies to tell them they were out of energy and needed to sleep. And then wake up and do it again, spinning out these twenty-four hour cycles without anything to anchor them, detached from anything solid …

"Corvo!"

The voice grabbed him and dragged him back to the ground. Man, staring at the dark for so long is a real eye-opener. Wait, does that even make sense?

"Come on and—!"

He lowered his gaze from the circle of stars and faced Philomena, who had trailed off into a yawn. He'd been wearing his space suit for such a long time, and it was weighing his tired body down. As she gaped at him, Philomena tried to cover her mouth, but her hand just tapped the faceplate. Though her face was usually so stern and shrewd, as she strayed into dreamland just now she seemed kind of … peaceful? Then, her yawn done, she jerked her head around like she was trying to slap her cheek with air molecules. Her eyes popped open wide and zeroed in on him.

"Do the … Do the thing," she said.

"Fine," he said, fighting the urge to yawn himself. "But I …"

Too late. A wave of fuzz went through his cheeks and jaws, forcing him to open his mouth wide. When he'd gotten the yawn out of him, he smacked his chop a few times. It was hard, staying upright, with the fatigue filling him.

"This is the last time," he said. "We've been out here for … Rsh, how long have we been out here?"

"Seven hours," the voice in his ear said. Zantaura had a thirty-seven hour day, so it didn't sound too tired. Ticked-off, sure, but not tired.

"We need to make a profit," Philomena said.

It seemed like the lack of sleep had defanged her nasty attitude. She struggled to look at him, and her orders fell listlessly off her tongue. Her eyes dropped from his face and stared at the ground somewhere behind him and to his left.

"So … do it," she mumbled.

She swayed on her feet for a few seconds.

"You work. I'm taking a nap, and when I'm done, you better have … revolts."

Under his breath, Blaze said, "I got your 'revolts' right here."

Normally, a comment like that would make her shout, 'What was that?!' But, sapped of energy, it came out as a mush of nonsense.

"Wha-wha-zaaah …?"

Struggling to see straight through the wave of dizziness swirling around his head, Blaze dug his heels into the stone and grounded himself. Be the cowboy, be the cowboy! Cowboys wouldn't let a little …

He yawned again. When it started to fade, he launched a rebuke at her. "Yaaah-listen here. If I'm working, you're working. Well, I say 'working' …"

Every time her eyelids fluttered, they lost energy and headed a little more towards closing completely. "Buh-huh … work," she said.

Muttering gruffly to himself, Blaze raised his spectroscope. "Come on, Luce. One last hurrah."

He waited for her to respond.

"Luce?"

He glanced at the tiny woman, who swayed precariously where she stood. Her eyes were closed and a trickle of drool dripped off of her lip, which quivered as she mumbled in her half-sleep.

"YEEE-HAW!"

Both women jumped on the spot as his bellow went over the comms channel. Blinking and twisting their head around, they raised their hands to defend themselves from danger.

"Rise and shine, ladies!" he called, with fake enthusiasm.

Their tired figures sagged as the weight of reality set in again, and neither of them bothered to hide their scowls. He grabbed Luci by the upper arm and dragged her, yawning deeply, over to the cliff.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she mumbled.

"Me first," Philomena said.

Blaze positioned her in the front of the crater wall, stood beside her, and raised his spectroscope. She followed his lead but at half-speed. Her arm slowly rose like she was fishing it out of an ocean. Once it was sort-of level, Blaze looked back at the ship while he spoke into his mic. The VM-84 was very far away, barely more than a blip of light in the distance.

"Last hurrah, Rsh. Then we're packing it in."

"As you wish. Comms offline."

The signal went dead, and then there was nothing in Blaze's ear but silence. We cowboys are used to riding alone, he thought. It doesn't get us down one bit, no sirree. But then why was his hand shaking? He tightened his grip, clamped down on his pistol, secured his hand to keep it from coming loose in turbulence.

Ten seconds, he thought.

He pulled the trigger, and the beam of light burst from its barrel and struck the wall. He stared hard at the dot, trying to distract himself from the darkness. Not scared, he thought. Not at all. When he hit ten in his head he let go of the trigger and the beam vanished. Right after that, the comms channel opened again.

"Well?" Blaze asked. He tried to put some enthusiasm into his voice, but after seven hours of failure he found it tough to muster any up.

"Sperrylite," Rsh said.

"What did you call me …?!" Philomena said, struggling to yell like she was drowning in molasses.

"Sperrylite." His vocal cords had a tough time sounding out the words, which made his voice seemed oddly hushed and reverent. "It is platinum … ore."

"Is that …" Blaze tried to keep his excitement from getting ahead of itself. "Is that valuable?

Philomena asked, "More importantly, is it pretty?"

"It is used to make jewelry—"

Suddenly wide awake, Philomena twirled towards Blaze, her eyes alive with a raging, passionate fire. "Dig, Corvo, dig!" She grabbed him and shoved him toward the cliff wall. "Get it all out! All for me! Go on, dig!"

"—among other uses," Rsh said wryly.

He said that on purpose, because he knew it'd get a rise out of her, Blaze thought. Jackass. As Philomena shoved him toward the ore embedded in the rock wall, he holstered his spectroscope.

"We left the drills on the ship, Philomena."

"So dig with your hands! I want it, Corvo! I waaaaaant it!"

Blaze grabbed her and stilled her by force. She tried to break free, but her strength quickly flagged and she went limp, panting for air as her head dropped drowsily.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Sleep first."

"I'll sleep twice as long, for the both of us. You stay here and …" A yawn interrupted her, and when it was done she smacked her chops loudly over the comms. "… do … job."

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

"Say, Rsh," Blaze said. "It seems we've struck ourselves some gold … or platinum, I mean. How's about you, uh, grab the reins and trot on over here?" He checked his oxygen indicator. "Air's getting low, too."

"As you wish."

Rsh silenced the flight deck's comms line, although — unlike earlier — the software continued to process their inter-suit comms just fine. He propped the drowsy woman up while he waited for that faraway light to lift into the air. Don't complain, he thought. Cowboys don't complain, they just get it done without fussin'. Next to them, Luci staggered to the cliff wall, put her back against it, and slid down till she'd curled up in a ball at the bottom. Her headlamps stared out in front of her.

"Wake me … eeee mon-suhs cuhhh," she mumbled while yawning.

"Fret not, partner. If any monsters show their ugly mugs, I'll fight 'em off."

She grunted.

A flash of blue light rolled across the stony plains. The sight of the starship blasting off drew Blaze's eye. It looked weird, watching it lift up without hearing the engines firing. The flaring blue dot rose two dozen feet into the air, then rotated and angled itself at them. Then, hesitant at first, it launched itself forward. Picked up speed, sailed over the ground towards their position, growing ever bigger.

Blaze hoisted 'the boss' up, held her at arm's length, and aimed her at the starship.

"Wake up, Philomena. Ride's here."

She didn't wake up.

As her dead weight made his tired arms ache, he fought off a yawn of his own. Imagine all that there platinum, he thought. We mine it, we're rich!

We'll, I'm just about the only fella that's gonna be doing any mining, but … whatever. A cowboy does his job and he doesn't do any belly-achin', ain't that right?

The ship hovered over them, bringing its intense landing lights with it. They ripped off the shroud of darkness over the land. He turned away from the blinding beams. Behind him, the ore embedded in the crater wall gleamed. Luci, curled up in front of it, squirmed and put her hands up to protect her eyes from the light. She moaned loudly, so loud it got past the comms' noise gate. It was the moan a person gave when they were begging for five more minutes of shuteye.

The ship touched down in eerie silence. Like a film with the sound muted. Its engines blasted a cloud of dust off the stone. Unbound by air resistance, the sheets of scree sailed right past them. Soon as the ship settled on its landing legs, the glow of its engines faded. The bright perimeter of light bathed them with its brilliance, but now …

Now everything else was pure, complete darkness. Hemming the ship in. Lurking around it. Getting ready to steal in and attack them.

Let them try, he thought.

The air lock door was still open. He guided Philomena to the cable dangling from it. Her legs half-moved, but they spent most of their time dragging and kicking the ground, meaning he had to bear most of her dead weight. When they reached it, he straightened her body. Put his hands over hers. Lifted them up and curled them around the cable.

"Come on, little lady. Time to climb."

He let go of her, expecting she'd at least be able to stand on her own.

Instead, she sank right to her knees. The rope slipped through her fists as they tightened around it, like she was putting all her effort into ringing a big bell. She sat on her feet and slumped forward, pulling the cable tight as she hugged it to her chest.

Come on, Blaze said, as he yawned.

"Rsh, you there?"

The comms channel to the flight deck opened. "I am here."

"I don't believe Philomena here's gonna make it up to the airlock. Depressurize the cargo bay."

A throaty growl trilled in his ear. It sounded annoyed, but not very surprised.

Blaze lifted Philomena off the ground and marched her to the ship's upswept stern. Bleary-eyed, Luci staggered away from the platinum vein and tried to keep pace with them without lifting her boots more then a quarter-inch off the land. She stood next to them, precariously leaning to the side. While they waited, Philomena snored softly right in Blaze's arms.

Not only did it take quite a while for the ship to cycle the air out of the bay, it put the ship's air storage tanks under a lot of strain. They tended not to do it if they could get around it.

To pass the time, Blaze imagined all the lovely ladies who's throw themselves at him the moment he proved he was worth his weight in platinum. Grinning, he lost himself in imagining the feel of all that soft skin rubbing against his muscular body. But then he felt a little awkward, since Luci was standing right next to him. Well, she did walk in on me while I was …

Then he yawned again, and shook his head to get the fuzz out.

"This here platinum's gonna make us rich, Luci. I reckon this time next month, we'll be millionaires!"

"Mmm, rich," she said, swaying.

"Gonna make all them space babes swoon."

"Mmm, space babes."

Yellow lights next to the cargo ramp flashed, distracting them. Shortly, the ramp detached itself from the hull and lowered along its hydraulic pistons. The interior, with its bare metal surfaces and steel ribs supporting the exposed fuselage, shouldn't look so inviting. Yet … it was bare and sparse, but it was familiar. Human. Home.

"Give me a hand with her," he said.

Luci blushed at the thought of touching Philomena, but with a shake in her hands she reached out and helped prop the slumbering moron up. Together, they hoisted her up the ramp and back into the familiar confines of the starship. After spending so many hours on the bleak alien frontier, all that manufactured steel was a sight for sore eyes.

"Alright," Blaze said. "We're inside."

The yellow lights flashed again, inside the bay this time. The deck vibrated as the hydraulic pistons raised the ramp behind them. The cargo bay had no airlock, so they'd have to repressurize the whole thing just to get the pressure door to the crew quarters open. Once the ramp sealed with a heavy thump through the deck, he and Luci eased Philomena to the deck and let go of her. She sprawled out on the grated floor, her arms limply resting on either side of her head.

"What do we do with her now?" Luci asked.

"Eh, just leave her."

"Huh? Leave her here?!"

"I got her back aboard the ship, didn't I? My job's done."

Air hissed from the vents and filled the room. Slowly, the sound waves started to vibrate against his helmet.

Frowning, Luci said, "But …"

"She's the one who gets uppity if we don't do what she says, ain't that right? Well, she likes to think she owns this ship, so …" He shrugged. "Ain't gonna boss her around on her own ship, am I?"

The woman in question smacked her lips in her sleep.

Eventually, the intrapanel on the fore bulkhead glowed green to indicate the cargo bay was completely pressurized. It was safe to breathe again. He undid the latches on his helmet and pulled it off. As the inside in his suit rushed out and the air filling the cargo bay rushed in, it shocked him so flushed and sweaty he'd was. Then he started shirking his suit off. Luci joined him, pulling the pieces of her suit off with clumsy, uncoordinated jerks. They tossed them to the deck and left them strewn there.

We'll deal with it tomorrow, he thought.

When they were finally done, Blaze headed to the pressure door and left the sleeping Philomena. Behind the pressure door, a ladder led up to the hub in the crew quarters. After a glance back at Luci, who gaped at him through the doorway, he climbed the rungs. Once he'd made it to the top, he made a beeline for the bathroom to relieve his bladder. When he emerged, he found Rsh waiting beside the ladder. He could sense the big guy was about to say something, and held up his palm in a stern warning.

"Tomorrow, Rsh."

Of course, there was no such thing as sunrise or sunset in space, but their computer would tell them when it was sunrise on a world some tens of thousands of light-years away from their present coordinates. They'd deal with it then.

"I was inquiring," Rsh said, his mouth sounding out all the syllables one by one, giving each one a hefty weight, "where we shall sleep?"

The starship only had two bunks, since it was meant to be crewed by two people. The bedrooms were tucked into the stern, flanking the common room. When it was just Blaze and Rsh living here, it wasn't a problem. But after Kestrel Mining got that hangar aboard Point Pleasant, they'd moved their stuff there and rotated the bunks between whichever two people were aboard the ship on any given shift.

"You and me take the bunks," Blaze said. "Philomena sleeps on the couch. That's how it used to be."

"Before Luci joined."

"Hmm."

Blaze racked his brains, but the haze filling his brain made his get lost in his own thoughts. He leaned out over the ladder and peered downwards. Luci stepped carefully through the doorway, propping up the taller woman, who'd been stripped of her suit and wore her jeans and T-shirt, like she was aiming to keep a wall from toppling on her.

"Hey, Luce!" Blaze called.

She froze and whipped her head upward, flinching like she'd been blasted with a bright spotlight while doing something naughty.

"Where do you want to sleep?" he asked.

As she thought to herself, the woman on her shoulder slumped over and dragged her toward the deck.

"I'll take the engine room, I guess."

"The engine room? You sure?"

"I don't mind the sound. It's kind of relaxing. Beats the silence."

"Suit yourself," Blaze said, straightening up. To Rsh, he said, "See? Problem solved."

Luci's voice came up from the hatch. "Um, can I get a hand with Philomena …?"

Blaze steeped quietly away from the hatch, his eyes fixed on Rsh's shrewd, discerning gaze.

He repeated, "Problem … solved."

Ducking into his old quarters, he waved goodnight to Rsh. As soon as the door shut and sealed the tiny room off from the dark world outside, he fell face-first into the mattress and drifted off into sleep the moment he closed his eyes. But his dreams were … disturbing, to say the least. He was lost in a shrinking circle of light around a campfire. No matter how much he drew his pistols out, unleashed hot blaster fire at the shadows, he couldn't keep the restless natives of the shadowlands at bay. The darkness tightened around him, and slowly the campfire burned low, and he couldn't ignite it again. Not while watching the frontier for trouble lurking in the darkness …

He woke with a fright and pushed himself up in his bunk. The dim glow of the intrapanel told him he'd only been asleep for about four hours. He felt a little tired, but the thought of going back into the dark of sleep made him feel …

I ain't frightened, he thought. Cowboys don't get frightened.

He shuffled into the common room. A beam of light came through the thin window at the top, from the landing lights. Standing guard through the night, while the humans inside slept. Brave sentinels. He used the intrapanel to turn the lights on, and headed for the coffee machine—

"Hah!"

The cry made him jump so high he nearly hit his head on the roof. He spun towards the couch, where a big thing like a caterpillar rolled and writhed, working its way free of its cocoon …

Philomena poked her head out the end.

Rubbing his chest over his heart, Blaze breathed a sigh of relief.

"Wha …?" she said.

"Damn, you scared me …"

That's not how a cowboy would say it, he thought. They'd say, 'You gave me a powerful fright!' or something … Ah, whatever. I'm not a cowboy until I've had my morning coffee.

Philomena tried to worm free of the blanket, but missed and rolled right off the couch. She thumped to the floor, and by the sound of it, the blanket didn't do much to break her fall. He smiled to himself, and then turned to get the coffee maker attached to the kitchen set going. Behind him, he heard her fumble around and get to her feet.

"Eh," she said groggily.

"You said it," he replied.

Once he got the pot going, he leaned against the counter and waited for it to finish. Philomena was slumped against the wall, staring out at the wall behind the couch where she'd slept. He wasn't expecting any deep conversation from her …

"I know things have been hard," she said, her voice weighed down by sleep.

Taken by surprise at her thoughtful tone, Blaze stilled himself. He didn't want to miss one word of this.

Philomena gulped. "It's just … when mother told me I couldn't be her heiress anymore, I … All my life, that's all I've ever wanted to be. Chief executive of the dynasty. And when she took it away from me, it's like … I needed a way to prove to her I can handle it. And now, today, I found a way. I'm going to prove to mother that I can become the greatest mining magnet in human history. And it's all thanks to you. You've really come through for me."

Wow, Blaze thought. So she does have a heart after all. Now I feel kind of bad leaving her sprawled on the floor last night.

The coffee was done. He poured a cup for himself and one for her.

Her voice choked up with passion, Philomena said, "With you by my side, I know I can get my destiny back. So thank you. Thank you so much … for being there for me."

He ambled over to her and held the mug out for her. Torn out of her thoughts, she looked at him with her eyebrows arched and her eyes searching his face. Taking the cup, she looked down at it, then back up at him. Her jaw fell open a little.

"You're welcome, Philomena," he said, smiling.

"Huh?"

"It's nice to know you care, once in a while."

Her slack expression tightened into a withering stare. "Corvo …"

"Yeah?"

In a dry, withering tone, she said, "I was talking to the platinum."

All the goodwill evaporated from Blaze's heart instantly. Scowling, he plucked the coffee cup out of her fingers, brushed right past her, and strode out of the common room.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

The drill's relentless whirring traveled up through Blaze's arms and shook them so much they felt like they were going to fall off. I don't want to hear none of that bellyachin', tenderfoot. Cowboys grin … and bear it! With a grunt, he swung the drill on its monopod and put his back into maneuvering the drill tip into the rock. It bit into the crater wall with a shudder. Bits of silicon dust sprayed past him. He licked his lips and accidentally tasted the sweat going down his face. Ignoring it, he chipped away at the stone planet. The drill bucked in his hands, so he put more of his weight into securing it and shoving it against the rock. Wearing the stone down and carving his way into the planet. Taming the starry frontier with grit and determination.

I'm a cowboy, with gumption. And even if you throw me 'tween a rock and a hard place, I ain't gonna grow yellow and back down—!

And then the drill died in his hands. It gave one violent shudder, and then its motor quickly cycled down into nothing. His arms were still vibrating, but they alone couldn't do a thing to the cliff face. He stared at the useless pick of junk, bought for cheap, and cursed it. He turned around, swiveling the drill on its monopod, to look at …

Where the hell is she?!

He turned to the hostile habitat, which had been erected near the idle starship. Underneath the crossed plastic beams supporting it, a white glow bled through the fabric walls from the interior lights. He saw a dark shape inside, sitting on her useless ass. He lifted the drill up off the ground. Although it was still really heavy, two weeks of work had toned his arms up a little. It didn't bother him as much as it used to.

The weight, that is.

Not the dumbass who never did any work.

What did you expect? Blaze thought. You know how she is.

Blaze turned to the hole he'd made in the crater. After two weeks, he'd barely made a dent in it. He'd made some ragged lines around the outside of what looked like the vein, but it was a crooked mess and he'd had very little luck getting through it.

Towing the heavy drill, Blaze waddled to the hostile habitat. It had two airlocks, one on either side of the large main chamber. The one closer to the dig site was sealed and pressurized, so he went around the back to the other one. He stepped inside and sealed the outer flap. The fabric flagged against its wicker frame. He kicked at on the small pump on the ground and waited for it to flood the interior with air. The fabric walls slowly inflated and firmed up from the pressure. Once it was done, he unsealed the inner flap and strode through the passageway. The thick white tunnel was supported by archways made of slightly thicker plastic than the woven wicker. It nonetheless looked on the verge of collapse. The whole thing seemed very rickety and unsafe. At first, they'd been absolutely terrified to be inside it. But, as they threw themselves into 'danger' repeatedly, they got used to it.

Ain't that the same thing I said when I told Rsh I was fixing to be a mercenary? he thought.

But they still kept their suits on and their helmets nearby, ready to suit up at the first sign the hostile habitat was losing integrity.

He followed the passageway into the main chamber. Philomena and Luci sat on chairs around the table, with their helmets sitting next to the cups of steaming hot tea they held loosely. Both of the women turned to watch him approach. He dropped the drill onto a crate sitting against the fabric wall, undid his helmet, and wiped the sweat off his face vigorously. Then he staggered to the table, his body burning with exhaustion, and collapsed into the third chair.

"Drill's busted," he said.

"I'll take a look at it," Luci replied. "But mining equipment isn't really my area …"

As Philomena sipped her tea, her eyes darted above the rim and shrewdly observed him and Luci. With a final slurp, Philomena lowered the cup from her glistening upper lip and set it down.

"Use the pickaxe," she said.

He rolled his eyes and slumped down in his seat. The rigid pieces of his suit clanked together. He tried to summon up some gunslinger swagger, but the sore throb in his body buried it so much he couldn't find it.

"The last thing I need is you yelling that I'm not 'pickaxing' hard enough."

As her brow came down, a twitch went through her eye. Her fingers tightened around the steaming cup in her hands.

"Corvo, I will not sit here and listen to you …" She glowered at Luci, her mouth sputtering.

"Um, 'undermine'?" Luci suggested.

"—undermine me like some kind of unionizer!" Philomena shouted, turning her eyes back to Blaze. "I am the chief executive, and I—"

Sitting up and leaning forward, unleashing the full fury of his voice at the useless waste of space sitting next to him, he yelled, "There's no way I can 'undermine' you, because I'm the only one around here who does any actual mining in the first place! You can't do less than zero mining!"

Jerking her hand at Luci, Philomena said, "Look at those noodle arms! She's too weak to mine anything!"

Luci bowed her head, her face torn up with anguish.

"At least she helps roll the ore I mine into the pile. And fixes our stuff when it breaks down. She doesn't just sit on her ass and bark about how everybody else is slacking off, when she's the biggest slacker of all!"

Deliberately lifting her face away from his, Philomena stared at the wall. Her nostrils flared open rapidly every time she sucked in air. Then, through her clenched jaw and pressed lips, she spoke at him without actually speaking to him.

"I … use my incredible mind … to manage things. That's my job."

"Like when we went to Zantaura? Remember how well that turned out?" As he turned the knife, he found enough savage energy to slip back into his gunslinger accent. "Boy howdy, that was a right mess, wasn't it?"

The fury in Philomena's scowling face grew more intense. "That wasn't my fault, Corvo! Right, Ramirex?!"

Luci whipped her head up, her eyes wide. "Um … I thought it was a good idea … in theory."

After muttering curses under her breath at them, Philomena turned back to Blaze. "Well, at least I'm not like you. A pathetic loser who thinks he's tough and goes around trying to make people think he's some kind of cowboy."

Suddenly, his temples pounded hard enough to squeeze his brain, and the maddening pulse goaded him to action like a charging bull.

"I am a cowboy," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "I can be a cowboy if I want. All you need to be a cowboy … is a—"

"Stupid accent?"

Simmering on his seat, Blaze stared at the woman through the red haze fogging up his mind.

"And for all that mining I do, not even a word of thanks."

With a dismissive scoff, Philomena said, "I pay you so I don't need to say 'thank you'!"

"You don't 'pay us' nothing! We all work for a cut of the profit! At least, the three of us work. The only thing you do is sit there, and suck up oxygen while you boss us around. Maybe if you were any good at making money, it'd be a different tale, but you, Philomena, are as dumb as the rocks we dig out of the ground, and you're just as poor."

Burning brighter than a star, Philomena stared at the wall like blasts of fire would shoot from her eyes and sear straight through it. "I AM NOT POOR!" she yelled.

"M-Maybe we should all c-calm down … please?" Luci asked.

Blaze scoffed loudly. But when that woman scoffed loudly at the same time, it only made his rage burn hotter. He turned his head to the side, away from her, but out of the corner of his eye … Did she just turn her head to the side at the same time I did?! Stop copying me, you useless—! Oh, whatever.

He turned to Luci and pointedly pointed his voice at her. "Hate to admit it, but … I'm just one lone cowboy. And I reckon I ain't so much as making a dent in that there platinum. Any ideas?"

She sipped her tea, then set the cup on the table and drummed her fingers on the table. "Well, me and Rsh were talking the other day … The big mining companies use explosives and blast the rock to pieces."

"If only we had some," Blaze replied.

"Rsh looked over our finances—" Her eyes flicked to the fuming woman across the table, whose clenched jaw tightened. "Ahem … There's some wiggle room in the budget for essentials."

"You reckon we can pick some up from a mercenary outfitter?"

"I don't know anything about mercenaries, so … that's your area."

Philomena piped up with a dismissive chirp of laughter, but Blaze ignored her.

Smoothly, he said, "I'll see what I can rustle up."

Another chirp of laughter came from the obnoxious moron.

"What about getting the platinum out of the rock?" Blaze asked. "Any ideas on that front?"

"The big mining companies use something called a flotation tank, he said. It's not that different from how artificial gravity works. Instead of binding gravitons to oxygen molecules, they bind them to the ore. The platinum rises up and the rock sinks down. Then you just skim the metal off the top."

"Can you whip something up with the ship's tachyon generator?"

"No, sorry. I only know how to work on hyperion engines. Tachyon generators are a completely different field. They're manufactured separately from the rest of the ship and plugged into the hyperion engines, like a black box. I don't even know where to start. Well, I know not to start at all. Tinkering with the tachyon generator will probably leave us stranded in the middle of space."

"Hmm," Blaze said. "Getting stranded in the middle of space with her. Ain't that the most awful fate you ever heard?"

Lifting her lips, Philomena bared her teeth and growled with feral hatred. Judging by the shine in Luci's eyes, she didn't consider the idea all that bad. Well, give it three weeks, Blaze, who once found himself in a similar situation, thought to her.

He pushed himself to his feet and scooped his helmet off the table. "So it's a supply run to Croshaw, then?"

"Looks that way."

"Let's ride, then. We ain't making much of a dent in that there rock anyhow." He strode towards the airlock. "Say, Philomena. Why don't you stay here and supervise the dig site? It's where you'll do the most good."

"If anybody belongs down here, Corvo … it's you!"

Smiling to himself, Blaze put his helmet over his head and locked it in place.

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

Gripping the cable, Luci climbed up to the open airlock. She hooked her hands onto the steel rim and hoisted herself inside, embracing its sturdiness. Machined and worked by human hands, lit by bright lights. A shelter from the darkness. Standing up, she looked down at the hostile habitat sprawled on the stone land a hundred feet away. Her stomach clenched from the height. Even though Croshaw was relatively close, they'd powered down the air pumps and turned the lights off. Its fabric reflected the bright landing lights, blazing in the darkness. But once they left … the shadows would rush in and eat it up. When they came back, would there be anything left? Or would the shadows make it disappear?

Maybe we should leave the light on, she thought idly. Let them know we've claimed this territory.

She hauled the cable in and untied the knot. Philomena and Blaze went in through the cargo bay, to close it up after they'd unloaded the hostile habitat and mining equipment. Luci was alone up here, standing guard at the edge of the universe. Searching for monsters in the dark, to make sure they didn't overrun this last lonely human outpost.

There's nothing out there, she thought. In two weeks, nothing's attacked us.

Yet.

The fear tightened her chest, made her breathing get faster. She focused on coiling the cable up to shut it out. Once it was spun around into a circle, she dropped it. It hit the deck silently. She pushed the button on the control panel the shut the outer door. Through the closing airlock doorway, her view of the darkness narrowed. The steel came together, shrinking the gap. The dark world outside was going away, and the reinforced steel of this familiar human machine would shield her fragile body from it. Bathe her in light and heat and air. Keep the bad things out there from ripping her to pieces.

Puffing out air to calm her nerves, she watched the door seal itself.

But then …

At the very last second …

Something hurtled out of the dark to grab her—!

Stop, Luci! Stop!

The door nestled against the opposite side of its frame, hiding her view of the rogue planet. Its mechanism secured it in place. They were ready to go. Tapping her foot ten times a second, she waited for the air to cycle. Once the inner door slid aside, she barged into the locker room and immediately stripped the heavy suit off. After sweating inside the damn thing for two weeks straight, the padding felt sticky and disgusting. But she was too tired to care right now, so she shoved it into the locker and hurried for the common room.

As her feet crossed the threshold, however, the long window at the top made her halt. It allowed a slice of darkness to enter the human world. She felt like the shadow was sweeping through it and going down her body like a laser scanner.

That's crazy, she thought. Light and shadow don't work that way!

She went to the kitchen sink and splashed some water on her face. Hoping the smooth, cool shock would calm her down. Wash away some of her fear. But that black line above … It was looking down on her. Watching her. Waiting for a chance to leap on her vulnerable back and rip her head off. The darkness wouldn't let her go. It skulked at the light's edge, where she couldn't see it, peering lustfully at her. Gripping the edges of the sink, she steadied her queasy body. Despite the water dripping down her face, washing the sweat away, she felt itchy and uncomfortable. The unease crawled under her skin, and no matter how much she scrubbed her face, she wouldn't get it out.

Groaning, she pawed at the paper towel roll. But her hand sailed through the empty air. They were out, it seemed. She wiped her face with her hands, then wiped her hands on her cargo pants.

Everything's broken, everything's running out …

She pulled away from the sink and headed through the ship. Back to the locker room. She pulled her hand-me-down flight jacket out and slid it on. The familiar weight of the several-sizes-too-big jacket was comforting, reassuring. It patched up her fraying nerves. The sturdy fabric was like a tight hug from her family. She zipped it all the way up to her chin and headed for the flight deck. The sleeve drooped past her wrist, so she thrust her hand up into the air to make the sleeve slide down to her forearm. Tapping the intrapanel, she opened the door.

Blaze leaned his lanky body against the wall on the port wall, his arms folded and his leg up on the wall like some kind of dreamy heartthrob posing for a picture. On the console's opposite side, Philomena faced the starboard wall. Feet apart, head tilted back, nose in the air, fists on her hips. Refusing to give the man behind her any attention.

Both of them are so confident, no matter what happens to them … or no matter how much Blaze makes himself looks like an idiot.

I need to get tough! No more of this fraidy-cat crap. I'm a starship engineer, I need to tachi-up and make my darling little neko-chans swoon! Yeah! From this moment on, I'm going to be all butch and confident and … and get all the space babes!

The two of them, and Rsh at the console, turned to face her as her shoes struck the deck.

"Ready?" Rsh asked.

"Yup," Luci said. "More than ready. Let's hit the road."

She forced the blustery statement out of her mouth. She wasn't going to second-guess herself anymore. In response, Blaze went down the steps to the pilot's seat. Philomena went to the console and looked at the database on its monitor.

"You finished it, right?" she asked.

Wearily, Rsh replied, "Yes."

"Did you find anything juicy?"

"I do not know. We shall need the starnet to … compare data with."

Luci said, "There's a ViaDUCT node orbiting Croshaw, right? Hey, did you find any addresses there?"

Mashing the mechanical keyboard, Rsh filtered the rows of data. "Likely aliases," he warned. "I am unsure how … useful they shall be."

In chorus, Blaze and Philomena both declared, "Can't be any more useless than—"

"SILENCE!"

The full-throated roar from Rsh was like thunder inside the cramped flight deck. Luci jumped away from the console, her heart going off faster-than-light. Beside her, Philomena jumped away from him, her arms crossed like he was going to lunge at her and she needed to keep him at arm's length. As the terror drained from her body, she clamped her hands down on her heart, her tall body sagging.

She's startled … Hey, now's my chance!

Luci took a bold step forward, towering over Rsh for once, and shot her finger at him.

"Hey!" she said. "That's no way to talk to a lay-dee!"

Her voice cracked. As her throat jumped up into a squeak, she cringed and quaked on the spot. Hoping everybody else had the common decency to overlook her embarrassing failure, like she'd just dropped a plate of food on the ground in a crowded cafeteria. Slowly, like a beast rousing itself from its slumber, his head tilted towards her. As his fierce, shining golden eyes came up, her pointer finger trembled so much it pointed everywhere except at him.

"Please?" she asked quietly.

After regarding her, he asked, "You too?"

She curled her finger up, tucked it into her weak fist, and then let her whole arm drop to her side. She gulped, but it got stuck in her throat, so she had to gulp twice as hard, and then thrice as hard, to swallow all that air down.

Blaze's voice called over the console. "Uh, ready for lift-off?"

Turning back to the console, Rsh said, "Please."

As they got ready for life-off, Luci turned to the gorgeous woman on the other side of the alcove and gave her a smile. 'I'm looking out for you,' she wanted to say, but the cold stare she got in return told her, clear as day, that Philomena could look out for herself. Nursing her broken heart, Luci watched Rsh work the console. Outside, the thrusters fired against the ground.

The thrusters fired against the ground. Rsh switched the monitor over to the external cameras and watched the exhaust light up the land. They rose up and away from all the stuff they'd left behind. He then tabbed the OS over to the 3D model of the crater the scanners made.

"We have a terrain map," Rsh said. "We should not need to be so cautious … on our next descent."

"What if something changes it?" Luci asked.

"There is nothing out there," Rsh said. "This world has remained in stasis … for eons."

"You sure about that?"

Rsh's fingers froze above the keyboard. Flexed a little bit. Limbered themselves up. Getting ready for a fight, maybe? Philomena, next to them, glanced their way. A collective shiver seemed to pass between all of them, as if there was a crack in the hull and the cold darkness of the crater was leaking inside, hellbent on killing them with its icy hands.

"Let's get out of here," Blaze said, his accent slipping away. "This place is giving me weird vibes."

He increased power to the thrusters, and the ship lifted into the air. Craning her head back, Luci stared up at the circle of stars far over their heads. Waiting for it to spread out, open like a portal back into the actual universe. Away from this shadowy pocket dimension they were trapped inside.

The starship's rumbling engines lifted Luci out of the darkness, but she knew, with some amount of dread icing her heart over, that soon they'd have to descend again.

---

Dive into the Subconscious Arc
"Descent"

FIN​

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

In [America] satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are 'endowed by their Creator' with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his [continual] victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
—Ambrose Bierce
​

---

ARC 4: "Shooting the Rodeo"​

---

The gray door slid out of Luci's way. She stepped through the bulkhead and entered the cramped cockpit. Two bucket seats faced the black of space visible through the narrow, curved windshield. Uncle Ramon sat in the lefthand seat, staring at the bulky, analog instruments panels. Their dinged metal covers were studded with worn switches and knobs. Lines of pixelated text swept across a curved monitor coated with phosphor.

The ship was old. Very old. It'd been in her family for generations. When it was made, Asilo was so poor in minerals — and so far away from the rest of the galaxy — they couldn't build anything more complicated than 8-bit microprocessors and CRT monitors. They didn't have the resources lying around. So, they made do with what that had … and kept doing it.

Thanks to her family's hard work, the ship was still flying after all these years.

"What's up, mija?" her uncle said, staring at the text spilling across the monitor.

"Uncle Ramon," she said firmly.

He tore his eyes from the screen and twisted around to look at her. His bushy eyebrows rose up and pushed the skin on his forehead into ridges. He waited for her to speak, his mouth parted slightly.

Gulping, she pulled her hands out from behind her back and held a metal, sun-shaped disc on a stand out to him. The statue hovered in front of the stars through the windshield, taking its place among the universe.

"I, um, made this for you," she mumbled.

A touch of embarrassment crawled through her body. It shook her hands, which began to struggle with the metal statue's weight in a way they hadn't before. They almost threatened to drop it, but her uncle gingerly lifted the statue off her palms and examined it. She rocked on her heels, her stomach clenched, wringing her wriggly hands behind her back.

"Um, it's el Diablo," she said. "I thought that, um, it'll remind you of home while we're away. Also, it's got arrows going in a circle inside it. You know, because … scrap trading."

He turned to her, a twinkle lighting up his eye.

"School's giving me vo-tech credits for being out here," she said, raising her voice. "S-So I need to practice my metalworking. So … that's the only— That's the reason I made it."

What's that word they call people in anime? A 'tsundere'? I'm totally one of those, aren't I? A gulp swelled down her throat. She chewed her lip. I hope he doesn't start teasing me like he always does …!

His eyes went to the statue again. He held it up and admired it by the light of the cockpit and the big brown planet floating past the ship's port side.

"Pretty good craftsmanship, mija. You're definitely a Ramirex."

She chuckled a bit, and the smile it brought to her face stayed there and pushed up her cheeks.

"You taught me."

"Haha, yes I did! That must be why you're so good at it."

Suddenly, the flight computer chirped. Its rapid-fire mechanical pitter-patter filled the cockpit. Frowning, her uncle spun around, bent over the instrument panels, and absently put the statue aside. Luci stepped forward, right between the bucket seats, and stared at the CRT monitor.

"Distress signal," he said.

She looked at the brown orb to their left. They were headed for a station in this system to meet up with her brother and cousin, and using the planet outside as a slingshot to save on fuel. Although they'd retrofitted the family starship with modern engines, it just wasn't built to fly like newer ships. It didn't have the power. It was old and clunky, and it'd stay that way unless they replaced so much stuff that it wasn't even the same ship anymore.

We learned about that in school. What do they call it?

Ship of Thesaurus?

Uncle Ramon punched a command into the instrument panel. The CRT monitor pulled up a pixelated grid of local space. Aliased vector lines showed the planet's curve and bracketed the chunky dots that stood in for their ship and the one in distress.

"I don't like this," he said. After studying the screen, he shook his head and adjusted the controls. "Nah, we're leaving. Get in the seat, Luce, and strap yourself in."

She did what he told her, but as she buckled the harness around her chest she imagined herself being trapped in the ship. Running out of air, freezing to death … And rescue was just sailing past, not lifting a finger to save their lives.

"But … they're in trouble. They need our help."

"They are trouble," her uncle said. "They're pirates, Luci. If we stop, they'll help themselves … to our cargo." Under his breath, he added, "And something much more precious, I'll bet."

"What's that?"

He sucked air through his nostrils and then snorted it out like he was about to rip a bandage off.

"You, mija."

Under her well-worn work clothes, her skin crawled from head to toe. The straps dug into her chest and stomach like they wanted to slice her to pieces.

"Wh-What do you mean?" she asked.

Not looking at her, he continued to adjust the knobs and switches.

"Don't worry about it," he said gruffly.

"What if you're wrong, though? What if they're really in trouble?"

He tilted his head back and groaned. His hands gripped the control yoke tightly, locking it in place. Then, shaking his head, he fiddled with the controls again, reversing some of them.

"Alright, but if I smell something fishy, we're hightailing it outta here, pronto."

As her uncle set the autopilot to intercept with the signal, he got out of his seat and walked behind her chair. She twisted around to look at him, but the seat back was in the way. She knew what he was doing, though. The computer systems were so old they couldn't use the Wireless Interface & Transponder Standard, which allowed spaceships to talk to each other, so they had to hook a portable WITS deck up to the comms panel.

"Ident code … Name, Icarus … Registered in Sanhelios … Maldita sea."

"What's wrong?"

Her uncle barked laughter. "Not very original. It's like they pulled it outta sus culos in five seconds. Checksum matches, but memory allocation doesn't."

"Huh?"

"When you initialize a starship's WITS system, it allocates memory to store its data. If you tamper with it to overwrite that data without doing a full system reboot, and the new data takes up less space, you'll see gaps between the pieces of data."

Uncle Ramon walked between the seats and sat down again. As he clipped his harness on, he stared through the windshield like the tiny dot in front of the curving planet was a bomb ticking down to detonation.

"The only reason somebody would overwrite their WITS signal like that … is if they need to quickly spoof a transponder while on the move."

"D-Does that mean they're pirates?"

"They could be smugglers … or they could just love their privacy. But we can't let our guard down. Make sure you're buckled in tight. I'll keep the tachyon generator running … just in case."

As she double-checked her harness, he disabled the autopilot. He took the control yoke in one hand. His other hand went to the thruster controls and inched them closer to the ship in distress. It hung lifelessly in front of the massive brown rock filling the windshield's port half. Luci's hands gripped the sides of her padded seat. The other ship had a sharp, arcing body, like a short, thick boomerang. It had two long, thin engines on its wings, beside its main fuselage. Like a very pointy W.

"It's armed," her uncle said. "Blaster cannons."

Luci's grip on the padded seat tightened.

He opened a comms channel and said, in Galactic Standard, "Hola, Icarus. Anybody there?"

The line remained silent, until a gruff voice spoke up. "Damn, are we glad to see you!"

"What's the problem out there, amigo?"

"Chambers coil overloaded. Caused a backfire that fried our Jarkmun rotor and took out our engines."

Luci stared at the side of her uncle's face. Deep in thought, he kept his eyes on the ship hanging in the middle of outer space. His tensed fists stiffly drummed their fingers on the control yoke's prongs. When he spoke, his voice was a lot friendlier than his face.

"That so? Sounds like a real big problem."

"What are you guys hauling? We'd be willing to make a trade …"

"Sorry, amigo. Just organic waste."

"Organic waste … ?"

"That's right. Somebody on Vorgelthorbe station is running one of those bioenergy places, you know? Supposed to generate electricity from recycled biomass."

"I see …"

"Say, uh, what model Chambers coil you have?"

The longer the line stayed silent, the more Luci's hair stood on end and her muscles tightened up. Then the voice came back, reciting something in a slow, halting voice.

"Eupidde Engineering, model … DQ-104N."

Her uncle's lips rose up to reveal his gritted teeth, like a cornered dog.

Frowning, Luci leaned across the gap between the bucket seats and whispered, "Can the DQ-series overload so bad it takes out a Jarkmun rotor?"

Rolling his eyes to her, he shook his head. His neck was so stiff it barely turned. At the sight of sweat beading on his face, Luci started to shake. She slumped down in her seat, clawing at the fabric. Digging in so deep in the hopes it'd keep her fingers from twitching.

What did I do? Oh, what did I do?!

"Give me a second," her uncle said. "I'll talk to my engineer."

The line was silent, before the voice said, "Sure thing."

Uncle Ramon muted the comms. She watched him flip switches, but to her shock, her vision was blurred by tears. They sprang out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. The shaking got so much worse. It built up inside her, tore her chest, and she couldn't control it. It came out of her quavering throat as an ugly, gasping sob.

"I'm sorry," she blubbered. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, hey." He smiled at her. "Don't worry about a thing, mija. You've got a big heart. They're the ones who should be sorry, for preying on your kindness like that. Now, just hang on, okay? Your uncle's gonna get us out of this."

He hit the button to open the comms channel.

Luci clasped her hands over her mouth to stifle her sobbing so they couldn't hear it over the radio.

"Icarus, come in," her uncle said.

"We're here," the voice said.

"Sorry, amigo. Don't have any parts to spare. And we're really not cut out for a rescue mission. It's a small ship, we got a full hold—"

"Hey, man. Give us a break here."

"We're on our way to Vorgelthorbe station. Soon as we get there, we'll tell traffic control—"

The stern voice declared, "We might be dead by the time they get here."

The accusation stabbed out of the speaker grille and dug itself into Luci's heart. What if … What if we're wrong … ?

Uncle Ramon said, "From a blown Jarkmun rotor? Your orbit looks stable from here."

His words were met by silence. They hung in the air, unable to cross the space between their ship and the other one floating weightless in the light of the brown planet. The silence dragged on … and nothing moved. Except the tense atmosphere getting heavier on pushing her down into her seat. She gripped its edges and waited …

Plumes of exhaust jetted from the other ship's engines.

Huh? I thought their Jarkmun rotor was damaged?

Then it twisted savagely to aim its nose at them. Bolts of light erupted from its cannons.

We're going to die, Luci thought, oddly calm despite the air getting caught in her throat.

"Hold on!" Uncle Ramon shouted.

Her uncle shoved the control yoke forward and ramped the throttle up. The engines kicked in and made the ship dive down. She yelled as the acceleration shoved her against the back of her bucket seat.

The pirate ship had started firing its cannons before it had zeroed in on them completely. The bolts sailed over the cockpit, filling it with the same hellish light as el Diablo. As the 'Icarus' turned, the beams of light cut closer to the cockpit, sliced through space, bore down on her …

"I'm sorry!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry!"

As their ship dove, the pirate ship slid up their windshield. It was nearly finished rotating. Firing its engines, it shot towards them to close the distance as quick as possible. Its cannons kept pumping out hot blasts of energy that narrowly sailed past their heads.

"They're aiming for our engines," her uncle said.

They couldn't jump to FTL with a big planet in the way, and they couldn't turn to starboard fast enough to get away without giving them a clear shot at the engines …

What are we going to do?! Luci thought.

They continued to dive.

The big brown planet swiveled next to them, throwing Luci's sense of balance for a loop. A headache pounded in her skull. Every nerve in her body shook like it was being electrocuted.

The sleek shape rapidly grew bigger in the windshield …

Her uncle pulled the yoke back and leveled the ship. The 'Icarus' soared down at them from up high, but Uncle Ramon yanked the throttle forward to scrape by under their keel.

Luci threw her arms out, groped for something to grab hold of. Some magical lever she could throw that would end this nightmare as easy as snapping her fingers. But there was nothing, her clumsy fingers found nothing. She was trapped in this cramped cockpit, there was no way out except flinging herself into the void.

Helpless … totally helpless …

Her throat was raw, but the screams wouldn't stop coming. Panic shredded its way out of her as a desperate howl, and there was so much more trapped inside her. Her head thumped, she couldn't deal with the pressure anymore, it crushed her like she was falling into a black hole…

"Mija, listen to me. It's going to be alright. Soon as we make FTL, we'll lose them."

The other ship shot down at them, its bolts streaking past the cockpit like crimson lightning. Sneering, her uncle stabbed his hand out and grabbed the knob that controlled the thrusters. Counting silently to himself, he tensed his arm. Luci stared at him with eyes that felt as big as moons.

They're coming right at us … !

Uncle Ramon twisted the knob and fired the thrusters at full blast. They kicked the ship upward right as the other ship moved to intercept them. It veered to the side to avoid a collision. Its keel slipped past the windshield. The space ahead of them was clear.

Her eyes darted to the scanner. On the pixelated grid showing their local space, right before her horrified, itchy eyes, the chunky dot of the pirate ship looped around and skipped across the rows of pixels.

They're coming … and they have a clear shot at our engines now!

"Uncle Ramon!" she squealed, tears flowing down her cheeks.

He put his whole back into twisting the control yoke as hard as he could. Aiming the ship away from the planet so the safety system wouldn't register a collision and cut the FTL drive.

"Almost got it, mija."

Blaster bolts shot past them from behind, bathing the cockpit in intense blood-red light. Her hands clawed into the cushion, their knuckles throbbing from the stress of being so stiffly bent.

… nothing I can do, nothing I can do, nothing I can do …

"Uncle Ramon, I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry!"

"Hah!" he shouted.

With agonizing slowness, the ship's nose inched past the rim of the planet and pointed at empty space. Her uncle's large, capable hand thrust out and slammed the switch to inject the tachyon stream into the engines. The thrumming traveled through the hull and built up into a whine.

"Hold on, mija!"

As she clung to the seat for dear life, goosebumps crawled all over her skin. Just waiting for a last-second shot to rip the cockpit open. Blast her out into space. End her life, when they were about to get free. Any second now, it'd all tear apart around her. Any second …

Why didn't you listen to Uncle Ramon?!

Stupid!

Then the thrumming exploded into a zap, and the glow of the planet was yanked out of sight. The system's star streaked past the cockpit, leaving a white-hot afterimage in its wake. The stars in front of the nose turned blue and slowly drifted past them.

The statue she'd made slipped off the control panel, clipped the edge of Uncle Ramon's chair, and bent badly. One piece broke off, and all of it clattered to the cockpit deck in a twisted wreck. She hadn't built it as well as she thought she did.

"We're alright, mija," her uncle said. "We're alright."

But the panicked screams wouldn't stop coming out of her wide-open mouth …

---

A tremendous yawn stretched Luci's lips out and pushed her cheeks up. Her eyelids were pushed together, blurring her view. As steamy post-shower air rushed through her wide-open mouth and filled her cheeks, she tilted from side to side, searching for balance while the yawn knocked her askew. She stretched her hand out until her palm landed on the mirror with a wet thump. Moving it from side to side in clumsy arcs, she wiped the mist away. In her hazed view, a dark shape making a funny face stared back at her.

Her mouth stopped stretching and closed with a snap. She blinked until the haze vanished and stared at her damp face. It was framed by jagged arcs of condensation, a haphazard patch of clarity in the middle of a big blur. Her damp hair clung to her scalp in a scraggly mess, twice as dark as it usually was.

That's me, she thought. That's my face.

It looked so pathetic and lonely, staring back at her with a meek, haunted look in its dull brown eyes.

I'm not horrible-looking, right? Earthy skin tones, slight build, extremely short, a little androgynous. Not the showiest, sure. But there's gotta be some women in this giant universe who are into that, right?

Right … ?

So where are they?

And why can't Philomena be one of them?

Heh, maybe they stay away because I still look like I'm twelve. Well, I think I'm done growing. All I can change now is my attitude. She screwed her face up into a stern glower and mugged for the mirror, but no matter how hard she tried, she just looked goofy. I'm turning into Blaze Corvo, she thought. She dropped the facade with a sigh and gave her dull brown face another long, hard look.

All I gotta do is stop acting so helpless and show how tough I am. Become a real tachi. Confident, capable, mature for my little neko-chans. Give off a real butch vibe. If I do that, everything else will fall into place …

Somehow.

The intrapanel chimed. She leaned over and pushed the button to accept the comms channel from the flight deck.

"Luci," Blaze said. "You almost done? We're about to land."

"Yeah, I'll be there in a minute."

Luci cut off the channel, and then gave herself one last look in the mirror. She scowled at herself.

It's time to get tough, Luci!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

With a dying whine, the tachyon generator cut out. The VM-84 dropped back down to sublight speed with a shudder, like one last kick in the ass on the way out the door. The color drained from the blueshifted stars and pooled into a cerulean puddle right in front of them.

Croshaw, Blaze thought. Back again.

Seated behind the console, he hammered its mechanical keyboard. The starnet browser popped up and linked to the ViaDUCT node orbiting the planet. Their gateway to the wide, wild galaxy. Below, in the pilot's seat, Rsh turned the control yoke and aligned the nose with the world's edge for their descent. The planet rotated around a fixed point in space, messing with Blaze's sense of balance.

"How's about we take a gander at what's going on in this here corner of the galaxy?" he said, a cowboy drawl in his voice.

The door behind his back opened. Since Philomena was already somewhere behind him, that must be Luci.

Status updates spilled down the browser, but a big red banner pinned to the top caught his eye.

"Hey, piracy alert for this system," he said.

Luci's feet stopped in their tracks. "P-Pirates?" she asked.

He turned the bucket seat halfway around so he could look at her. She stood stiff as a steel rod, her feet digging into the deck and her hands fidgeting at her sides. Her eye twitched as she stared at him. Because he was sitting down, she was taller than him … but only slightly.

"You feelin' yellow-bellied, Ramirex?" he drawled. "Well, don't you worry none." He lifted his thumb and pointed it as his chest. "Blaze Corvo, quickest draw in the galaxy, is here."

Philomena had been staring through the canopy, watching their descent. When Blaze spoke, she gave him a little sneery side-eye. He gave her one right back. Rolling her eyes, she glowered at the planet and pointedly ignored him.

Well, same to you, Blaze thought.

Luci cleared her throat. A flurry of motion went through her body. Raising her head to stare into the far corner of the flight deck, she cocked her hip and made a few clumsy, awkward attempts to put her hands on her hips in a way that displayed an air of confidence. After a few failures, she crossed her arms instead. But she dug in so tight, it looked like she was hugging herself for comfort instead.

"Pirates? Ha! I-I'm not scared. Not a bit. Who said I was scared?"

Chuckling, Blaze turned his chair back to the console and took a look at the piracy alert.

"That's a mighty big bounty they got on them," he said.

From past the console, Rsh said, "They have angered somebody."

Jokingly, Blaze asked, "Want to go pirate-hunting?"

Behind him, Luci sucked a sharp rush of air through her nostrils.

"They would look at us once … and fly on," Rsh said.

Blaze looked around at their dilapidated starship. "Suppose you're right. Let's see what else is going on."

He swept his eyes over the attention-grabbing status updates. It was like hunting for something valuable in a nebula full of garbage. Luci hovered behind his chair and peered at the monitor over his shoulder. After a little bit, he sensed Philomena inch up behind him too. He could just imagine the look on her face, peeking at the screen while trying to pretend she wasn't interested.

"Something happened on Calcephor," Luci said.

Blaze maximized the status update. "Looks like that planet baron who was hanging onto the place made a secret deal with the Altrax mining consortium."

"Altrax," Philomena spat under her breath.

"After all that fighting," Luci said, " he just gave it up …"

"Presumably …" Rsh said while he aligned the planet's rim with the lines on the HUD, "… he wished to spite GeoForce."

"GeoForce," Philomena spat under her breath.

Blaze pulled up a list of relevant status updates and breezed through them. "Altrax sent Lightning Strike in to counter Golden Guard. All the indie mercs got told to pack their bags and go home. Now Golden Guard and Lightning Strike are in a stalemate while Altrax and GeoForce fight it out in court."

Hey, my accent's slipping … He fumbled around his brains for something cowboy-ish to say, then he raised his voice up into a boisterous drawl.

"I bet they'd settle it quicker with pistols at dawn, I reckon—!"

"Unfortunate."

Even though Rsh didn't talk any louder than he normally did, his voice utterly ploughed through Blaze's. He shot a dirty look at the back of Rsh's head, despite the console blocking his line of sight.

"What's unfortunate?" Luci asked.

Blaze declared, "All those brave indie mercs without a battle to fight. It's a right shame—"

"Calcephor is nearby," Rsh explained, his voice ramming right through Blaze's again. "Out-of-work thugs … shady spaceport … large pirate bounty … It may get rowdy."

"We like rowdy, partner," Blaze said. "For a tough-talking, straight-shooting badass like me, 'rowdy' is the kind of shindig that I dig."

"Uh … yeah!" Luci chimed in. "Wh-What he said!"

Blaze's eyes swept over the status updates again, while he wondered how things were going to shake out on Calcephor.

The galactic government took a very hands-off approach to running the frontier. They had no military of their own. When it came to a dispute over a privately-owned planet, all the courts could do was issue a letter of marque authorizing one side to use mercenaries to enforce their claim. The winner still had to foot the bill for all the mercs they needed. In the end, only multiplanetaries had the deep pockets and the clout to come out on top.

Everybody else on the frontier settled their disputes by themselves, or with hired guns.

Indie mercs didn't give a crap about letters of marque unless they could make a buck off one, but rated outfits like Lightning Strike and Golden Guard were honor-bound to follow them. Mercenary rating agencies like Blibbitz & Boom's watched those hombres like hawks, making sure they played by the rules, so corporate clients knew what they were paying for. For a rated outfit, disobeying a letter of marque was the same as sticking a blaster in your mouth and pulling the trigger.

All the more reason to be your own gunslinger, Blaze thought. When you're an indie merc, all you need is your wits and a good blaster at your side.

But, as the status updates reminded him, the ruckus on Zantaura they recently blundered into might've caused the mercenary rating system to fray at the seams … but it hadn't come undone just yet. He wasn't thrilled about being reminded of what'd happened, so he scrolled past those updates as quick as he could.

Ahead, the horizon's curve flattened out. The VM-84 descended towards the cloud cover and the blue landmass beneath it.

"Ooh!" Philomena said, leaning over his shoulder. "A list of last year's most game-changing executive memos—!"

Blaze scrolled the page and made the status update, from some lame corporate culture magazine, slide off the screen.

"Moving on," he declared.

She unleashed a whirlwind of motion just outside his line of sight, but he didn't bother looking.

"Hey, bring that back! I wanted to read it!"

"You've got an omnitablet, don't you? Read it yourself."

"Hmph. Well, somebody seems to think I don't do any work around here—"

"That's not true."

"Oh, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Everybody thinks you don't do any work around here."

The lazy, incompetent woman who called herself a chief executive snorted bitterly.

Behind him, in his opposite ear, Luci's breathless voice said, "I think you do plenty of work around here."

"See?" Philomena tutted. "Ramirex knows how hard I work."

She's just sucking up to you so she can … He shook his and let Luci have her moment. She got pretty rattled when they descended into the crater, after all.

"Anyway," Philomena said. "I think you should read about what it's like to be a chief executive. That way, I can start getting the praise I deserve. My executive style adds so much to this company."

"When shall it start adding money … to our bank account?" Rsh asked.

As an outraged squawk came from Philomena, Blaze put his fist in front of his mouth and snickered into it.

"Ugh," she said. "Corvo, pull the article up."

"No. It's my ship, and I don't care." He continued scrolling the list, ignoring the angry buzz of outrage he sensed behind his back. "Hey, I got something for you, Rsh. Mining company just went belly-up."

The pale, dark blue of the planet's atmosphere seeped upwards and covered the starfield.

"How?"

Blaze checked the related updates. "One of their dig sites got wiped out by local wildlife, so they … wiped out the wildlife right back." Then, realizing his accent was slipping again, he cleared his throat and spoke in a forceful drawl. "Ain't that just life on the frontier?"

Bluntly, Rsh said, "Why would that … put them out of business?"

"Looks like some of them animal rights activists raised a ruckus."

Rsh scoffed, "That would do nothing."

"Well, who cares? If their mining equipment goes on the market for cheap, does it really matter?"

"I prefer to know … all variables."

Blaze leaned back in the bucket seat and kicked his boots up on the console's edge. "You're the computer programmer, not me. I deal with things as they come. That's how gunslingers like me fly."

The starship sliced through the sky and headed for the sprawling settlement on the horizon. The sun had cleared the horizon but the sky hadn't brightened past the dark pale blue of predawn found on an Earthlike world. It was eerie to look at. Like a camera with its exposure cranked way down.

Heh, I ain't scared. Not one bit.

Then he remembered the last time he came here. His back chafed on the cushion. Sitting up, he cleared his throat. Kept it low and even, speaking slowly so it didn't have a chance to get away from him and waver. He didn't want people to think he was a coward or anything.

"Not that I'm yellow-bellied or anything … but this is the other side of the planet from where we landed last time, right?"

Rsh took so long to respond that it felt like he was taunting Blaze. Letting his voice carry around the flight deck, so everybody had a chance to examine it and laugh at it.

"Yes," Rsh finally replied.

"Good! Ahem, good. I-I-I just don't feel like having to mess up anybody's day, you know?"

"Of course."

Since he explained why he wasn't scared, he waited for the others to murmur, 'I see.' To show him they didn't think he was scared. But an awkward, cringe-riddled silence filled the flight deck.

"Blaze, clearance," Rsh declared.

I'm not scared! Blaze thought as he huffed to himself.

He used the starnet browser to connect to the starport's frontpage and request landing clearance. Unlike the outpost they'd landed at last time, the main settlement was larger and more permanent. Lots of rectangular concrete buildings at right angles to each other. Floodlamps mounted on poles blasted the grid of streets with harsh, glaring light. Beyond the buildings, a forest covered the ridged land. A jagged column towered above the tree trunks, issuing a steady stream of mist from its huge slats into the dim sky.

The atmosphere processor.

"Rsh, you got the list of parts I typed up, right?" Luci asked.

"Yes."

"Alright. So what's our budget for food look like?"

"We are only purchasing … the essentials."

A rush of air went between Philomena's lips as she got ready to unload her big mouth all over the flight deck.

"Galactic Swirlies are not essential," Rsh said.

"Hey, this is my company," Philomena whined.

As she gestured erratically, her jabbing hands poked into the corner of Blaze's eye like a swarm of hornets angry somebody had thrown rocks at their nest.

"Then you balance its books."

Rsh's blunt voice lobbed each word at her like an asteroid.

The hornets didn't stand a chance. They shriveled up limply and withdrew, while the woman herself smacked her useless lips so loudly Blaze could hear.

"I … Um … Ah … Ramirex!"

"Hai?!"

"Balance the books for me."

"I'm an engineer, not an accountant, but … I-I could take a look …"

"No," Rsh stated. "Do it yourself."

"Heh heh," Luci said weakly. "Guess that's that! Sorry, Philomena."

Even though he was facing the ship's nose, Rsh's voice was strong enough to brutally ram a few more words of wisdom in Philomena's direction.

"You wish to run 'your' company? Learn to add …"

Philomena yelled, "I know how to add!"

Rsh caught his breath. "… something of value to it."

"Hmph! Fine! I'm going to become the best book-balancer, faster than you can say ten times ten is, umm … ten thousand!"

Another awkward, cringe-riddled silence filled the flight deck, but it wasn't directed at Blaze this time. He smiled comfortably and eased down in his seat, stealing glances at the red-cheeked, flustered woman right behind him.

"I'll show you that I add so much value to this company," Philomena said. "Unlike somebody, who hasn't got any boom."

"I have plenty of 'boom,'" Blaze shot back. Then, he finished up with, "And at least I know ten times ten is one hundred."

She made a grunting snort, an ugly, disgusted sound that was somehow throaty and nasal at the same time.

"We're cleared to land, by the way," Blaze said. "Space #71. Hey, what's this? 'Due to circumstances beyond our control, an air purification fee will be charged upon landing.'"

"A what?" Rsh barked.

Blaze almost said, 'Beats me.' But he caught himself in time and instead drawled, "Ain't got a clue, partner."

"Does it state an amount?"

"No."

"They will surely try and scam us."

"Probably."

Stepping forward, past the console and to the edge of the short stairs down to the pilot's seat, Luci stared at the black spire sticking out of the forest.

"Think the atmosphere processor's broken?"

"Looks fine from here," Blaze replied.

"Then what …" She tilted her head and stared at the landing field they were flying towards. "What the hell is going on down there?"

Blaze followed her vision to what looked like a carnival on the concrete. Dozens of small and mid-sized ships were clustered together. At first, Blaze thought they were the indie mercs who'd wandered over from Calcephor. But all the ships were intricately detailed and customized. Their owners had put a lot of effort into keeping them looking nice. People milled on the field between the parked ships, chatting freely. Standing, sitting on crates and chairs … some even had barbeques going. It didn't look like they'd put a lot of care into where they'd landed — not a single ship was within the lines painted on the concrete.

"Ay, caray," Luci said. "I think those are sky-blasters."

"Huh?" Philomena asked.

"A roaming herd of jackasses. Cabrones who fly through space, pissing people off everywhere they go. Dealing with them is like pulling teeth. My family crossed paths with them a few times. They're bad news."

"How?"

"Well, they—"

A collision warning popped up on the console monitor. Blaze's heart started to pound against his ribcage. A rush of blood went to his head. His fingers fidgeted, ready to start throwing punches. Next to the console, Luci tensed up. She slid her feet apart to steady her posture and raised her arms to get better balance.

"Rsh—?!" he called.

"What is it?!" Rsh called back.

Blaze pulled up the radar. A line of contacts swept through the sky behind them. Are they birds, or …?! Whatever they are, they're right up our ass!

"Go down!" Blaze shouted. "Down—!"

Then a line of small starships screamed past their heads, flying in a sloppy formation. Their exhaust came so close it rattled the ship's hull and Blaze's nerves alike. But it wasn't any old exhaust. Thick black fumes shot out of their hyperion engines and filled the air around them with noxious plumes of smoke. It clung together with all the tenacity of slime and fell over the canopy like a veil. Within seconds, the ships that'd buzzed the VM-84 were lost in thick sheets of smog.

It's like being back on the rogue planet, Blaze thought.

"I cannot see!" Rsh roared.

Luci gripped the console so hard her knuckles went white. "That's what they do. They modify their engines to burn hot and spew out this crap."

The VM-84 sailed out of the black clouds. The wisps pulled away from the canopy like fingers uncovering somebody's eyes, revealing the dim blue sky of the planet again. The ships that'd buzzed them hovered over the carnival below. The people on the ground cheered up at them as they landed.

"Can't they just get them out of here?!" Philomena whined.

Blaze looked over and saw she'd wedged her flustered body against a support beam, clutching it for dear life.

"No," Luci said sadly. "They squatted on Asilo once. Even though everybody hated them, whenever we tried to get rid of them, they screamed about their rights being violated."

Since getting stranded in space without fuel was a death sentence, the Consumers' Bill of Rights gave people the right to land at any commercial starport, even on privately-owned planets.

Concerned, Rsh said, "There are limits to what is permitted …"

"They're also heavily armed," Luci added.

Rsh went silent for a moment, then replied, "Noted."

"The only thing you can do is ignore them and hope they go away on their own. Anything else is just asking for trouble. Back home, the news feed said that whenever a settlement hires mercenaries to kick them out, the sky-blasters sound the call and more just keep swarming out of the sky, day after day. Nobody knows how many sky-blasters are out there. The settlements end up going bankrupt from having to recruit so many mercenaries to keep order."

"I've heard of these hombres," Blaze said, "but I never understood what's with all the black smoke."

"It's some crazy religious thing," Luci said. "They think the universe was ejaculated by a stellar sperm whale. So if they ruin all the breathable air in the universe, this stupid whale will return and ejaculate enough breathable air that it'll fill up all of outer space. Oh, and that'll also incinerate everybody who doesn't believe in their religion."

"Huuuuuuuuuh," Blaze said, drawing that one syllable out while he tried — and failed — to figure out what to make of this piece of info.

"Yeah," Luci said, "they call it the Second Cumming."

"Huh. Uh, just so we're on the same page …"

Luci explained, "They think if they pollute everything, it'll make the Second Cumming happen."

"Heh heh, that's, uh …"

As Rsh maneuvered towards landing space #71, he grunted in disgust. "And humans think themselves above … Zantaurans."

"Hey, we ain't all this short on wits, partner," Blaze said. He turned to the two women with a cocky smile and drawled, "Anyway, don't you fret none. If them sidewinders down there try any funny stuff, I'll wrangle them under control."

Philomena's upper lip lifted in a sneer. "When they throw you to the ground and trample all over you, try and trip a few of them up so I have time to escape."

When she finished speaking, Luci's eyes widened as they flicked between her and Blaze. She rocked up onto her tiptoes, straightened her back, and raised her head like she was trying to add as many inches to her height as she could.

"I'll, um … trip a few of them up too! So … don't you worry, Philomena!"

Blaze and Philomena both turned to her. The longer they stared at her face, the more her cocky posturing fell to pieces like a starship shedding parts. Her blushing, twitching face gave one last feeble smile, then faced the corner.

The starship's landing legs touched down on the concrete with a shudder. It might've been in Blaze's head, but as the impact went through the hull, it seemed a little creakier than usual.

Pirates, mercenaries, sky-blasters … all in the same system at the same time …

Ah, whatever. I can handle it!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

Leaving the cramped, but secure comfort of the flight deck behind, Rsh descended into the pale blue light of the planet. The distant forest rose up behind the landing leg's aged metal. As he hooked his hands around the rungs, he noticed his claws were getting long. I should file them down soon, he thought. It's a pain, but it's only practical. I can't use touchscreens with claws or I'll scratch them up. The fact that it makes me look more civilized is … just a bonus. He reached the bottom and let go of the rungs. Raising his hand, he examined the way his stubby claws were slowly forming a sharp point again.

Everything is in motion, he mused. Even though we all long for comfortable stasis, the biological processes of life always continue.

"Feels good to be on solid ground again!" Luci said. "Without a space suit, anyway."

Rsh raised his eyes and watched the tiny human stretch her arms while wandering in a circle.

Except for Luci's height, that is.

A smile spread across his face, but humans could never read his expression, so he didn't bother to hide it.

Despite her enthusiasm, some loud hooting and hollering from the assembled sky-blasters halfway across the field made her glance fretfully their way. She eyed them like a herd of wild beasts that would stampede at the drop of a hat. She edged sideways toward Rsh, her soles scraping the concrete. She used to look at me like that, he thought, amused. Now she's flocking to my side for protection. How times change.

A heavy-duty hinged lid protected the intrapanel attached to the landing leg. He lifted the lid up, typed in the command to seal the ship and put it into low-power mode, and let it go. The lid swung back down into place and pressed firmly against its casing. Above, the hatch to the flight deck sealed itself shut with a heavy clunk. The exterior lights switched off, leaving the four of them steeped in the dim blue of the planet's atmosphere.

"What about fuel?" Luci asked.

"I was not expecting a 'fee'," he said. "We shall see … how much is left … after buying supplies."

As always, the words got stuck in his throat. They never came out as smoothly as they sounded in his head. He cursed the limitations of his non-human vocal cords.

Their 'boss' stalked past, turning restlessly one way, then the other. She held her omnitablet up, two inches from her squinting eyes. Her frown deepened the longer she stared at it. She poked the screen and scrolled it down, up, down, up again. Rsh's keen hearing caught the mutters spilling from her mouth.

"What the hell is a 'dee-vee-soar'?"

Predictable, Rsh thought. She refuses to learn anything, except when she needs to spite other people.

He said, "It is pronounced … 'divisor'."

Although he enunciated the word as best he could, it ended up just sounding like his normal voice.

She whirled towards him in surprise, scowled, then whirled away from him and hid the tablet with her body.

"I didn't say anything," she spat.

Something rankled Rsh's senses. He tilted his head towards the starport. A line of thugs strode up to the ship. They moved with purpose, but they didn't seem like they were looking for trouble. Blaze was in the middle of checking the charge meter on his blaster pistol when he noticed them too. He raised his eyes, his fingers gripping the handle tightly. Rsh assumed the words 'no boom' were echoing around the human's head. Blaze shoved the pistol into its holster and strutted into their path to meet them. He puffed his chest up, straightened his back, put his hands on his hips with his elbows sticking way out to the sides. Taking up as much space as humanly possible.

He wants to be a boulder blocking their path, rather than a pebble they might stub their toes on.

This should be amusing.

Rsh hung back, in the ship's shadow, to watch the encounter unfold.

The thugs stopped a few paces away. An appropriate distance to ensure nobody felt crowded or threatened. Shiny badges were pinned to their chests, but that was it as far as uniforms went. They had worn jackets, nondescript turtlenecks, tactical pants with kneepads. No coordination whatsoever. Motley, mismatched clothing, typical of independent mercenaries.

"Howdy there, partners," Blaze said. "How can I help y'all?"

"Welcome to Croshaw," the man in front said. The pale blue light made his skin the color of stone, and the stubble covering his chin and cheeks doubly so. His gravelly voice immediately put Blaze's fake cowboy accent to shame. He gestured to the men behind him. "Planetary security. We're here to collect the air purification fee."

"I don't reckon I recall any such fee the last time I came around this here … these here parts … I reckon."

The confused jumble of folksy slang made the thug blink a few times. His sealed lips wriggled around his clenched jaw, occasionally rising up at the edges in a contemptuous sneer.

"It's new," he said, forcing the words out.

He doesn't have much experience with customer service, does he? Rsh thought. I'm guessing they were all hired to keep order when the sky-blasters arrived. Or the pirates, one or the other.

"How much?" Blaze asked.

"350vx."

My turn to speak, Rsh thought.

He strode forward. His heavy footsteps thudded on the concrete. The thugs shifted their attention away from Blaze and onto Rsh. Their eyes shot open. Their hands tensed and edged toward their weapons. They didn't seem quite as relaxed now.

"Outrageous," he stated.

"Take it up with them." The lead thug nodded at the sky-blasters. "The atmosphere processor is strained to its limits scrubbing that crap they pump out of their engines."

"So tell 'em to hit the stardusty trails," Blaze said.

Fake sincerity oozed from the thug's lips. "That'd be breaking the Consumers' Bill of Rights, son."

He doesn't look like he'd lose any sleep over it.

"And they have all paid … this fee?" Rsh asked.

"Of course."

The mercenary's smooth voice and broad smile dared Rsh to call him a liar. They stared each other down, the human doing an admirable job of hiding his fear, even though Rsh's sharp eyes noticed the slight tremors and twitches that betrayed how hard he was trying not to flinch in the face of a Zantauran. As the staring contest dragged on, Blaze's slack, gawking face twisted between them. Then, he remembered his cowboy posturing, and stuck his hands on his hips again and wiped the stupid look off his face.

Rsh narrowed his eyes, and spotted a gulp going down the thug's throat. Behind him, another thug's hand crept along the stock of his rifle, towards the trigger.

Let's get this over with, Rsh thought.

He announced, "Perhaps you misheard."

The thug tilted his ear towards Rsh, his eyebrows rising. "Oh …?"

"Perhaps the fee was … 150vx."

The thug's eyes narrowed. He bared his teeth, his lips sliding over them like half-formed words were going through his brain.

"250vx," he said.

Although he tended to keep his head down and hunch his back to be slightly less imposing, now he drew himself up to his full height of seven feet. He stared down his muzzle at the thug. Drawing each syllable into a slow, savage growl, Rsh said, "200vx."

Blaze edged forward to escape Rsh's shadow.

"Take it or leave it, hombre," he said.

But his paltry words bounced off the steely silence between Rsh and the thug like a pebble flung at a starship hull.

The mercenary's lips cracked into a grin.

"Right! How silly of me. It was 200vx."

Easing himself back into his hunched posture, Rsh plucked his wallet out of his robes. He passed a handful of transparent plastic cards to the mercenary, who held them up to a floodlight on the starport's main building. After he examined the prismic pattern inside to ensure they weren't counterfeit, he nodded at the others. They relaxed and turned to head back to the starport.

"Pleasure doing business with you," he said.

He followed the others, leaving Kestrel Mining behind. They shrank to the size of figurines and headed for the starport's main building.

"I could've handled them," Blaze said, when they were a considerable distance away and well out of earshot.

Rsh sighed. This 'fee' had taken quite a chunk out of their petty cash. How much had it set them back? He started doing some quick mental math, but he got distracted when Philomena wandered past. Her nose was still buried in her omnitablet.

"'Quote … tent'?! What language is this?!" she muttered, shaking the tablet like she wanted to throttle it.

---

Mist fell from the cloudy skies and drifted down the sharp, rocky peaks. It pooled in the narrow valley far below Dr. Brusq's vantage point and spread among the evergreen trees pointing at the sky. Observing the alpine planet's climate as it swirled past the window, he focused on keeping his breathing steady.

This is it, he thought. The culmination of my life's work!

He studied his reflection in the window. Bony. Gaunt. Bald on top, gray on the sides. Too late to start over. And the 'new blood' coming into the university these days … they had the silliest ideas. Laszlipp theory? Sendic reinforcement? The Drustum-Mandig technique? He'd rather eat the slime sac of a Zebocrim than restart his academic career learning all that trendy garbage.

When would people learn? The only educational technique guaranteed to work was the Brusq method. He'd devoted so much time and effort trying to get people to learn that simple fact, but they just didn't understand. No, they didn't want to understand. Every time he graciously offered the galaxy a study, others bent over backwards to poke holes in it. Accuse him of 'misinterpreting the data'. 'Fudging the numbers'. Some had even dared to throw around that dreaded insult … 'Fraud'.

Jealousy, pure and simple. They cannot comprehend the brilliance of the Brusq method! Their petty minds refuse to let go of their own flawed theories, and they hunt for flaws in my work where there are none. Their egos are holding the collective development of the human race back by decades!

It is the height of irony that the men and women in charge of researching educational theory are uniformly terrible at learning what's best for them.

But all of that is about to change!

He turned away from the window and faced the taupe room. It'd been furnished exactly as he requested. A table in the center, with a single chair. A large display screen on a cart in front of the table, facing the chair. Spotlights on stands and bounce cards directing large amounts of light towards the chair. The subject of his technique sat in it, hunched over a large tablet. She clutched a stylus and furiously scribbled onto its screen. Her face was hidden by her long copper hair.

There she is, he thought. The key to validating my life's work!

The scientific community had shut Dr. Brusq out. And yet, when one of the richest and most influential business dynasties in the galaxy needed their help, that same scientific community had utterly failed them. A parade of amateurs, peddling nonsense theories, had failed to produce the results they needed. So, they had come to the 'pariah' for help.

And help I shall!

Using the Brusq method, I shall mold her like clay into the scion her family deserves!

He checked the time on his omnitablet. The first session was almost over. In just a few minutes, he'd make all those so-called 'experts' eat Zebocrim for doubting him. He walked cautiously to the table, careful not to disturb the young girl as she worked. He was tempted to peek over her shoulder and see how far along she was, but he decided against it. He didn't want to bias his conclusions before the session was finished. He stealthily circled around her. She remained hunched over the tablet, scribbling furiously with the stylus.

Good. Good! Work hard, my little scion! Work hard!

He went to the spotlights aimed at her and checked the wavelength of their soothing, nurturing golden light with an app on his omnitablet. He'd already checked the lights a dozen times before the session started, and half-a-dozen times during. But his gut told him to check one last time, to make sure nothing had gone wrong.

He needn't have worried; they were still perfectly calibrated.

The quality of the light was central to the Brusq method. He had analyzed his young subject's nervous system, and calculated the appropriate wavelength of light to resonate with her synapses. It would relax her, lower her resistance, make her receptive to the lessons. The math lessons on the display screen had an identical golden tint. As it traveled down her optic nerves and vibrated in sync with her nervous system, it'd generate a harmonic feedback loop in her impressionable little mind, priming her to rapidly and efficiently absorb the lesson.

In addition, a small speaker on the table emitted a soothing, barely-audible tone. When that wavelength entered her ears, it'd make her auditory system vibrate harmonically with her nervous and ocular systems, intensifying the learning experience.

He glanced at the security camera on the ceiling. It was streaming the session to the conference room down the hall. Once they got a taste of the genius-level intellect the Brusq method had bestowed on the girl …

At last, I'll get the recognition I deserve!

And, with the help of my patrons, I'll rub my results in the face of everybody who's ever doubted me!

Soon, the entire galactic educational community will be begging for my forgiveness!

A chime interrupted the soothing tone coming out of the speaker on the table. Suddenly, his heart beat very quickly. The session is over. Time for results! He stood over the table, watching his subject write on the tablet. She's in a frenzy to learn! Oh, this is glorious! Better than I expected!

He could barely contain a smile.

"Ahem!" he said. "Oh, Philomena?"

Her concentration broken, the girl froze. Her stylus hovered over the tablet and its math problems. Blinking slowly, she raised her face to him. He wanted to clap his hands together and rub them. But no! He was an educator. He had to be disciplined, for the benefit of the young mind he intended to mold.

"Huh?" she asked.

"The session is over," he said sweetly.

"Oh," she said. "Um, okay."

"Now then!" he said, stealing another peek at the camera on the ceiling. A smirk crept onto his lips. His heart was pounding at the speed of light now. "Let's test what you've learned, shall we?"

She stared up at him, her face blank. The effects of the procedure haven't worn off yet, I suppose.

He loudly cleared his throat, as much for the benefit of the woman watching via camera as himself.

"Now then! Let's start simple. Philomena, what is … twenty-five … divided by … five?"

Dr. Brusq nodded at the girl, signaling that it was okay for her to speak. And he waited for the brilliant, erudite intelligence to pour from her young mouth.

And … he waited … and …

"Huh?" the girl asked.

A bead of sweat went down his forehead. His gut got so heavy it felt like he'd swallowed a black hole. His eyes wanted to look up at the camera, but he forced himself to stare intently at the girl. A terrible twitch went through his eyes, making half his face flinch and buzz.

"It's okay, don't be shy. What's twenty-five divided by five?"

"Huh?" the girl asked again.

He barked out a laugh, but his voice cracked midway through. The Brusq method had been set up properly. Her subconscious should be an open book to imprint knowledge onto. Those math equations on the screen should be etched permanently into her brain.

"It's a simple equation, Philomena."

"Equa … tion?" she asked.

Her little mouth sounded out the word. Not a single spark of recognition glinted in her eyes. M-Maybe she just hasn't been primed to associate the numerals when written out with them being spoken? Yes, I'm sure that's it. She has been dutifully completing her math problems with no issue, after all.

He lifted the tablet out of her hands and checked her answers—

Dr. Brusq froze. His blood ran cold. The fingers gripping the tablet went numb. Started to shake. In disbelief, he read the words, scribbled around the unanswered math problems, out loud. The more of them he read, the worse his shaking got.

"'One day a biznezwomnn from Fancy Compnny wntt to the Airee. And she sed "Pfilomina yure the best biznezwomnn ever." And Pfilomena sed "Yes iyem the best biznezwomnn ever." And she sed "Pfilomena how doo yu becomm the best biznezwomnn ever?" And Pfilomena sed "Its eesee! Be smrt and wear pritty drezez!" And she sed "Pfilomena yure the best biznezwomnn ever!" And Pfilomena sed, "Yes iyem the best biznezwomnn ever!" They livid haply ever aftur, bekuz theyr best biznez' …"

He flipped the tablet around so she could see it and pointed at the screen.

"Why didn't you complete the math equations?!"

"Oh," the girl said. "Um … I didn't know what those are."

The black hole in his gut grew bigger. Ate up everything inside him. He searched for something to say, but all the words in his brain had gotten sucked up by the crushing singularity.

An intrapanel next to the door chimed. He spun towards it, at a loss for words. A sharp voice shot across the room and struck him like a blaster bolt.

"Thank you, Dr. Brusq," she said. "Your services will no longer be required."

He turned to the security camera on the ceiling. "Please, I— Give me another chance! The Brusq method works, I assure you! I can prove it! H-Hello …?"

There was no reply.

When security arrived to escort him from the premises, they found him huddled up in the corner, crying. By then, the girl had returned to scribbling in the tablet. She looked up, watched the guards take him away, and raised her hand to wave goodbye.

He didn't return it.

It's not the Brusq method that's the problem, he thought. It's her!

Sh-She must just be … the dumbest girl in the galaxy!

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

Cracked, stained concrete walls hemmed them in, imposing and uncomfortable. Rusted mechanical boxes and thick pipe clusters stuck out of the blocky buildings above their heads, like garbage spilling off a high shelf. Haphazard stacks of crates, pallets, and barrels lining the street added to that vibe.

It's like walking through a trash compactor, Luci thought.

The grimy metal doors were all set into recesses in the concrete with razor-sharp edges. Most of the lights inside them didn't work, which threw the alcoves into shadow. Like caves with monsters inside. The buildings rarely stood above three stories tall, but somehow they felt so much taller. Occasionally, an elevated walkway bridged them and briefly turned the street into a dark underpass.

When they had to cross through the shadows, Luci edged so close to Rsh that his coat brushed her face. Her head twisted around, peering at the shadows to make sure nothing rushed at her, but she could not see anything except very dark gray on black.

It wasn't much better when they emerged, either. The narrow paths between the buildings were lined with junction boxes and pipes so they looked like teeth. The sideways maws of space worms, which lay in wait to gobble her up for daring to walk too close.

Every town had a few dark alleyways, but this settlement seemed like one big dark alleyway with a bunch of even darker alleyways branching out on both sides.

If she disappeared, would the others even notice?

They didn't even realize how fast she had to walk to keep up with their annoyingly-long legs. 'Wait for me!' she wanted to yell. But something in her gut told her that showing weakness in this place was a bad idea. Gulping, she pumped her legs as hard as she could and ignored the pain flaring up in her joints.

Rusted metal boxes rattled ferociously, the motors enclosed inside on their last legs. Squeaky fans behind grimy grilles issued steam into the air. The mist filled the street, making the path ahead seem more mysterious … and more dangerous.

The closer they got to the heart of the settlement, the more people they passed. Rogues and scoundrels hung around, boasting to each other and trading growls. Rough-looking men and women stalked down the street, but one look at Rsh was enough to convince them to keep their heads down and keep walking. Others stared down at them from the elevated walkways and the buildings' balconies like gargoyles.

A fuzzy feeling make pins and needles break out on Luci's skin. Stopping, she twisted her head to the right and saw a skinny little girl, about twelve, watching them from the side of the street. She wore a ratty T-shirt that was once baby blue. The girl was pretty, with red apple cheeks under the dirt that clung to her face and fair hair that flowed where it wasn't tangled.

Ay caray, I can't even imagine being a twelve-year-old girl in this dump—

Staring Luci down, the girl raised her hands. She held switchblades in both. The blades whipped out with a metallic click and flashed as they caught the light. She narrowed her eyes at Luci.

Time to get moving! Luci thought.

She hurried after her co-workers.

They reached the center of the settlement. The intersection where the two main roads met widened into an octagon, creating a small plaza with some open space in the center. Neon signs advertised a bunch of seedy shops, including a greasy spoon so dirty it wouldn't have shocked Luci if their spoons were actually made of solidified grease.

When Rsh came to a stop, Blaze and Luci followed his lead out of instinct. On the other hand, Philomena continued to stride forward, her eyes fixed on her omnitablet, not looking where she was going.

"Hold up," Blaze called.

The cool beauty twisted around and stared at them. Then her eyes wandered across the plaza, causing a sneer to lift her lip and show her teeth. She always acts like she's got a force field around her, Luci thought. One that keeps her from getting hurt, but not from getting dirty.

I wish I had her attitude …

I will! I'm going to get tough and stop being so meek!

She straightened her back and lifted her head up, but she remained frustratingly five-foot-two. Even Blaze's cocky cowboy stance was more imposing than hers, and that was Blaze! What hope was there for poor Luci Ramirex, then?

"What is it?" Philomena asked.

The bright rectangle of her omnitablet glowed on her face, making it stand out from the seedy, grimy buildings behind her.

"We must ask for directions," Rsh said.

Blaze turned to the greasy spoon. Through the filthy window, the place's decor was piss yellow with off-white accents. The counter and the booths all looked flimsy and cheap, with peeling padding and chipped laminated surfaces.

"Ship's out of food," Blaze said. "How's about we grab some chow and ask the locals?"

Rsh crossed his arms and thought it over, then shrugged. His stern expression didn't lift in the slightest. Both of them then swiveled to face Luci, staring expectantly.

"I've eaten at worse places," she said, shrugging.

Philomena recoiled from the sight of the greasy spoon. "I am not setting one foot inside—"

Blaze and Rsh headed for the entrance.

"Alright," Blaze said. "You can wait out here for us, then."

Luci lingered at the threshold, holding the door open for Philomena, who looked like she was about to be marooned on a deserted planet. Her eyes swept all over the place like the filth was alive and would creep up on her when she wasn't looking. A scowl twisted her lovely face at first, but her arched eyebrows and lips flipped into a gloomy sigh of resignation. She launched herself forward and hurried across the plaza to the dingy light spilling out of the open door.

Warm comfort filled Luci's heart as the cool beauty slipped past her.

They stuffed themselves into a booth against the wall. Blaze went in first, against the wall. Philomena dropped down on the other side. A confrontational glare turned her gorgeous face to stone. He matched it with an exaggerated, mugging scowl.

Luci inched towards the side Philomena was sitting on, but Rsh — unaware of Luci's stealthy approach — brushed right past her and heavily dropped onto the bench. As the jolt made Philomena jump, her head whipped around to him. A panicked expression lit up her lovely eyes and made her pert lips drop open. Rsh's bulk slid down the bench towards her, and she stared it down like a meteor about to strike the ground below her feet. She threw herself against the wall. A grimace pulled her teeth back and caused a sharp rush of air to suck into her mouth, like a cornered cat hissing at danger. Rsh stopped short of crushing her, but it still looked awfully cramped.

Y-You can sit on my lap, if you want …

Luci's cheeks started to burn. She quickly dropped into the seat next to Blaze and busied herself looking at the menu. It was being shown on a cracked, crusty display screen that hung askew on the wall, just above the tray of expired condiments. Occasionally, the screen filled with garbage data and then reset itself.

They studied it in silence until a haggard waitress approached their table. She had a gaunt, bony face that made her look like she was in her forties, but it was entirely possible she was a twentysomething who'd aged very poorly after living on this craphole for a few years. Heavy makeup went around her eyes, but the big black bags under her eyes were heavier. They caused the makeup to crack and stood out horribly. Frazzled hair stuck out of her ponytail. Her puckered mouth barely moved, as if she had just sucked a dozen lemons in a row.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Luci looked at her co-workers, and they all looked at her. The same expression went across all their faces — cringing uncertainty with a hint of revulsion at whatever would be scraped off the stove.

She looked at the menu again and ordered the first thing she saw.

"Uh … steak and fries?"

Rsh growled, Blaze grunted, and Philomena groaned in agreement.

The waitress typed their order into her omnitablet. "Four steak and fries."

She started to move away, but Rsh called out to her. Obligated to answer, she twisted her upper body around to look at him, but from the way she remained leaning forward, it was clear she was itching to get going.

"We are in need of … supplies," Rsh said. "Wholesale."

She raised her hand towards the road through the window like she was brushing a fly away.

"Selman's Bazaar. East end of town."

"Thank you."

She went back to the counter, leaving them to wait in silence. After about five minutes, the front door opened, and that twelve-year-old girl wandered in. Luci glanced at her as she sat down at the counter.

"Midge," the girl said. "Gimme a beer."

The waitress stood on the other side of the counter, her fists on her hips. "Don't you think you've had enough? You're twelve."

"Ain't no law here but 'Do what the posse says.' You wanna drag 'em out here to ask for permission?"

Sighing, the waitress fetched a beer from a small fridge on the counter against the wall and put it down in front of her. The little girl pulled a wallet out of her pants pocket. When the waitress saw it, her eyes shot open. Flakes of makeup sprinkled like colorful snowflakes as they fell down.

"Whose wallet is that?"

"Don't worry about it," the girl said.

"If the owner comes looking, I'm not covering for you, Valia."

"I can take care of myself. Just gimme the beer."

Huffing, the waitress dropped a beer bottle on the counter in front of the little girl with a bang. Unfazed, the girl swiped it off the chipped laminated surface, tilted it back, and chugged it.

Maldita sea, Luci thought, averting her eyes from the sorry sight. This is one rough place.

Ten minutes later, the waitress slapped four plates of disgusting slop in front of them. They stared at the lumpy, charred meat, drizzled in an oily film, sitting on a pile of blackened fries. The waitress walked off without a word.

"Looks like something you'd find caked on an engine," Blaze said.

"As an expert in that area," Luci said, "I agree."

Their stomachs rumbled as one, but none of them dared to touch their — well, calling it 'food' was a bit of a stretch. More like 'plate of mush charred into brittleness'.

Tough, Luci! Be tough!

Summoning all her courage, she dug in first. It didn't taste great, but the oily film helped it slide smoothly down her throat. It rested in her stomach without making her want to hurl, so her expectations were exceeded. Blaze, perhaps goaded into action by her courage, scarfed the first bite of his meal down like it was no big deal. Rsh soon joined him, chomping the steak with his typically inscrutable expression. The burnt fries were worse. They broke apart when she chewed them and stabbed her throat on the way down.

Philomena was the lone holdout. Trapped in the corner, she stared at them like they'd keel over dead any second, even though a very loud rumble came from her stomach.

"It's not that bad," Luci said to her.

"Yeah," Blaze said. "It's so overcooked that any germs would've burnt up faster than being tossed into a sun."

Her eyes dropped to her plate, and she started picking at her meal. She put the first piece in her mouth, shuddered, and swallowed it like the most bitter medicine in the galaxy. She gulped hard and swayed dizzily on the bench. A nauseated gurgle came from her throat, but she swallowed it back down.

She's so pretty, Luci thought. Just look at the way the muscles in her slender throat squeeze together to push that food down …

Oh, I'm staring too much!

Luci buried her eyes in her unappetizing plate of slop as she picked at it. Every so often, Philomena sighed. Luci snuck a peek her way, and saw she'd pulled out her omnitablet.

"What do you keep sighing for?" Blaze asked.

Philomena's eyes flicked up and stared at him over the top of the omnitablet. A look of pure revulsion burned in her eyes. Then, she summoned her poise and put a haughty lilt in her voice.

"I'm doing some complexicated math."

"Ah. And, uh, how's that going?"

"Great!" Philomena said, stuffing her strained voice full of forced cheer. "It's going great." Twisting her head towards Rsh and Luci, she remarked, "After all, I'm not useless like Corvo—"

Taking advantage of the opening, Blaze shot his hand across the table and plucked the tablet right out of her hand.

"Hey!" she cried.

Glancing at the screen, he suppressed a giddy grid. Then he turned it around and showed it to the rest of them. It was a starnet site to help kids practice basic math. Luci thought, I want to say I didn't expect that, but … She cringed on Philomena's behalf and gave the beauty across the table a smile, though it felt pitiful and weak on her lips.

Fuming, her cheeks redder than normal, Philomena ripped the tablet away from Blaze. He didn't put any effort into keeping it away from her. The big smile on his face let everybody else know he'd had his fun. She hid the omnitablet from view and slumped against the wall.

"I-I am an amazing executive," she said. "I just decided to breeze through the basics first, that's all."

She stared at the wall instead of at them. Her plaintive protest hung gloomily over the table. Luci drummed her fingers on the table and searched her mind for something to say that'd comfort her beautiful boss. When Rsh beat her to the punch, annoyance stabbed her. She shot a dirty look at the side of his face.

I wanted to lift her spirits!

Rsh sucked air through his nostrils, roused his massive body so it straightened up on the seat, and turned towards her.

"Philomena," he said. "Give me your omnitablet."

She placed it on the table and slid it over to him with a single long finger pushing it. Her eyes remained glued to the wall. He picked the tablet up, pressed his finger to its screen, and then growled as had to press it harder. All touchscreens were calibrated for use by human beings, and they didn't work very well with his biology. After using it for a minute, he flipped it around and aimed it at Philomena. She peeked at the glowing screen out of the corner of her eye. Once she got a look at what was on it, her eyes lit up. Her face shot forward until it was two inches from the screen, its glow lit her whole face up too.

Breathlessly, Philomena said, "That's a Versuca Itero dress! It's the hot new executive style this year!"

"Look at the price," Rsh said.

"14,495vx," Philomena said.

"That is the price … for one. If you wish to have ten—"

"Oh, I do!"

"Then what is the price?"

Philomena had craned her neck forward to bring her face close to the omnitablet's screen. She tilted only her head back, putting her neck at an unusually-crooked angle. Her pert pink lower lip lagged behind the rest of her face and drooped open.

"Huh?" she asked.

"What is … the price for ten of these?"

Her eyes searched his face blankly. Then, she jerked upright. Her jaw snapped shut with a loud click when her teeth came together. She shrugged her shoulders like she was just getting comfortable.

"That's easy," she said. "It's …"

This is your chance, Luci!

Sitting up, just as Philomena had done, Luci cleared her throat and announced, "I-I always just add a zero to the end."

Without moving the rest of her body, Philomena's eyes rolled round to look at Luci.

"Take the price and add a zero after the last number," Luci said.

Without moving the rest of her body, Philomena's eyes rolled back to look at the tablet in Rsh's hand.

"Wait," Philomena said, squinting. "If there's a dress for 14,495vx … and I want ten, then … add a zero … 144,950vx?"

"Correct," Rsh said.

Philomena sat up rigidly, her eyes shining like supernovae and her lips twitching uncertainly. Then the brief moment of shock passed, and she scoffed while waving her hand through the air between them.

"Of course it's right. This is easy."

Blaze paused with a chunk of steak in front of his lips.

"Sure is! That's why most people learn it when they're five."

Popping the chunk into his mouth, he chewed it with an exaggerated munch and grinned at her. She glowered back, then flapped her hand at him and turned back to Rsh while rolling her eyes in huge orbits around their sockets.

"Ramirex's way is just a little faster than doing it the way I'm used to, that's all," Philomena said.

Rsh studied her before speaking. "Philomena. This would be more … effective … without an attitude."

Scoffing, Philomena said, "I don't need to 'learn anything', mother. I'm already a genius executive."

He dared, "Spell 'genius'."

"Ha! G-E-N—"

Her eyes fluttered a few times. As she sounded the word out under her breath, the confident smile slipped off her lips. Then, she pulled it back up into place.

"—E-U-S. Easy."

Snickering, Blaze dipped his head to avoid looking at her.

Shifting in his seat, Rsh dug around in his robe and plucked his wallet out while consulting the menu on the wall next to Philomena's head. But, midway through thumbing through their petty cash, he tilted his head to the woman sitting next to him. She tensed up, her head rising, under his discerning gaze.

"Philomena. If each plate is 38vx … what is the total?"

"Um …"

"Go on," Blaze said. "Show us what you got."

"It's, um … I can do this, but, um … Can we go back to talking about executive fashion?"

"If you wish to balance the books … then answer."

With a groan, Philomena slid down into the corner between the booth's back and the wall, staring at Rsh like a prisoner staring at their jailer through the bars. His hefty frame's shadow darkened her face, and the 'cornered' look of desperation making its muscles twitch.

"If it's 38vx, then obviously the answer is … Um, 38vx, um …"

"Round up," Luci said.

"Huh?"

As Rsh watched, Luci walked Philomena through the mental math required to calculate out the cost of lunch. Round 38vx up to 40vx, trim the 0 off, multiply by 4, add the 0 back on, and then subtract 8. Although it was slow going, by holding her hand — Oh, I wish I could hold her hand for real! Luci thought. — Philomena at last turned to Rsh with a triumphant cry.

"152vx! Lunch costs 152vx!"

Despite Blaze's continued snickering, Philomena met Rsh's scouring expression with a smug, self-satisfied fire burning in her eyes.

"Wrong," Rsh said.

His blunt reply made her cringe like a hammer had slammed into the top of her skull.

"What do you mean 'wrong'?!" she protested.

He nodded at the menu next to her. "Our meal cost … 34vx. I have scammed you."

She stared at him, then at the menu, then at him again. Her lips wriggled around until they turned into a scowl. The fire in her eyes had turned from triumph to fury. While Luci's heart ached for Philomena, Blaze hid his mouth behind his hand and chortled.

"Check the price … before you buy."

She flung her arms up in the air and then folded them like she was stabbing somebody.

I'm here, Philomena! Luci thought. I helped you! I can keep helping you! I won't judge! Get as tsundere as you want, I'll love it—!

The entrance door creaked. The sounds of the city spilled into the long, narrow greasy spoon. Behind the counter, the waitress lifted her head. She moved so lethargically it seemed like the big bags under her eyes were weighing her down. A dirty look of distaste popped onto her face, like she'd sampled the diner's own food.

Then she went rigid.

The muscles in her bony arms tensed up. Her fingers dug into the laminated counter like she was getting sucked out of an airlock. Her head snapped up alertly. She hesitantly stepped toward the staff door in the back.

What the hell …?

Luci looked over her shoulder, at the front door.

And then she went rigid too.

Three men trooped into the greasy spoon. One was extremely lanky and had irregular patches of stubble on his pointy chin, one had a hefty pear-shaped bulk and a neat ring of beard around his mouth, and one was morbidly obese and had a puffy, scraggly mess of hair dangling off his chin. All three wore baggy, ragged shirts with manufacturers' logos on them. The pear-shaped one had his sleeves cut off. The men were surrounded by a noxious cloud of body odor, grease, ionic exhaust, syndolene, and a bunch of other smells Luci's nose picked out instantly. They shared the same look. Smug, dreamy, self-satisfied. They entered the restaurant like they were taking their rightful place in the universe.

That's the same look Philomena has.

Reminds me of that saying: When you head out into the vast universe, you either shrink back in fear, or you grow an ego big enough to rival it. Philomena … Blaze … the sky-blasters … You need to have a huge, swaggering ego to cope with how incredibly tiny you are, out here.

All three were armed. They had gun belts slung around their waists and blaster pistols on each hip. Or two gun belts, in the case of the large one, buckled together over his stomach.

Ay caray, Luci thought. Her fight-or-flight instincts kicked in and made her tremble.

They walked past the booth on their way to the counter. The overpowering stench made Luci's eyes water and the taste of vomit rise up the back of her throat. Woozy, she gripped the divider to support herself. Flustered, the waitress hid her grimace behind a fake smile. The little girl clutched her beer and shot them a nasty look, but as they came closer she gagged from the stench and doubled over in a coughing fit.

"H-Hello there,"the waitress said. "What can I—?"

The large one hollered, "Get us some of them beers, Vytus!"

"You got it!"

The lanky one leaned across the counter and groped for the fridge with the beer bottles, despite them clearly being out of reach of the customers. His elbow hit a stack of plates and knocked them all over. They crashed to the floor behind the counter, making the waitress jump back and slap her hand over her heart in fright.

"'Scuse me!" the lanky sky-blaster shouted.

He yanked the fridge open with a victory hoot. The door swung open so hard it hit the edge of a microwave. The glass cracked instantly, but he either didn't notice or didn't care. He plucked beer bottles off the shelf and tossed them to the other sky-blasters. They clumsily caught half of them. The other half sailed past them and shattered on the floor.

Out of the corner of her eye, Luci spied a brown blur speeding at her face. She threw herself sideways and accidentally snuggled up to Blaze. The broken chunk of beer bottle whizzed across the table, twirling and catching the light. It shot through the empty space next to Philomena's head and exploded in the next booth over. Philomena, who had her head turned sideways to glare at the sky-blasters, snapped her neck back. She rolled her eyes around like she was trying to track a buzzing fly.

Luci looked up at Blaze, who squinted down at her with his head cocked. His arm hovered uncertainly in the air over her.

"Don't get the wrong idea," she said.

Slamming her palm on the table for leverage, she pushed herself sideways and sat up. Then she sank down in her seat and hid most of her body under the table for protection. She watched the cabrones from afar, like a wildlife photographer hiding behind a rock.

"Mmm, don't that just hit the spot?!"

"Sure does!"

The sky-blasters swaggered to the counter next to the street urchin and dropped into the swiveling stools. The waitress had her back to them. They couldn't see what she was doing, but from where she sat, Luci could just barely see that she was tapping something into her omnitablet. Alerting the planet's posse, probably.

Huffing, the little girl started to slip off her seat. But, in a scene that made Luci's skin crawl, the pear-shaped sky-blaster hooked his arm around her and forced her to sit back down.

"Now just where do you think you're going, you little cutie?" he asked. "Have you ever heard the whalesong of His Holiness?"

"What?" the little girl spat.

The waitress turned around and straightened up, like she'd just grown a backbone. "Listen here. You k-keep your hands off her. She's only twelve."

Speaking slowly and clearly, with a dangerous undertone, the sky-blaster said, "The prophet, Boe-Job Cliggs, has handed out a fat wad of rules for those who walk the path of righteousness. And one of them fatwads is … 'age ain't nothing but a number.'" He pulled the urchin closer, even though her scrawny frame wriggled to worm out of his grasp. "And he has shown many a young bride the path of righteousness."

Rsh's hands, resting on the table, slowly clenched into fists, and Blaze's arm shifted so he could pat his blaster pistol. We'll just make things worse, Luci thought, her stomach gnawing itself into knots. We'll just … m-make things … Oh, Maldita sea!

"Get off me, you creep," the girl said, her hand sliding towards her pocket.

"Now, now, little missy," the sky-blaster said. The other two leaned around him and leered at her. "Don't you fuss like that! When His seed fills up the whole universe in the Second Cumming, its purity will burn all the nonbelievers like fire. And the righteous folk will float wherever we want in the blink of an eye and breathe freely of the infinite air that He has ejaculated. Don't that sound nice? Ain't that something you want to be a part of—?"

The front door opened again, and several pairs of boots stomped across the threshold to the greasy spoon. Everybody turned to stare. A handful of indie mercs, badges pinned to their chests, stood in front of the entrance. They were also heavily armed, although they didn't make any aggressive motions … yet.

"Hey, Midge," the leader said. "Me and the boys are in the mood for a beer."

"Well, there's some on the floor at your feet," she joked.

The mercs looked down at the shattered bottles and puddles of booze covering the floor in front of the entrance.

"Now look at that." He raised his head and smirked at the sky-blasters. "Who'd be so thoughtless to smash a bunch of bottles on the floor and leave them there?"

The sky-blasters, shooting dirty scowls at the mercenaries, swiveled their seats to face them. Behind their backs, the waitress nodded at them. Meanwhile, the urchin took advantage of the distraction to scurry away from them and rush for the door. She slipped between the line of mercenaries, but the leader — not looking back — called out to her.

"Hey, Valia. Jekkerson Talde lost his wallet. You seen it?"

The girl paused in the doorway.

"Nope," she said.

Then she shoved the door open and slipped away.

The mercenaries slowly advanced, their arms hovering tensely at their sides and their fingers curled up like they wanted to rip their guns out of their holsters. They stood over the sky-blasters, who stared back with a strange mix of defiance and dreamy confidence.

Groaning, Luci thought, I don't like the look of this …

"You boys going to clean up your mess?" the lead merc asked.

"The Second Cumming will cleanse the universe of all impurity," the obese sky-blaster replied. "The only mess to worry about … is the mess inside the heart of nonbelievers."

"Really?" the merc smirked. "Because, uh … you should probably be more worried about your cholesterol than me, big boy."

His face flushed, the sky-blaster opened his mouth wide, which made the scraggly beard sprouting from his double chin shake.

"You dare mock one who has bathed in the seed and eaten the blubber of His Holiness?!"

The merc leaned over him, getting right up in his face, and asked, "Suppose I do?"

The sky-blaster gasped. Although Luci couldn't see the mercenary's face, judging by his posture he wasn't flinching in the slightest. An act made all the more impressive due to the sky-blaster's incredible smell. The scene froze, time slowed to a crawl like it was undergoing time dilation, moments stretched out for an infinity as the two men stared each other down …

And then the ground started to rumble.

The mercenaries, and everybody at Luci's table, twisted their heads around hunting for the source, their faces creased with worry they'd be buried in an earthquake.

Sounds almost like a … a stampede?! Luci thought.

And then the front door burst open, and a horde of sky-blasters poured into the restaurant. Red-faced and sweaty, they crammed themselves into the narrow restaurant. Dozens of them stuffed themselves between the booths, and more were piling up outside. Their obnoxious, screeching voices filled the room with a deafening roar that made Luci's head ring. The mercenaries' stern confidence had totally flipped into panic as the human tidal wave surged around them. Wide-eyed from fright, the mercs sank like they were drowning and vanished from sight in the ocean of insecure, narcissistic manchildren. The sky-blasters screamed endlessly about how all the non-believers would burn, about how they'd been gifted with 'freedom', about the fatwads their crazy leader issued that let them execute people for making fun of them. The roar of fifty whiny morons yelling at once pounded a headache into Luci's tiny, fragile skull, and there were even more clamoring outside.

Ay, caray! she thought. Where did these cabrones even come from?!

Rsh rubbed his temples. A Zantauran's hearing was even sharper than a human's, and he looked like he was being stabbed right in the eardrums. Slamming his palms on the table with a resounding boom that filled the room like a bomb, he shot to his feet. It instantly cut through the din. The crowd froze, and every eye turned to him. He scowled at the table, drawing a series of breaths to steady himself.

Luci gripped the table, tense from head to toe, Is he … is he gonna do something crazy …?!

Then Rsh raised his head, swiveled it to the side and stared through the crowd at the waitress behind the counter. Wedged against the wall, she gulped as his large golden eyes glared right at her. He opened his mouth, his sharp teeth gleaming in the light, and he said …

"Check, please."

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

On the settlement's outskirts, the claustrophobic street widened out. Sparse buildings, much wider than the cramped facades in the town center, lined the path, which turned into a dirt trail through the trees half a mile further away.

"Is that it?" Luci asked.

The one-story concrete building had sloped walls and was built low to the ground like some kind of fortified bunker. The entrance was a big square block sticking out of the front, with a red awning covering the door. Above it, a sign announced the place was 'Selman's Bazaar'. Next to the building, large crates were stacked up behind chain-link fences with camouflage netting covering the top. A handful of mercenaries sat around, keeping an eye on everything. They looked up as Blaze approached, then instantly lost interest.

Hey, I'm a badass too!

He put a little swagger into his strut. Kicked his legs out sharper, swung his shoulders wider. Stamped a cool scowl on his face. Made sure anybody who dared to gaze upon his confident attitude just had to pay attention to him—

Putting on a burst of speed, blew past and pulled away from them like she was leading their way. She hustled towards the front door.

Where does she think she's going? Blaze thought.

"When we get inside," she announced, "I'm handling the no-go-tiations."

Rsh called, "Philomena …!"

But she ignored him and strode into the building, leaving the rest of them in the dust.

"W-Wait up!" Luci said, scurrying after her.

Blaze looked at Rsh and rolled his eyes, and Rsh returned it.

On the inside, the bazaar looked like a warehouse. Bare concrete floor, metal beams, dark rafters. Only a few banners hanging on the walls provided some color. The lights were a dim, moody blue, like the planet outside. Boxes were piled up high to the ceiling, offering wholesale supplies. The smaller stuff sat on unadorned tables and shelves. To make the place look more accommodating, mannequins in action poses stood in fake little field command posts under camouflage netting, surrounded by equipment with price tags dangling from them.

So much merc-spec equipment everywhere, Blaze thought. Be cool, don't start drooling over anything.

A portly man stuck his head out of the back room. When he spotted them, a big smile pushed his cheeks up and widened the humongous mustache, its ends curling up into fine points, sprouting from his face. He slipped out of the back room, his arms spread wide, and approached like they were old pals.

"Welcome, my friends, welcome! From the mundane to the bizarre, you can find it all at Selman's Bazaar! I am Selman Khann. Please, tell me how I can help you."

Philomena strutted out in front of everybody.

This oughta be good, Blaze thought, folding his arms.

"Hello," she said. "We need supplies."

Clapping his hands together, the owner said, "Of course, of course. Tell me what you need."

She sucked down a deep lungful of air, but it got caught in her throat. She froze, the gleam in her eye going dark. Like somebody had shoved her onstage without giving her a script. Blaze lowered his head to hide the savage smirk on his lips.

"Um …"

Rsh edged past her and blocked the sorry sight of her fumbling failure from view. "Standard complement of foodstuffs."

Philomena circled around Rsh's bulk and stood next to him, nodding firmly. "We need that," she added.

"Mhmm," the owner replied, his eyes flitting between the two of them. His hands were still clapped together.

"High-grade explosives," Rsh said.

"That too," Philomena added.

"Of course, of course," the owner replied.

"Spare starship parts—"

A sharp intake of air rushed through the owner's grimacing lips. He leaned back, rocking on his heels, and put his hands up to ward off the request. "I'm sorry, my friend. I-I don't deal in starship parts. They're much too hot right now."

Rsh asked, "Explosives are not an issue … yet spare parts are?"

The owner, Selman, turned away and headed behind the counter, towards a computer terminal. "QualMart is making it very risky to deal in starship parts right now."

At the mention of that name, Blaze, Rsh, and Luci let out a shared, exasperated groan of disgust.

"They're trying to shut down the aftermarket," Luci said. "So people are forced to fly to the nearest store and get their ship repaired at the … the damn service center."

Blaze scoffed bitterly.

"There must be some … recourse," Rsh stated, stepping up to the counter.

"Yeah," Luci added. "There's no QualMart around here, so people would be trapped on this planet if their ships broke down."

Selman, who was typing into the terminal, paused and looked up with an apologetic smile. "Oh, there is, but …" He exhaled like a doctor telling somebody he'd have to amputate their leg. "There's one person in town who deals in starship parts. An old business partner of mine. We came out here together to found this place, but when I chose to stop selling starship parts, he bought the inventory off me and set up his own store."

"Brave man," Luci said.

"More stubborn than brave," Selman replied. "John Farouk is his name. He is not an easy man to do business with, I must say. But I'm afraid you have no other choice. So, I wish you the best of luck in dealing with him, my friends."

"We shall … keep that in mind," Rsh said. After taking a deep breath, he continued, "First, the food."

"Yes, of course." Selman consulted the terminal one last time, then gestured for Rsh to follow him to a door. He opened it via the intrapanel, revealing the yard outside. "Let me show you what I have in stock. This way, please."

As Rsh strode to the door, Philomena hurried after him and then slipped past him, reaching the door first. But she was trying not to look like she was hurrying at all, which gave her an extremely funny-looking walk. Her upper body leaned back, head raised, bent arms stiffly pumping while keeping her elbows tucked to her sides. Meanwhile, her feet pattered rapidly on the floor without committing themselves to a full run. She awkwardly hustled through the door, and Rsh followed just behind her, shaking his head.

You moron, Blaze thought.

When the door closed behind them, Blaze and Luci shared a half-smile, and then went their separate ways. Aimless, Blaze wandered through the blue-tinted store, hunting for anything interesting …

Black silhouettes in front of opaque white light panels on the wall caught his eyes. Awestruck, he glided towards the rack like a moth to a flame.

Oh, that's a Snapdragon X21, with a Turbodyne repeater!

And a Kessler & Kitt ZMR! One bolt has enough energy to blast through the skin of a Zoorbian slog-weasel! A bunch of mercs I follow on social media swear by them!

Hey, and that's an Aldebaran Arms Solar Flare! It burns twice as hot as a normal pistol. Sure, it's bulky, but it needs all that extra coolant to keep from melting!

Oh, I'm in gunslinger heaven …

As he drooled over the blaster pistols on display, Blaze thought, If I had one of these bad boys, everybody would take me seriously as a mercenary!

"My friend!" Selman said, his voice coming over Blaze's shoulder.

A little shaken, Blaze thought, Man, he took me by surprise. I didn't even hear any footsteps. How long has he been standing there? For that matter, how long have I been standing here?

I hope I didn't have a stupid look on my face …

Turning his face into a steely mask, Blaze squinted shrewdly at the guns on display and shifted his weight so he could stand confident, with his hands on his cocked hips. The owner clapped his hand on Blaze's back and gazed at the rack alongside him.

"You like what you see?" Selman asked.

"It's a pretty good selection, I reckon," Blaze replied. "Bit of a surprise, seeing so many quality pistols this far out."

"Out here, there are many people with discerning taste, such as yourself. And Selman's Bazaar is here for you. I know my market. You want it? You need it? I have it. Come, tell me exactly what it is you're looking for."

Studying the guns, Blaze shifted his jaw and pulled his pressed lips around in a circle. "Hmm … I'm looking for something with a lot of boom, you know?"

Selman gave him a vigorous nod, with an impish smile that said, 'I know exactly what you mean.' He pulled away from Blaze, strode along the wall to another weapons rack, and plucked a blaster rifle off its hooks. The rifle had a hefty body, but it was sheared by forty-five degrees, making the whole thing seem extremely sleek. There was something punchy about it, like it was leaning into a headwind to ram a fist into somebody's face. Its ergonomic grip jutted out at a perfect diagonal. It matched the shear's angle. So did the serrated slats for dispersing heat.

The weapon was lit from one side by the opaque light coming from the back of the weapons rack and from the other side by the pale blue light filling the shop. The contrast between the two colors shining on its matte black finish made it look so… advanced. Like something you'd see in a promo for cutting-edge technology.

That's a …

That's a …!

Selman faced Blaze, the rifle in his hands. His eyebrow arched upward.

"You like?" he asked.

"Th-That's a VK-76! The 'Victory Cry'!"

"My friend, this has got so much boom you feel like you have a nuclear missile between your legs. You pull the trigger, the bang is so big, you start a whole new universe!"

Blaze shuddered. Gunslingers like him usually lived and died by their blaster pistols, but … He imagined his hands slipping around that sleek behemoth. Caressing its grip, running his fingers along its edges, lifting its weight to his shoulder and sliding his hands around the underbarrel grenade launcher … giving its girth a playful squeeze, before digging it and holding it steady as all that explosive power shot out of its barrel …

Oh, yeah.

Hey, get a hold of yourself!

Recoiling, Blaze snapped his slack jaw shut. The sound of his teeth clicking together traveled through his skull. He wiped the stupid, fawning look off his face and replaced them with a squinty scowl.

"It's a fine rifle," he said.

Selman held it out. Offering that beautiful beast to Blaze. His hands trembled as they anticipated touching it.

"Want to hold it?" Selman asked.

Gulping, Blaze inched forward, raising his hands and cupping them to bear the weight of its thundering power …

Then his path was blocked by fabric and copper hair, just a few inches in front of his outstretched hands.

"Ahem!" the blundering moron said. "Since you're not busy, let's talk business."

"Err, yes?" Selman, hidden behind her, asked.

"I own a mining company, and we do lots of mining. Jewels, gold. Pretty things. We're very successful."

"I see."

"But we need explosives to get our pretty things out of the ground. We need a lot of boom. You see, my company don't have enough boom right now. It's a big— Or, actually, a small problem."

Blaze pulled his hands away before the urge to throttle her from behind overwhelmed him.

"I imagine it would be," Selman replied.

"As chief executive, I'll handle no-go-tiations for the explosives."

"Oh, of course, of course! Given how successful you are, I can only presume money is no object?"

"Nope!"

She doesn't even know what that means, does she? Blaze thought.

He circled around her and grinned at Selman, refusing to look at the idiot next to him no matter how much he pointedly aimed his words at her.

"Where's Rsh?"

Selman hung the rifle back onto its rack, making Blaze's heart ache. I could've held that beautiful thing in my very own hands …

"Your Zantauran friend? Inspecting a palette of bulk food supplies."

"I see. Well, he's got a head for numbers, and I reckon we should wait for him."

"Not a problem," Philomena said to Selman, her teeth gritted together, not looking at Blaze either. "I also have a head for numbers."

Smirking, Blaze said, "Only up to ten, though."

She exhaled like a fuming dragon, then stuffed double the good cheer into her voice. "Ha ha, don't pay any attention to him. I don't! He's just the manual labor. Now, show me what you got!"

"Very well."

They followed Selman as he walked back to the counter. Along the way, Philomena brushed against Blaze. Startled, she recoiled from the touch, and then slammed his side with her body to try and knock him away from her. Why, that little … He slammed her right back and made her bash her thigh on a display table. Giving her a side-eye, he noticed her scowling at the air right in front of her. She's gonna refuse to look at me? Well, that suits me just fine. I don't want to look at her face anyway.

Behind the counter, Selman typed a command into his terminal.

"I don't keep the explosives on-site … for obvious reasons."

Blaze walked up to the counter, the spiteful woman burning with rage next to him, and they both watched Selman study the screen. Except for when their arms brushed, and Blaze blasted her with a fiery sidelong scowl.

"Unfortunately, I don't carry mining explosives," Selman said. "Will merc-spec do?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders a few times while she pretended to think over something she didn't have the first clue about.

"Sure, those'll do."

Blaze rolled his eyes.

"Excellent! I have a crate of DynaStar high-yield plastic explosives for 4,690vx."

"We'll take it!" Philomena said.

"We shall not."

As Rsh's booming voice filled the shop, they all turned to watch him approach the counter. Although his face was as impassive as ever, Blaze knew him well enough to notice the extra bit of suspicion that made his brow crease just a little bit more. Luci poked her head over a shelf and, seeing the rest of the company gathered, wandered over.

"That is … higher than market price," Rsh said. "Much higher."

"My friend, you know your explosives."

"I research … before I buy."

Philomena made a wet, throaty, hissing sound.

"The food is expensive too," Rsh added.

Sucking air through his nose, with that 'about to deliver some bad news' tone, Selman looked down and spread his arms out with his palms up. Presenting himself with dignity to his customers for their abuse.

"I have no interest in price-gouging, but my hands are tied, I'm afraid. You've seen the piracy alert for this region, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Those bastards are disrupting the supply lines to this region. I have no choice but to raise my prices, due to the risk."

"Hm," Rsh said, relaxing his tone. "I understand."

"Say, partner, you know why the bounty on them is so high?" Blaze asked.

Selman looked at them, weighing something in his mind. Then, with a sigh, he offered them an explanation.

"QualMart," he said.

Blaze, Rsh, and Luci all groaned in unison.

"Chain stores do not operate out here, on the frontier. Not enough people, lack of security, impossible to get insurance. But still, the reach of QualMart is very wide."

"Their spy network," Rsh said.

"Correct. Many cargo haulers buy supplies from QualMart to resell out here. Their captains also make money on the side by informing for them. Keeping them up to date on what is going on. Somehow — I don't know how — the pirates know who is doing this."

"So they're going after QualMart's spies?" Luci asked.

"That's right."

Luci chuckled. "Now I kind of wanna root for the pirates."

"They also shove the crews out the airlock into space."

After shivering and swallowing heavily, Luci said, in a voice tinier than she was, "Oh."

"So QualMart wants to find who's tattling and shut them up for good," Blaze replied.

"Yes," Selman said.

Forcing bravado into his voice, Blaze said, "Well, I reckon that's one way to go about it."

Rsh stared at the floor while he ran his big fingers down his chin. The wheels spun inside his head, and Blaze wasn't sure where they were taking him. Then he raised his head and fixed his fearsome face on Selman.

"Excuse us," he said. "Company meeting."

"Of course, my friend."

The four of them moved away from the counter and huddled up in a circle.

"What are you thinking?" Blaze asked.

"We cannot afford all we need."

"Figured as much."

"However …"

Blaze, Luci, and the chief idiot of the company watched him closely as he wrestled with his thoughts.

"The pirates …"

Luci gulped loud enough that Blaze could hear it.

"May be selling their stolen goods … for cheap."

Luci gulped again, even louder. Though her voice stayed low, it rose up into a fever pitch until it cracked. "Ay caray, you want to go looking for them?!"

"It may save money."

"It's—!"

Her eyes flashed around the circle and landed on Philomena's face. Then, staring down at the floor, she shrugged and settled her body's frightful trembling. Her eyes rolled around to peer at the Zantauran towering over her. Her voice, though calmer, was still on the verge of cracking.

"Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh. You sure that's a good idea?"

"No. However … it may be the best … of many bad ideas."

Pumping an authoritative tone into his voice, Blaze said, "Now, I'm not saying I can't handle a bunch of pirates — because I can — but let's just reckon we take the moral high ground and don't encourage that sort of thing. If we take out the cost of food, starship parts, fuel, everything else we need … how much we got left for explosives?"

"At these prices?"

Drawing a deep, elongated sigh, Rsh opened his wallet and went through the plastic cards tucked inside it. Then he held up a tiny stack of valex in his huge hand. Calling such a paltry handful of cash 'pocket change' was being overly charitable.

"That's it?!" Luci asked.

"Yes," Rsh replied.

"No problem," Philomena said happily, plucking the valex out of his hand. "I said I'd handle the no-go-tiation. Just watch me."

She started to stride away from the circle, but Blaze shot his hand out and snagged her upper arm. Nostrils flaring, she swung towards him.

"What kind of stupid idea you got in your brain?" he asked.

She hoisted a fake smile onto her face. "Corvo, you're the one who told me to read that article about last year's most game-changing executive memos on my own. So I did!" She yanked her arm out of his grasp. "Maybe you should try it sometime. You might learn a thing or two about no-go-tiating."

She strode to the counter, placed her hand on its surface, and leaned against it with a sly smile on her lips. Selman returned it warmly and waited for her to speak.

"Selman. See, we're a very successful mining company. We have lots of jewels and gold and silver and things like that."

"Of course."

"But, um, right now all our money is in the bank. And there's no branches out here, you know."

"Right …"

"Now, we could go all the way back to Point Pleasant, get the money from the bank, and then come all the way back here. But that'd be an awful big hassle, wouldn't it? Or … this could be the start of a very fabulous business relationship. If you know what I mean. It'd make me very happy if we struck a deal where we didn't have to fly halfway across the universe to visit the bank. I might even shop at this nice little place again. So let's talk, and see if we can agree on something that makes us both happy."

"Hmm. Well, tell me what you have in mind."

Smiling, Philomena said, "I'm glad you've come to the table." She dropped the valex on the counter and slid it over to him with her index finger, still smiling. "How much explosives can we get for this?"

Selman looked down at the stack, up at her face, down at the stack again. He breathed in through his nostrils, then exhaled slowly. He turned around and headed for a door to the back room.

"I'll see what I can do," he said.

As he disappeared, Philomena flashed a grin and a thumb's up at her employees. Leaning against the counter, she waited for him to come back out. He came back out about thirty seconds later. Shuffled up to the counter. Returned her smile with that 'bad news' face. With a grimace carved into his laugh lines, he raised his hand, and …

Laid a single hand grenade down on the counter.

All four members of Kestrel Mining leaned over the counter and stared at the six-inch long metal cylinder, topped with a lever, then tilted their heads up and stared into Selman's sad smile.

"My apologies, my friends. That's the best I can do."

Philomena said, "Uhh …"

"Also! I should warn you … This model was recalled for being defective. There is a fifty-fifty chance this is a dud."

Philomena's smile dropped into a lopsided gawp.

Suddenly, Selman pushed both the valex and the grenade across the counter to them. He closed his eyes and shook his head widely from side to side.

"No, please. Take it, take it. On the house. My gift to you."

Philomena lifted the grenade off the counter and stared at it.

Stiffly, she said, "Gl-Glad we could agree …" Then she turned and shoved it into Blaze's hands. "Here you go, Corvo. Have some boom, for once in your life. Or maybe not. Fifty-fifty chance!"

Rsh stepped up to the counter, plucking valex out of his wallet. "For now, we shall purchase … the food."

"Of course, my friend, of course. I'll have it delivered to your ship. And, uh … the explosives?"

The question made Rsh pause, his fingers tightening on the money in his hand.

"We have not … decided."

---

 

[SGMargrave]

---

"It's right over here."

The shrill, smug voice echoed off the concrete walls of the alleyway and attacked Blaze from every angle like ambushing snipers. The woman who owned it stomped ahead, blundering into the dark with her finger outstretched to point the way. She headed straight for a blind turn. Around the corner, the alleyway seemed to get even narrower.

"This ain't where Selman said to go," Blaze snapped.

"Well, it's a shortcut. I have an amazing sense of direction, after all."

"Yeah, cuz whichever way you go, that's a sign to go the other way."

"Hmph!"

Philomena put on a burst of speed and strode ahead of them, rounding the corner fearlessly, and Blaze quickened his own pace to hustle after her.

"Hold your horses—"

He stopped in his tracks, right next to Philomena.

The alleyway widened into a little courtyard where four separate alleyways met, with crates and barrels piled high on all sides. There were four other men there. One of them was on his knees, sobbing. The other three were mercs, by the look of them. The two standing behind the kneeling man had blaster pistols clutched in their black-gloved hands. The third was a mean-looking hombre with long hair slicked back across his scalp and a ragged scar over his milky white left eye.

"There's some interesting rumors floating around, Squeaky Jim," he said. "Brody Bagobie says he saw you talking to a freighter captain on the take from QualMart."

"Brody Bagobie … is wrong! He's just setting me up! He's playing you for a fool, Valk! C-C-Can't you see that? I wouldn't rat you out to QualMart! You know that!"

Grinning wickedly, the man named Valk stood over the kneeling man and cracked his knuckles. "Well, we'll see about that after I—"

Suddenly, the three mercs in the little courtyard froze. Lifted their heads, sensing trouble. The kneeling man continued to sob at the ground. And then, as one, the mercs snapped their heads towards Philomena and Blaze. Their gazes were as explosive as missiles. Blaze rocked back on his feet from the impact, but quickly recovered and waved his hand in a friendly gesture.

"Howdy, partner," he said. "Say, uh … you wouldn't know the quickest way to Rightway Starship Parts, would you?"

The kneeling man's sobs trailed off, and he raised his reddened eyes to Blaze, dumbstruck. Next to him, the mercenary, Valk, scrutinized Blaze and Philomena. Blaze's hand felt awful naked without the comforting weight of his blaster pistol. Then, Valk raised his head and nodded over Blaze's shoulder.

"Go back to the street. Make a right, then a left."

"Much obliged."

Then Blaze swept his arm out and scooped Philomena up. Ignoring her cry, he smiled at the mercs, walked backwards, and dragged the idiot back behind the corner. Once they were safely out of sight, he wiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead and scowled right into her flustered face.

"So much for your amazing sense of direction."

Turning sharply, he grabbed her upper arm and marched her back up the alleyway. She thrashed and tried to break free, but he kept up a hard pace to throw her off-balance and keep her from getting a chance to put her foot down. He stormed past Rsh and Luci with the struggling, whining idiot in tow.

Back on the street, Philomena dragged her feet on the ground and thrashed so hard she broke free. But she clearly wasn't expecting that, because her face lit up in alarm and she windmilled her arms frantically to regain her balance. It failed. She toppled backwards and landed ass-first on the ground. She squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself as the impact traveled up her body and made her teeth clack together.

"Ain't that just like you," Blaze said. "Couldn't lead your way out of a paper bag, could you?"

Seated on the street, she twisted sideways to rub her backside. Like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, she shot him a stubborn scowl. Then she twisted her head to the side to avoid looking at him.

"I'm such a great leader!" she said to Rsh and Luci. "Not like Corvo, who's just useless! That's not me at all! I'm sooo great!"

"Philomena," Rsh said.

"What?"

"Is it possible … you are projecting?"

"Huh?"

Edging forward, her feet scraping the ground, Luci chimed in. "It means you hate other people because they remind you of things you don't like about yourself. It's a, um …" She hid her next words with a cough. "… tsundere thing. Whoa, excuse me."

"That is—!"

Philomena scoffed at them, her cheeks flaring red. She threw her stiff arms up and made shapes in the air to try and emphasize her point.

"Me and Corvo have nothing in common! He is a complete moron who struts around like a smug know-it-all, even though he's useless and pathetic. I … am a brilliant businesswoman who struts around actually knowing it all, because I'm brilliant."

She stared at Rsh, who stared back with a low, thoughtful rumble coming from his throat. Then she stared at Luci, who yelped and jumped when the other woman's eyes swept towards her.

"Oh! Uh …" She looked off into the distance and rubbed the back of her head. "Don't get me wrong, you're so brilliant, but … maybe you could, I dunno …" She cringed. "… be a little more brilliant if you, um, listen to other people a bit more? Maybe …? Heh heh."

Philomena picked herself off the ground, raised her hand, and prepared to throw her pointer finger at Blaze like a javelin.

Then, the sound of engines roared overhead. They all cranked their heads back and watched as a line of ships buzzed past the rooftops, with plumes of black exhaust jetting from their engines …

And then sheets of hot black smoke filled the street. Eyes watering, lungs burning, Blaze doubled over coughing. His sense of balance lost, he staggered through the darkness. His face ached from coughing so hard, but no matter how much air he sucked down, the black exhaust made him cough even harder. His head pounded. Dizzy, he sensed the planet wobbling under his feet like its gravity was going haywire. His pulled himself up straight, slitting his eyes against the burning exhaust and stiffening his throat to suppress the mad itch to hack up a lung.

Where's everybody else?! he thought, staggering through the dark. Where is anything?!

"I can't— Bleck! Hurg! I can't see anything!" Philomena shouted, her voice coming through the smoke. "Where are—?"

And then her face rushed out of the darkness. Her forehead rammed his, and the fat smack of bone on bone made his senses blur and his dizziness double. The world swirled around him, lost in the smoke except for the inescapable pull of gravity. Next thing he knew, he'd fallen over and landed hard on his back. His feet flew up in the air, then fell back down. His heels slammed into the ground with a loud click.

Below his legs, he heard Philomena's body also slam against the street.

Dazed, Blaze's head rolled around. He squinted into the endless clouds of black smoke rolling over the surface of the planet. It swirled around, forming shapes. His brain, knocked senseless, occasionally picked up a pattern where there wasn't any.

Hey, is that a whale …?

Lead me, space whale! Lead me to victory …!

---