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<h1 id="remains">Remains</h1>
<p>"Commander Ig"</p>
<p>2017-11-10</p>
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<p>Through the spider’s web filigree adorning his cockpit canopy, Arnold strained to see the pair of glowing jewels above the horizon.</p>
<p>Fifty light-seconds.</p>
<p>Small turquoise numbers, the colour of the sort of sea this desolate rock had never seen, ticked smaller in the corner of his helmet display, metering out his air. He stretched his hand out, his muscles protesting, and flicked the cover off the power-reboot, pumped the lever itself. The empty clicks as the contacts closed and opened rippled through his suit and skin, but all else was silence. No sounds of escaping air from his suit, and no sounds beyond that at all. To his side, through her battered faceplate, Lucy derided him.</p>
<p>He dared to breathe.</p>
<p>A pair of miss-matched suns bathed Summer’s cockpit in tattered clashing shadows. The crash had left the Cobra facing a distant pinnacle, a ramp to salvation for a fast enough rocket sled. But Summer was going nowhere. She had fallen short of the jewels above the horizon, that pristine ocean world, the nearer orbital platform. In the black airless sky they looked almost the same.</p>
<p>He reached out to hold them in his hand but met the cracking canopy. If he moved his head, the lights danced, split, multiplied. He punched, frustration filling him. He breathed in rage and screamed it out, hitting and hitting and getting only pain in return. The canopy held fast against his railing and he slumped, panting and cradling his fist.</p>
<p>Lucy was looking at him. Her bright blue eyes in the eerie light were full of disdain and accusation, and more than a little mirth. Her lips moved, condensation crossed her faceplate, and something like a mumble of a voice conducted distantly through ship and dust and chair.</p>
<p>Arnold released his harness, and then pulled himself free of a seat that would not move itself to help. He groaned as the world relentlessly tried to pull his head and limbs somewhere to its middle. With some fight, he opened the cockpit door, and stepped through into the main hull. The empty shelves of the cargo racks confronted him with accusations about space better used and field maintenance units. They spoke with something of Lucy’s voice, but he had ignored that voice before. Passed the racks, into the vehicle bay, he came to the curled up sleeping form of Six. The spindle legged dust brown SRV sat firm atop its hatch, which sat sealed against the moon beneath.</p>
<p>As he approached, his feet stumbled over a smashed case of Pearl Whisky, the liberated liquid draining to a puddle, and then trickling towards the rear. He followed it stern-wards, finding a vista of stars seen through smoke and settling dust. There should have been bulkheads and engines.</p>
<p>“Well that explains the power-reboot,” said Lucy.</p>
<p>Arnold looked briefly over his shoulder, then tested the hatch on Six. It had life. It had <em>some</em> life. The door resisted but obeyed. What precious air Six had held escaped to flick up dust and dissipate, replaced in mass if not in volume by Arnold’s space wasted skeleton, his suit, and the jelly of blood and muscle in between.</p>
<p>The seat was recently familiar. Six’s instruments and consoles sparked to bright life, then dimmed for their surroundings. He only called the SRV Six because in Lucy’s vowel shifting accent the word sounded like sex. He wasn’t counting replacements, he wasn’t counting its weird wheeled legs. The number wasn’t special. He just liked when Lucy said she was bringing Six back into Summer.</p>
<p>He cycled the displays, looking for the fuel readout - nine kilometers. Give or take. Lucy’s voice thrummed through his head again, something about contingency plans.</p>
<p>With a little bit of mental arithmetic, he estimated that nine kilometres was probably less than fifty light-seconds. He shrugged, then powered up the lights to clear the cockpit and the cabin of ghosts.</p>
<p>Curled up, Six was neat and tidy and fit the insides of Summer’s vehicle bay. It was unlikely that it would fit so neatly with its six legs extended and ready to drive. His suited fingers drummed the dash as his eyes scanned the empty racks on either side. At least the death of Summer would have killed the magnetic hold-fasts.</p>
<p>He gambled on the space, on the clearance at the cannon blasted tail, and deployed the wheels. Six responded, shaking, moaning, lurching. The wheels bashed the sides of the bay, but the body lifted from the floor. Inch by protesting inch, Six scraped backwards, gouging wounds in the carcass of Summer’s womb until the wheels met regolith and rolled free.</p>
<p>Arnold drove to a halt fifty metres from the hulks of his ship, then stepped out to walk once around Six, checking for new damage. There was plenty of old, too much to really tell the difference. The metal of the hull was practically a bruise, burnt from laser fire, dented from rocks and hard landings, caked in dust. The legs were strong and straight and true. The wheels were round, the tyres treaded and intact.</p>
<p>He looked back at the detritus of Summer, the much abused and engineered Cobra, her rear blown open and to pieces by a parade of cannon shells.</p>
<p>“We had some times,” he said. As his eyes saw the hull, he pictured a shiny casket being lowered into earth.</p>
<p>He shook his head to force that away, turned back to Six and climbed inside.</p>
<p>“Going back is capture,” said Lucy.</p>
<p>He looked towards the horizon, towards the star-like planet, the orbital. Then he looked back along the crash path of Summer, and then at the power-down switch, his own two feet, the timer in his eyes counting his breath.</p>
<p>Lucy had been a dancer in Azeban City, and not the clean kind. She drank him under the table and took his credits in a dextrous move she and her troupe pulled night on night on night, colouring the carpets with Eranin’s finest distillate. Summer had fewer dents and burns back then, and Arnold was just her pilot, running the rares on someone else’s money and fuel. That someone else, she had guns and influence and <em>cared</em>, not so much for Arnold, but for respect of her self declared status. Three pimps and two dancers died recovering credits and honour, and the nature of the people he flew for became less fiction and more fact.</p>
<p>By chance it was Arnold who came upon Lucy, cowering in the corner of a dressing room and half-way between costumes. He reached out his hand to her, spoke some words from a film:</p>
<p>“Die free or live a slave.”</p>
<p>They hid, they ran, they sneaked their way to Summer. As the ship lifted them free of the city, Lucy parroted those words.</p>
<p>Someone else’s ship, someone else’s cargo, someone else’s phrase. Summer carried them into the black.</p>
<p>Nine kilometers, then fifty light-seconds. Or exactly a lifetime’s worth of air, a free death in the empty. A death he chose. A death poetic, a life complete, a runner free. Standing atop a mountain on an airless moon, bathed in the light of a miss-matched double sun. Alone.</p>
<p>“Back.”</p>
<p>He turned Six away from the mountain. Lucy scowled, sulked. But the black was calling.</p>
<p>Six rolled smoothly through the moon’s thick dust, even as it sapped the lingering power. Summer was receding, and as he crested a rise, the base he had just robbed, leaving its skimmers smoking holes in the ground, was growing closer. He couldn’t even remember which local faction and which galactic power they represented, nor the exact relationship they had with the suited men that had promised to pay him. He had them off, and now they were the only air in range. A call for rescue, which Six could easily make, could only go through <em>them</em>. Whether local or in orbit, they were the only faction around.</p>
<p>As he drew closer, the base gathered form. At first just a collection of lights, and later the dull form of a building, a spread of transport containers and communication towers. And the Viper. The gleaming chromium Viper.</p>
<p>“A bit, ostentatious,” Lucy said.</p>
<p>But fast. Fast enough to catch Summer, to blow her out of the airless sky.</p>
<p>“It didn’t go home,” he said.</p>
<p>“Probably compelled to secure the base.”</p>
<p>“But it didn’t go home.”</p>
<p>Arnold could feel Lucy’s eyes calculating, considering, condemning.</p>
<p>“It will be secured.”</p>
<p>“It wouldn’t be the first ship I’ve stolen.”</p>
<p>“You had permission to fly Summer.”</p>
<p>“She wasn’t my first either.”</p>
<p>“Die free! While you can still choose.”</p>
<p>Arnold looked at Lucy, her blonde hair matted, blood on her perfect chest.</p>
<p>“We know what you chose.”</p>
<p>She was silent.</p>
<p>The warning light on the range display seemed brighter. Arnold started powering things down that he didn’t need, knowing it would make little difference. Six rumbled on, rocking on exposed rocks and hidden mounds, carving parallel trails that would exist in undisturbed eternity.</p>
<p>The range display passed over to zero, Six rolled between wrecked skimmers, storage containers, and unconstructed pre-fabs. Arnold, squeezing the last out of the cells, lined the SRV up with the primary building, a squat two-floored windowless monolith with a single air-locked garage.</p>
<p>He raised the turret, took aim, and discharged the weapon capacitor. Beneath the hail of high-energy particles, the outer airlock door melted away. Six steadfastly refused to divert power for any more.</p>
<p>Arnold dialled in a broad transmission band.</p>
<p>“Give me the Viper, and I wont melt the inner door.”</p>
<p>There was a long pause filled with occasional static.</p>
<p>“They can just suit up and wait for back up,” Lucy said. “You have no cards.”</p>
<p>Arnold pointed to the airlock - a vehicle bay, with suit storage. Suits on the wrong side of the internal door.</p>
<p>“They can still wait you out,” she said. “They can have another shiny Viper here in minutes. You’re just as dead as me Arnold, on your terms, or you’re snared and owned.”</p>
<p>He looked around the base. A base exciting enough to pay him handsomely to raid, to have Vipers on hand to defend, to have a full complement of skimmers.</p>
<p>“Come and join me Arnold.”</p>
<p>Lucy was standing outside in a blood-stained white dress, the hem billowing in a non-existent wind, holding out her hand.</p>
<p>Arnold depressed the radio transmit.</p>
<p>“There’s enough left in this SRV to blow your whole base off the face of this dead rock. Give me the Viper, I’ll let your keep this little enterprise, and I’ll even throw in this SRV, with its data-banks full of <em>your</em> data. You hear that? Keep your secrets, your base, your lives. What’s the Viper to you against that?”</p>
<p>The memory of Lucy looked to the stars, looked him in the eye. “Don’t you want to be with me?”</p>
<p>The SRV display relayed a short incoming data message. Access keys. He uploaded them to his suit, dismounted Six. He left heavy footprints in the dust where Lucy’s naked feet left none. She skipped towards the shiny hulled combat Viper, reaching it on a bound. Her hand stroked across it, her costume now the same metalled silver as her dance troupe. The same outfit she was wearing when first she boarded Summer.</p>
<p>The Viper’s access responded to Arnold’s suit. The consoles responded to his wants. Moments later, the engines hummed.</p>
<p>Only enough fuel for local flight. No scoops. Hallmarks of a faction that held no trust for its own pilots.</p>
<p>A paranoid faction indeed.</p>
<p>“I’m always with you Lucy.”</p>
<p>Jets fired, the Viper lifted, angled upwards as he caressed the controls. It wasn’t Summer, it didn’t feel familiar. But the view was old as time.</p>
<p>He maxed out the thrust, the Viper smashed him in the back. No wonder it caught up. It <em>really</em> wasn’t Summer.</p>
<p>“I could like this,” Lucy said.</p>
<p>“You like anything fast and shiny.”</p>
<p>She smiled.</p>
<p>The Viper surged into the black.</p></body>
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