CW:

  Spoiler Suicidality and suicidal ideation, discussion of past suicide attempts, parental death

  [colpse]

  There’s something disturbingly anatomical about the ruins of the Central Dysnomia Gas Pnt. It’s a set of four buildings on a hunk of ice, but it’s not just that. It’s a dead body, too. And when a dead body is left alone for so long, all the hidden bits that are supposed to be out of sight poke out and show themselves. A dead building does this as much as a human corpse, if not more so.

  Especially out in space. There are no elements to wear it down, no weather or sor radiation, not out here. The whole complex of buildings, the hab, the maintenance, the gas processing, the whole corpse has stayed the same since the st time someone was here. Blip shivers.

  The pn couldn’t be simpler.

  “So, what exactly is happening here?” Osprey asks.

  The two of them are standing at the front door of the maintenance building, which is stuck open. It’s one of those electronic sliding doors that looks cool but breaks the second the electricity goes out. And, what with the magnetic storm…

  Well, everything that uses a couple of amperes of power is forcibly shut off. Blip cranks her fshlight. It’s big and unwieldy in her hands, and it’s the only thing that will light their way in the storm.

  “Well,” Blip says, “the magnetic reactor is having herself a bit of a tantrum. Think of it like a hungry ghost, jealous of other electrical devices. It has these storms when it gets particurly unstable.”

  If you name a ghost, it loses power. If you can expin a ghost, it goes away. Blip expins her ghosts through the angle of engineering and technical specs; everyone in the vicinity died because of the fws in the reactor, no other reason.

  She knows there’s more to it, but it hurts to say it. So she doesn’t. What’s to say? Who would listen to hear speak?

  “And what can we, a pair of dirtbag pilots, do about it?” Osprey asks.

  “Easy! We’re going to activate the containment devices down in the reactor control room. Press a few buttons and flip a switch, and we can get back to fighting.”

  “Is that safe?”

  Blip says, “Yeah! As long as the containment system is working. The hard part is getting down there.”

  It’s a long walk to the reactor control room. The maintenance and utilities building is massive, big enough to look after an array of forty-five mechanical frames of all kinds (security, construction, mining, maintenance, and more!). And beyond the frames, there’s the development bs, where Blip’s mother used to work, and then the reactor. Quite a lot for one building in a gas pnt, but it was cheaper to put it all together.

  It’s not the reactor’s fault everyone died.

  They’re walking down a long corridor.

  Blip almost trips over a shape, a long and curved shape, the kind that might slither through the grass and attack with its fangs dripping with venom. She panics. It’s the rational move, after all: kick at the shape and hope it goes and rattles at someone else.

  When she is finished panicking, though, her light reveals it’s a disconnected cable.

  Osprey takes her hand, and says, “Hey. You’re okay.”

  Yeah. Blip is okay. It’s just a loose cable. She yanks her hand out of Osprey’s.

  “Hold this.” Blip hands Osprey the light, and kneels down next to the cable. “Bring the light over here.”

  With the light showing the cable in detail, Blip can see that this is a data cable. There were some secrets here so deadly they could only be transmitted via fiber-optic directly, even though there was a perfectly good intranet.

  Blip plugs the cable back in. It does nothing, because all the secrets anyone knows about this pce are in her head and her head alone, but it does make her feel better. She stands, and takes the light back.

  “Onward,” she says.

  “Right, if you say so.”

  Osprey is looking at her funny, and Blip can’t help but get huffy about it. What good is being all concerned about her? Blip is holding it together. The pn is simple and clear; why worry?

  “So,” Osprey clears her throat. “So.”

  “Yes?”

  “You grew up here, huh?”

  Blip scoffs, “Yes. Not in this building as much, I wasn’t allowed in here, but yes.”

  “How’s it rate as a pce to grow up?”“Bad! The water was too cold and the air was stuffy and set off my allergies. I have several fun skin conditions from exposure to the wonderful new molds that grew in the communal shower rooms!”

  Osprey doesn’t say anything to show her disgust, but it’s obvious on her face. She has this very twitchy thing about her expression, like she can never find one comfortable way to hold her face. Of course, this is all under a pressurized helmet, so maybe that’s a factor, too.

  “So, uh, all bad memories?”

  “Nope!”

  Blip refuses to eborate beyond that. They’re approaching a locked security bulkhead, anyways. She needs to concentrate on dealing with this!

  “Hold the light, please.”

  With both hands free, Blip approaches the door. The morons at JKIM who designed this thing set it so when the power cut, it would seal anyone in the high-security areas in. Blip shivers, because she can imagine the terrified attempts of people (no one in particur, not at all) trying to get it open and failing. How many bodies are beyond this door? There’s no way to know for sure.

  “Shine it over here, by the control panel. If we can give it a jolt…”

  Blip gestures for Osprey to come closer. She does, with an odd furrow to her brow. What’s the matter, Osprey?

  “Here, hold the light. If I can pop the panel on both the light and the door, we can give the door an electric charge, and maybe it’ll open. It doesn’t need a lot of amps. Just a simple ‘on’ signal should do.”

  “Okay, Blip, how can I –”

  “Hold the fshlight, and don’t distract me.”

  Maybe Blip said that harsher than she meant to, or maybe Osprey is softer than expected. Either way, Osprey looks hurt. Blip can feel the expression poking at her defenses, but the emotional line holds.

  Blip always keeps a set of small tools on her person; she retrieves the case from a zipped pocket in her flight suit, and unwraps it. She selects a screwdriver no thicker than her ring finger and no longer than a ballpoint pen. That should do the trick.

  “So, you, uh, know a lot about electrical stuff?”

  “Had to. Don’t shake the light while I’m unscrewing the panel,” Blip says. The panel opens, and the mechanical entrails of the fshlight are visible.

  She turns to the door panel, and finds the screwdriver cking. The super-heated knife will have to do! Blip puts the screwdriver back, and selects the knife. With the pull of a pin, the steel edge turns orange-hot, perfect for carving the panel open.

  “That’s really cool. They teach you that here?”

  “A bit. Keep the light steady? Thanks. Yeah. Mom was a –ugh– frame developer here, and dad was the safety inspector. I’m told they had their first date after a six-hour long argument about,” Blip grunts, almost drops the knife, “whether mom’s frame designs were ‘humane’ or not.”

  “Who won?”

  Blip smirks. The panel floats off, and the wire guts of the door’s circuit are revealed. She tugs the blue wire loose, slices it with the knife, and it’s ready to go. Bingo. Beautiful. Best job Blip’s done.

  “Well, you tell me! The Dilemma is an iteration of designs she started, and I finished. Turn the light off for me?”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Hmm?”

  Osprey gestures with the light, “We’ll be in pitch darkness without it!”

  “Only for a second. I have to solder the door signal wire,” Blip indicates the blue wire, “to the fshlight’s wire. We’re going to use the hand crank to power the door, see?”

  “Is that safe for you?”

  All Blip can do is sigh.

  “Maybe not, but we’re never rebooting our frames with the storm going.”

  “Could we wait it out? How long does a storm st?”

  “Anywhere from three hours to nine weeks,” Blip says, “I think the longest was four months? You couldn’t get a frame or a ship anywhere near here! Pain in the ass! Killed the cleanup efforts for good, that one. How much oxygen do you figure we have? Six hours?.”

  Osprey deftes, but she can do the math.

  “Okay… just don’t get zapped. If you die, I’ll be by myself in the dark.”

  “If I die, Osprey, I promise to take you down with me. How’s that?”

  “Acceptable. Turning the light off now.”

  All Blip has to light her way is the hot gleam of the knife, with its chemical heating element, and the sensation of touch on her shoulder. It’s a tight, comforting sense, firm and gentle. Blip can’t do gentle. She admires the gentle, the soft, but that’s not her.

  She cuts the fshlight’s main wire, and connects it to the door’s. The bde’s heat fuses them together, with a bit of solder to seal the deal. It’s a kind of kiss, really.

  “Okay, Osprey, turn the crank.”

  “Uh…”

  Blip turns to look back, and finds the comforting touch at her back is Osprey’s hand. She can’t see her, not as such, but the outlines and shapes are there.

  “This is, a small thing,” Osprey sounds like she’s drawn tight, “but, can you ask me nicely? I’m used to orders and… I’d like to be asked. I’ll do it, of course I will, but can you… Sorry. That’s a stupid question.”

  “No, it’s okay. Can you please turn the crank?”

  Osprey nods, and turns it.

  Nothing happens at first. The crank turns, and it does jack shit. It’s useless work, work for the sake of work, another bullshit job to make David Graeber’s ghost shiver with hatred, when suddenly, the door opens. Old Dave can rest again, all the problems of 21st century capitalism are finally over, good job, the door is open.

  “Thanks, Osprey.”

  “Yeah, of course. Now what?”

  * * *

  Osprey doesn’t have the same appreciation for the mechanical arts that Blip does, apparently. She knows how to look after the Crown, but she looks after it the same way she does her own body: inconsistently, and with the void calling her to give up and let entropy do its thing.

  She watches Blip take apart the improvised power setup with more than a little awe. In SCR soldier training, they tried to teach Osprey some of this stuff. None of it stuck. That’s why they made her a sniper, instead, she supposes. She knows how to put a gun together and take it apart, she can clean it and look after it, but put a circuit board in front of her and it’s all nonsense.

  It’s easier to break than to build. Osprey is the sort of person called on to destroy, to extinguish, to snuff out. Blip is clearly a person called to build, to fix, to problem solve. It’s an admirable way to be.

  Though something is bothering Blip. Osprey couldn’t say what, but the fact is, Blip is perturbed. She jumped at a loose cable, she’s snapping at Osprey, she’s looking as haunted as the Xanadu graveyards on Titan.

  “Okay.” Blip stands, having rewired the fshlight. “Crank it again… uh, please.”

  Osprey smiles at the ‘please’, and cranks the handle. The light comes on just as well as it did before.

  “Excellent!”

  “You’re a genius,” Osprey says.

  “At basic soldering? Sure! Thanks! Let me screw the panel back on, and we’re good to move on.”

  It takes a second to find the screws, but with the two of them working at it, Blip spots them and puts the panel back on.

  They carry on, past the thick steel door. Just past it is a security checkpoint, with a metal detector and conveyor belt and everything. There’s an old satchel floating around the belt; it must have been there when the whatever it was happened and knocked out the power and the gravity generators.

  “What happened here, anyways?” Osprey asks.

  “JKIM ignored a safety audit, and an easily corrected fw in the magnetic reactor became the impossible nightmare you see before you. That’s what happened. This is what unions are for!”

  “What, this accident specifically?”

  Blip shrugs, “It was a st straw sort of thing. Two thousand people lived here when the accident struck. No one made it out.”“Except for you,” Osprey says, “You did. Unless you’re a ghost.”

  The look Blip gives Osprey would turn curdled milk into cheese in an instant. It would turn cheese into a delicious spread that goes well with crackers, that gives whoever eats it unbearable stomach pain.

  “Yeah! I did, didn’t I?”

  And that’s the end of that conversation. They keep walking. Since they’re in the vacuum, the only sounds are the ones from inside Osprey’s flight suit and helmet. She can hear her breathing, her stomach growling, the beating of her heart.

  Thank god that the radios in their suits have low enough amp-airs or whatever that the magnetic storm doesn’t take them out. She considers asking Blip to expin the technical details, just to hear her voice again, but that seems inappropriate. Osprey Watkins’ foot is still stuck in her mouth from that ‘ghost’ comment.

  She makes herself useful, and scans the light beam around the hallway. The walls are a corporate beige and off-white that’s an attempt at neutrality, forgetting that neutrality is merely choosing to side with whoever’s in power already. Or, no. That’s the point. It’s a company building, meant to serve company interests. Being able to cim neutrality is a show of power: ha ha, you idiots have to take sides. We don’t! Sucks to be you!

  The wall is beled with a few colorful lines, each one with text prociming where that line leads. There’s a red one (Development Lab), a green one (commissary), and a blue one (power pnt- SECURITY LEVEL THREE CHECK IN REQUIRED). There’s a purple one that leads back away from the security door (mechanical bay). Osprey studies them.

  “Okay, okay. Good,” Blip says, “Good. Follow the blue line, and it’s straight to the power pnt.”

  “Uh… yeah. Right. Um…”

  “Yeah?”

  Osprey clears her throat, “Sorry about the ghost comment. That was out of line. I’m a bit out of practice with, uh, talking to people who I give a shit about. If I make an asshole out of myself again… tell me? If that’s okay?”

  Blip nods.

  “Yeah. Just remember, we’re standing in the middle of a mass grave right now. We’re stepping on people’s bones. I… yeah. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “Right, yeah. Are you okay?”

  “I’m tough. I can handle this, Osprey. Who else but me would this job fall on? Let’s move. Time’s a-wasting.”

  Man. Was talking to people always this hard?

  Even if she can’t put her finger on what, Osprey can tell Blip is hiding something. To be fair, Osprey is sort of hiding something, too.

  That threatening email sticks in the back of her head, the all caps SCRAP THAT MACHINE OR ELSE. Who is ‘we’ that was listening and watching Osprey through the Crown’s systems? Who could the Captain possibly send to DO YOUR JOB FOR her?

  What if…

  No. No. No.

  If the Captain sends Carrion Squad, it’s fucking over. The Captain and her four toadies, her attack dogs, her best friend squadron...

  It’s fine.

  No, really. It’s okay. All is well. Osprey tells herself this, like it’s true, and it becomes two percent less fake and made up.

  “Hey, Osprey. Are you okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re looking unsettled.”

  Osprey shakes herself.

  “Yeah, I’m good. I know my… headspace, wasn’t so good a while ago, but that comes and goes. Sometimes, I just… am struck.”

  “By the need to destroy yourself?”

  Osprey nods. She’s still walking forward, isn’t she? She’s following the green line, like she’s supposed to. Nice and easy.

  “My bosses… they want me alive, alive enough to work. It feels, well, it feels good to destroy myself. I dream about simply being unable to do what they tell me to, sometimes. Wouldn’t that be nice? To just be unable to do what they ask?”

  Blip says, “You should talk to a few disabled people before you go around saying that. Just because you can’t doesn’t mean they won’t tell you to, anyways. You know what it sounds like to me?”

  No, Osprey doesn’t. She shrugs, and gestures for Blip to say more.

  “It sounds like you want to be able to say ‘no’, more than anything. But you feel you need an excuse to say ‘no’. But you don’t. You can just say ‘no’.”

  “What can I say? My contract forces me to be a yes-man,” Osprey says.

  “But a contract is a piece of paper, yeah? Or just some data on a computer. It’s not controlling your mind or whatever.”Osprey says, “Sure. Money is just a substitute for goods and services. A house is just a pile of wood and other materials. A traffic light is just metal and some pretty lights. Food is just sustenance.”

  Blip ughs, the kind that’s a quiet exhale through the nose.

  “Okay, okay, I get your point. But, a house, you lose that, you’re homeless and exposed to the elements and it’s hard to get a job. You disobey the traffic light, you get run over. You don’t eat, your body tears itself apart and dies. What happens if you disobey your contract?”

  Osprey says, “I’m taken to court. Company court. Contract w is no joke. They could take the Crown. I’d rather die painfully and alone than lose my frame, and they know that.”

  “Shit.”

  Osprey nods. Shit is right.

  “The SCR could protect me, maybe, but I don’t think it would. You called me traitor, before.”

  Blip looks mortified, at that reminder. But it’s not offensive. It’s honestly, more than anything else, funny. She ughs.

  “Yeah. You were right. No matter the why, I left the life I had behind. If I wanted to stay loyal, I should have swallowed the cyanide capsule I kept handy in my cockpit, before they pried me out of the Crown. Better die a hero than live to become… whatever it is I am.”

  “I could vouch for you. The commander could vouch for you. We have a whole rehabilitative justice program, now.”

  “What, patting ex-Nazis on the back because they feel bad?” Osprey snorts.

  “Well, no. Yes. Sort of. It’s a long process, and it’s only a pilot program for now, but there’s been some promising case studies,” Blip says, “we only want people to stop being fascists. The how is secondary to that.”

  It takes a minute for Osprey to swallow that. She killed a lot of people who could have gotten better, who could have stopped being fascists, but didn’t. It sucks she had to do it… But there’s no regrets. If she could snap her fingers and make every Nazi fuck die right now, she’d do it.

  And it’s not fair. If jackboots mcstormtrooper has a chance at all being forgiven, how come she can’t even forgive herself?“What about the big time war criminals?” Osprey asks.

  “A person has to want to stop being a fascist, to stop being a fascist. Most of the big time war criminals are pretty smug about what they’ve been up to. Not all, of course, though. Those are the hard ones to sort out. It’s a pilot program, not a full-fledged one, for this reason.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think the lead officer behind the blitz on Titan is asking for forgiveness, huh?”

  Blip ughs, “No, but he also died st year. So he’s not asking for anything except more grave dirt.”

  “Um, excuse me,” Osprey takes on an affected tone, “could you get rid of these worms eating me? I’m supposed to be a superior white man above you commie degenerates, and me actually degenerating is embarrassing!”

  “Hah! Yeah, no. More worms for him.”

  They walk in easy silence, for a while. Blip is still looking around like the walls are made of hands grabbing for her, but she seems a little more stable now. Thank god. Osprey was getting worried.

  They pass another security checkpoint, this time with some ceiling-mounted gun turrets. They’re off, thank goodness. Osprey looks to Blip, is this normal, is this what she grew up with? Blip looks completely bnk, like the guns don’t even register to her.

  Sure, Osprey grew up in the SCR, with most people growing up with trigger discipline and basic arms training, but guns were a political tool that were held in careful regard. In case some corporate mercenaries or jackboot goosestepping bastards showed up (and sometimes, they did, together or separately), it came in handy. Most people never had to touch them, though.

  But this, with live turrets just there, that’s weird. That’s terrifying. That’s not a locked armory and a secure practice range, just in case. That’s a reminder about who has the power. This really is a JKIM building.

  “Okay, beyond this checkpoint, things might get a bit hairy. All the security systems are off, obviously, but expect more obstacles,” Blip says.

  “Right.”

  There’s a blown-out pipe, running along the ceiling. Bits of it are bursting outwards, as if whatever was in there had imploded. Osprey catches Blip staring up at it… Blip flicks her eyes away. It really shouldn’t hurt for Blip to be so closed off, but it does. Osprey barely knows this woman! Why does she care so much?

  Maybe Osprey is too eager and soft when she gets close to someone. It’s probably better to be like Blip, more closed off where it counts.

  “We’re pretty close, now. Are you ready?” Blip asks, “Because I am!”

  * * *

  Well, Blip wasn’t ready.

  The reactor control room’s doors are bsted open, from when the fuel pipes pressure shot up and exploded. It takes someone who doesn’t care to build the pce poorly enough to let that happen; even an incompetent designer would look at this pce and go, ‘hmm, maybe we need to take this one back to the drawing board’.

  That said, at least the explosions opened the door for her. She steps through the bst hole; Osprey lingers behind, gazing through the exploded doorframe. The doors were unched, it seems, backwards, and embedded into the wall across the way from the control room.

  “Here we are,” Blip says, “control room! Come look!”

  Osprey steps through, into the destroyed space. She shifts around in the room with a weird look in her eye. Maybe the melted pstic chairs and the mess of exposed wires aren’t the most friendly to look at?

  “Is this pce irradiated?”

  “No. After the power went out, the safety limiters shut off! And then the fuel pressure went too high, the temperature shot up, and the main fuel pipe exploded! Through the whole campus!” Blip says, “It was bad. Really, really bad. Like I said… mass grave. Don’t have all your safety features relying on the same power system, hot tip.”

  “Noted.”

  Blip and Osprey approach the main control panel, and the huge gss window. The reactor is there, on the other end of the gss. Blue lightning arcs off of it in sharp angles. A person could cut themselves on those sparks, a person could get their limbs sliced clean off by a jolt of that lightning.

  The reactor chamber is a huge circur ampitheatre, complete with steps down, with the pilr-shaped reactor standing in the middle. It’s a silver obelisk. It’s a mess of cables and pipes. It’s a beating heart, shing out at the ribcage-room that contains it.

  There’s a bunch of yellow-and-bck striped equipment surrounding it, including some kind of circur shielding unit. A long mechanical arm runs from the open shields, all the way to the wall.

  “That’s how we stop the storm. Back during the cleanup efforts, we set that up. Of course, it didn’t stop the st big one, but it’s worth a shot. Here goes!” Blip says.

  She flips a big lever on the control panel, one that was obviously added on after the big accident. There is no tension to its movement, no pushback. Blip’s eyes narrow.

  “Come on. Work. Please work. I’ll crack open my Torah again and remember my prayers, please, just fucking! Work!”

  It doesn’t. Moving the lever up and down does nothing. The jerry-rigged shielding units remain open.

  Blip sighs, and sits on the floor.

  “You know, promising God that I’ll be a better Jew if He lends me a hand is probably not the best strategy to solve my problems,” she ughs, “but hell, it worked once, right? Shit.”

  Osprey sits down beside her, and leans back, so she’s resting against the wall.

  “Maybe it’ll go away by itself, huh?” Osprey says.

  “It’s not out of the question, but probably not.”

  “Right. If it’s any comfort, I brought a deck of cards in my flight suit. Want to py a game?”

  Blip doubles over herself, shaking. Osprey is worried until she realizes that Blip Horowitz is ughing at her idea! Rude!

  “What.” Blip exhales. “Could you and,” she ughs some more, “I possibly py? There’s only two of us, and there’s no gravity.”

  “You know, they make pying cards you can use in microgravity now. I bought them from the Security Division commissary a few years back. As for what we could py…”

  “Two-pyer strip poker?”“Don’t be stupid, Blip, we’d suffocate and die after two hands. How’s solitaire sound?”“You want to py solitaire. In the broken reactor room. When we have maybe six hours of oxygen left?”

  “Solitaire takes like twenty minutes or less, Blip. Are you game or not?”

  “You know what, Osprey? Sure. Let’s py some fucking solitaire.”

  * * *

  A red four goes on a bck five, if only Osprey could find a red four.

  “It’s somewhere in the piles,” Blip says, oh so helpfully.

  Okay, never mind the red four. Fuck the red four. Osprey has bigger fish to fry, like the giant arcing reactor just on the other side of the wall like finding a bck nine to go over the red ten. Especially since the magnets in the cards keep failing, almost like there’s a strong electromagnet nearby or something. Who’s to say? Certainly not the cards, drifting towards the gss that separates the control center from the reactor chamber.

  “Thank you, Blip, you are so helpful. Help me find a bck nine, will you?”

  “Here you go! It was right here, under your nose.”

  “Nonsense. If it was under my nose I’d be sneezing.”

  Blip pokes Osprey on the helmet, and goes ‘boop!’.

  “Hey!”

  “I see the famous Silver Bolt of Titan has put her guard down, I have to take my shot.” Blip shrugs. “You know?”

  Opsrey rolls her eyes, and elbows Blip on the shoulder. Such an attack on Osprey must be answered twofold! Osprey has her dignity to maintain, damn it!

  Okay, that’s a lie. But it’s nice to pretend to have some dignity, when she can.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. You got me. See if you can do it again, though. You can’t. I’ve got my eye on you,” Osprey says.

  “Uh huh! Sure you do.”

  “Stop sticking your tongue out at me! I’m the Silver Bolt of Titan, you can’t bully me.”

  Blip ughs, “I can, though. I totally can. You’ve seen me do it.”

  Whatever. Osprey puts the bck nine on the red ten, which opens up a whole new avenue of possibility in the solitaire game. She takes a whole pile of cards and consolidates it into a near-complete stack.

  It’s almost completely dark in the control room, save the blue arcs of lightning that shine through the gss. On occaison, the lighting vanishes, and everything goes pitch dark. Osprey can only make out the vague shadows of Blip, the cards floating away, and the room as a whole.

  It’s like having a hood pulled over her eyes, it’s the thrilling sensation of the world reduced to the prickle on her skin and the sound of her own breathing in her suit. All time is suspended for a moment, in the absence of light. Shadows are subsuming everything and everyone past and present and future.

  The void is calling Osprey Watkins, that pit is opening up beneath her. How easy would it be to –

  Pressure around her hand. What is…

  “Easy, easy,” Blip says, “It’s just me. It’s just my hand.”

  “I… I…”“Shh, shh, it’s alright. Or, if it’s not, it will be.”Osprey squeezes Blip’s hand, as hard as possible. The pit is still there. No amount of squeezing can make that maw of eternal rest close again, but it does help her st through it. She can’t let the pit take her, not now! Osprey is holding a girl’s hand, and that’s something to celebrate.

  When Osprey first started feeling this way, she made some rules for herself. Sure, one day she might let the void take her, but it couldn’t be on a weekend.

  And when she started going out for pizza with her friends on Thursdays, it couldn’t be on a Thursday. Birthdays (hers, her parents’, her friends’) were right out. Religious holidays, even ones she didn’t celebrate, weren’t options, either. The anniversary of the SCR revolution and the month-long festivities that came with it were too much fun for her to die during.

  So if she was going to, you know, die by her own hand, it had to be a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday that wasn’t a holiday, birthday, or the day of any other important event.

  That got harder during the war, but it also got easier somehow. People were relying on her to sughter fascists! She had to wake up the next day for the SCR, for her squadron, for the future of the working css the sor system over.

  And then, after the war, she and the Crown were with the Security Divison of JKIM, and that all fell away. There were no birthdays, no holidays except for the Jesusy ones, and no trips to beloved pizza parlors, and no jobs worth living for.

  So she got sloppy. Missed easy shots. Let things slip a little, bit by bit. The Crown would get damaged more than her pride liked. But the pride was in short supply, and the dedication to life no matter how bad it hurt went quickly.

  This state of affairs sted a full decade and three years, thirteen long rotations of the Earth round the sun. The war ended when she was twenty-two, and before she could make it home to Titan and the SCR, she found herself under new management. This has sted until now, at age thirty-five.

  That’s a very long time to live without hope.

  Osprey exhales, sharp and pained. It’s not physical pain; she can take physical pain like a champ. This is the kind of thing that hurts the spirit, tugs at the heartstrings.

  Fuck.

  “Blip, I can’t live…”She swallows. Blip squeezes her hand with both of hers.

  “I can’t live… like this. They shot me down, you know. Over Earth orbit. I crashed, and I couldn’t afford to make it home.”

  Osprey can’t see Blip, not exactly, but she can feel her. Blip is touching her head, or her spacesuit helmet, or both. The lines between suit and wearer are irrelevant when the wearer needs it to live. Do people say someone is wearing their lungs, the way they say a person wears an oxygen tank? No. But in space, in the vacuum, it’s impossible to breathe without both. What is an oxygen tank but prosthetic lungs? What is a flight suit but a prosthetic yer of skin?

  So, really, Blip and Osprey are skin-to-skin touching. Even if some would say they’re not touching at all. Fuck them, though. They don’t know anything about bodies.

  “I tried, you know, to live ethically, to my principles. But I was hungry, and out of estradiol, and the Crown was a wreck. Earth… it would have killed me, if I didn’t do something. I had to take the job. Security Division paid well, and let me keep my frame. They were the one pce that didn’t look at a resume of work with the SCR and say, ‘go to hell and starve, commie!”

  Osprey ughs, but it’s not funny.

  “Should have died there. I was a better person before I crashed.”

  “Hey, no, no, no.”

  “Blip! I mean it. I wish I had died a better Osprey Watkins than I am now,” she says.

  Blip shifts around, so her legs are stretching out in front of her. She pulls Osprey a little closer, so Osprey is leaning on her shoulder.

  “Can I tell you a story, Osprey?”

  Osprey nods. The reactor begins arcing again behind them, and a fsh of blue shows Blip’s face. She’s drawn her mouth tight and ft, and her eyes hard and jaded. There’s a feeling stirring in Osprey, but it’s difficult to pinpoint.

  “I tried, so, so hard to convince my parents to move to the SCR, since I was a teenager. One time, I made a fucking powerpoint presentation about it, even. The SCR has strong unions, you know, my aunt is on Rhea, we could live with her! That kind of thing. But my Dad was a company man till the end.”

  Blip ughs, like it’s a little bit funny, but not very. Osprey finds her head drifting down, towards Blip’s p. There’s the faint feeling of pressure on the top of her helmet, like Blip is pying with her hair.

  “He was the safety officer on duty here, you know? He would always say, ‘More lives than my own are at stake’, which is why he never took a single day off.”“Not even a sick day?” Osprey asks.

  “He was the one safety officer, so no. He would clock in with pneumonia! After his injury, and he had to get prosthesis, he went to work the second the hospital released him. That was the kind of man he was.”Blip pauses, and sighs. Fog from her breath coats the inside of her helmet. Osprey wishes she could reach in there and wipe it off for her. As.

  “Anyways, I gave up on convincing them, and right before the war, moved in with my aunt on Rhea. It was just after Passover when I figured the SCR was in for armed conflict, so I signed on to basic training, and eventually got sent to the testing track.

  “I was good. I mean, I had plenty of piloting experience since I was a kid, but I was good. The frames were like second bodies to me, they just made sense. You know?”

  Osprey nods, but her mouth is too dry for her to respond.

  “Yeah. So, you know, the war sted two years, bh bh bh, we won, etc etc. I figured I’d be a test pilot till I died.”

  “So why are you out here?” Osprey asks.

  Blip ughs, and as another lighting strike fshes blue against the gss, she gestures at the ruined room.

  “While I was away, testing and working on building new armor frames, my Dad was working here, and my Mom was building frames in the development bs upstairs. Dad found… well. He called me, once, during the war, right after I ran a successful test.”

  There’s a long pause. The solitaire game, long abandoned, floats before them. The red four Osprey sought so much is just there. It taunts her as it sits in the vacuum, weightless and free from gravity and magnetism. All the forces of nature and physics are suspended in this time between time, space between space.

  “My dad, he says, hey honey, I’ve found a fw in the reactor, and the whole safety system, and no one is listening to me. I said, what’s the problem? He says, well, the control systems inside the reactor are getting old and worn from all the power it’s carrying, and if the company doesn’t do something soon, we could see massive EMP waves and magnetic storms.”

  “What were you supposed to do about that? You were pnets away,” Osprey says.

  “He just wanted to talk to someone, I guess. He sent a whole audit about it to the company, and no one even read it. Both him and mom pushed for someone, anyone, to read it and hear dad out.

  “No one did. After the war… it all came true. Every page of that audit. The control systems failed because no one with the power to would clear the budget for maintenance, and then the first magnetic storm hit. Everyone in the high-security areas got locked in when the power went out… and then the pressure reguting on the fuel pipes for the heating died… and then, boom.”

  Boom? Osprey shivers. All she can do is put her hand on Blip’s shoulder. It’s insufficient as a gesture, but nothing could be sufficient.

  “I felt so fucking guilty, Osprey. I thought, if I had to stayed home, I could have helped mom and dad, or… if I had come home and left the test track… or if I had just convinced them to move with me, you know? They’d be alive. I… I threw myself into testing even more, Osprey. I didn’t sleep, or eat, I just tested and worked and tested some more.”

  Blip is tight, pulling herself apart at every muscle. Osprey holds her; it doesn’t help much, but it’s better than nothing at least. Better insufficient than nothing; better too little, too te, than not at all.

  “They kicked me out of the testing program, Osprey. They thought I needed counseling and rest. I thought I needed a bottle of wine and some sleeping pills.”

  “Oh…”

  Blip nods. “Yeah. Yeah. My aunt and looked after me the best she could, but… shit. Osprey, you know what it’s like. Sometimes not even the most loving touch gets through. It looked like it was it for me, when someone from command reached out to me.”

  Osprey takes Blip’s hand in hers. Their hands are so simir; Blip’s are a bit bigger, but not by much. Blip ughs at the gesture, but not mockingly. There’s a gentleness to the ugh, like it’s amusing, but not funny.

  “Her name was Miranda Schubert, and she was leading a cleanup effort of the wreckage. She told me the best cure for guilt and grief was action, and time.”

  Osprey says, “Yeah, that sounds like her, alright. She was a good fiancee like that.”

  That stumbles Blip for a second, like the thought of Osprey having a fiancee bothers her for some reason. Weird.

  “Right. Yes. Anyways, I signed on for the cleanup job. There were survivors to rescue, Osprey, and we buried a lot of bodies. It felt good to do something about all the shit tearing at my insides. You know, even now, some days I wake and ask, God, why did I live when all my childhood friends and mentors died? And He never answers. God’s kind of a son of a bitch like that.”

  “Yeah, he is, isn’t he?”

  They both ugh.

  “Fuck, Osprey. Don’t we make a sordid pair?”

  “Yeah. Call us the Guilt Girls,” Osprey says.

  “Seriously. We should get T-Shirts and matching jewelry! We can be sexy and struggling together.”

  Osprey ughs, “Man. If I could go back to the SCR, we totally could do that.”

  For a long moment or two, Blip just looks at Osprey. Her face seems shadowed with an idea, or a concept, or a conundrum. Osprey would very badly like to know what’s on Blip’s mind.

  “Well, yeah! But we’re not going anywhere until we contain the reactor. So come on, we’ve had our time to be sad sacks for now. Let’s take our depression and make it work for us!”

  * * *

  This pn is kind of stupid.

  Osprey and Blip are in the antechamber just before the reactor room, facing a massive maintenance frame.

  “Who invents a two-person frame?” Osprey asks. It’s hard to be a little incredulous, seeing how sharing a frame sounds more like sharing a body. She knows such a thing is possible, but the thought of her being one to share strikes her as odd.

  “Me. I do. I helped design and build the It Takes Two to help do search, rescue, and other stuff for the cleanup efforts,” Blip says, “You don’t like it?”

  It’s a big yellow rectangle, with four arms, two legs, no head, and big lights on the shoulders. Bck stripes and ‘DANGER’ signs are abundant all over it. It’s like if a forklift, a bulldozer, and a dump truck had a very strong baby.

  “I haven’t piloted a frame other than the Crown, not since pilot training, right after the war kicked off. It feels like cheating to pilot any other.”

  Blip takes her hand. “I promise you the Aves Crown won’t be mad. She’s you, and you’re her. But the It Takes Two to Tango is built specifically to function during magnetic storms like this one. It’s our pn ‘B’ for dealing with this reactor.”

  “Right. That makes sense, just…”Osprey puts her hand up to her helmet. She can feel Blip squeezing her other hand, giving her gentle tactile reassurance.

  “Okay. You take the lead, Blip. I’m good. I’m good.”

  It’s a short trip up a long dder to reach the cockpit; Blip has to pull a manual release lever from the outside to crack the sucker open. It opens in six segments, the whole chest swinging apart to reveal a two chairs back to back, each facing a massive control panel and screen.

  “Come on, then,” Blip says.

  Blip takes the right-side seat, and straps in with a smile. Osprey has to linger at the dder for a second before she can allow herself to join. It’s not dishonest, the Crown can’t be mad. The Crown is her, and she is the Crown.

  Right.

  She takes the left-facing seat.

  “Okay, Osprey. Strap in. The It Takes Two is kind of a weird experience. You have control of the bottom pair of arms, and we can swap who controls the legs.”

  The safety belt goes click when Osprey puts it on. “Right. How do we contain the storm?”

  “We close the containment shields. The storm is essentially the reactor without grounding, venting out power in whichever direction it can. We just need to force it shut so it uses the actual grounding wires again.”

  Seems simple enough.

  “Okay, I have the legs and top row of arms. Let’s…”

  Blip goes silent, and grunts. When Osprey looks over her shoulder, she can see Blip messing with about eight different controls with her back tense.

  “Blip, what’s happening?”

  “Whoever piloted this thing st left the legs in a weird limbo. If I can’t fix this…”

  “Don’t trail off on me, what’s happening?”

  There’s another gap of silence. Blip fiddles with the controls some more, and the right leg moves beneath them. The left, on the other hand, stays put. Weird.

  Blip sighs, “We’d have to control one leg each. You ever do a t

  hree-legged race? Imagine that but if we screw up we could be trapped inside the reactor room and die of slow oxygen deprivation.”

  Well.

  Okay.

  Huh.

  “We can do it. Let’s try it, Blip. If we stay here and do nothing we’ll die anyways, right?”

  Blip says, “Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Okay. I moved the right, so you move the left…”

  Osprey focuses on the controls. She can do this. How long has she been a pilot? Long enough that all of this is second nature, long enough that walking with the legs of an armor frame is as natural as walking with her own.

  But there’s a disconnect with the It Takes Two. She can’t feel it as her own body, the same way she can with the Crown. It’s a minute gap between mental impulse (moving left leg), physical action (using control panel), and the desired outcome (walking). Back before she transitioned, she felt like that all the time, in her own flesh. Osprey can’t say she missed that feeling.

  “Okay, moved the left. Your turn,” Osprey says.

  “Right…”

  “Don’t look at me, look at the controls.”Blip says, “But I like you!”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “We’ve both had too many breakdowns in front of each other to say we don’t know each other, Osprey. This is literally how my st girlfriend and I got together, minus the armor frames.”

  Osprey has to fight the blush in her cheeks. God, what is wrong with her?

  “Anyways,” Blip says, “I just wanted to see your face. Let’s go.”

  The right leg moves, and the left responds in kind. Step, step, step. It’s a shaky line to ride, where they’re both in control, trading off movement. There’s a rhythm to it, like dancing, like all the things two women can do with their bodies entwined and in motion.

  The pair manage to get the It Takes Two to the door. The reactor chamber is beyond it, pulsing and arcing and glittering.

  “We can do this, right?” Osprey asks.

  “Duh! Of course we can.”

  Blip smiles, and turns her chair as far is it goes, towards Osprey. Osprey meets her in the middle of the cockpit.

  “Listen, Osprey. I’m not saying we will. I’m saying we can. If we fuck up, well, that’s life, right? But let’s not dig the graves while our bodies are still warm.”

  “Why not?”

  “Did your family ever have that period where, when you’re first out, they’re mourning you while you’re, you know, alive and well in front of them? Like, they’re so married to a fake future that the beautiful present is invisible to them? Because that sucks. Having a grave for yourself while you’re still breathing sucks shit!”

  Osprey says, “Both of my parents are trans, And Marxists. and they threw me a fucking party after I came out as a girl.”

  “You SCR babies got all the luck,” Blip says, with an envy-tinged ugh, “Let’s do this thing.”

  They step through the door as one unit, and into the reactor chamber.

  Even through the insuted armor of the It Takes Two, the air is heavy with static and potential energy. Osprey’s arm hairs are standing up under her flight suit. They keep walking, the two of them together, right into the heart of the storm.

  The first arc of lightning hits them, and Osprey jumps. It’s like being shot at by nature, being stabbed by the physics of the electron. She can’t say she’s a fan of that. At least with bullets and sers, it’s easy to predict their trajectory. Lightning is wild and can do whatever it wants, unimpeded by the rules that govern motion of solids and superheated photons.

  “Are you okay, Osprey?”

  “Fine. Just – fuck!”

  Another arc strikes their armor.

  “Osprey,” Blip says, “Osprey, honey, I built and designed this machine so that the electricity has a safe path down the armor pting without even touching us. I promise you I would not have let you on board if I thought there was any chance of you getting hurt.”

  “You said we could trip over and die.”

  “I… I was being flippant. Sorry. Old habits die hard. We’re fine. We’re going to make it out of here.”

  Osprey nods. She takes a breath in, she lets it go. She takes in another, she lets it fill her up from the diaphragm, she lets that one go.

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s do this.”

  They advance, down the ampitheatre steps, towards the reactor. Right, left, left, right, they go, ever forwards. Time stretches out as they do this. Osprey is aware of each shift of the leg servos, of the rotating motion of the foot, the swivel of the knee, the rounded-out ball joint of the thigh. Step, step, step. More lightning hits the armor, is directed down to the floor.

  They’re not even a few steps out from the reactor, now.

  “Remember: you have the bottom pair. Can you grab onto the shielding unit on your side?” Blip asks.

  Osprey takes the arm controls. The bottom rack of arms moves readily under her hands, even with that hint of dey and dysphoria. This is not her body, this is not her, but she has to make this work anyhow.

  The arms grasp onto the emergency shielding, with some difficulty. Wrapping the fingers around the massive handles is harder than it looks! Osprey pulls up on the arm joysticks, and the arms pull upwards, take the bottom half of the shield doors upwards.

  “They won’t move anymore. Your turn, Blip.”

  “Right!”

  Blip moves the top half of the shielding down with ease. The It Takes Two responds to its creator as if they were one and the same, and Osprey feels a little jealous. Only one body in the whole universe fits her right, and that body is sitting outside by the fuel tanks of doom, along with the Dilemma.

  If Osprey could adapt to any body, she would be so much happier. She muses on this as Blip pulls the top shield shut over the reactor.

  “Okay, great! Now, we have to lock these. Do you see those plunger handles?”

  Osprey does. They’re raised circles on the seam between the two shielding halves, with bright red handles, sized for a frame.

  “Yeah.”

  “Grab those two, and pull them out, turn them, and push them back in.”

  She does that. They’re stubborn little bastards, but Osprey can pull the handles out just fine. They don’t turn as easily, though. This connection better be good, is all she can think, because this is scary fucking work and every second they’re in the reactor chamber is one that makes her feel nausea and fear.

  The lighting is at least no longer arcing outwards. The shielding works, so it seems!

  Osprey presses her two plungers in; they lock in nicely. If they weren’t in the vacuum, it would make a nice click sound.

  “Done,” Osprey says.

  “Great! I’ll do my two.”

  While Blip is doing that, Osprey…

  Osprey can’t help but think. It’s dangerous, but, man. What if they send Carrion Squad? The Captain and her little buddies, with their armor frames that may or may not have been active during the war (on the fascist side), she knows they’re out there. She couldn’t beat Carrion Squad. Could Blip? Could the two of them do it, together?

  Hmmm… no. It’s impossible. No one’s even scratched Carrion Squad’s armor.

  Fuck.

  All the lights come on, all at once, in the reactor chamber, and the control room. The static feeling in the air persists, but it eases off a little. Thank god. Osprey’s heart feels less tight and tense.

  “Let’s get out of here, then?” Osprey asks.

  “Yeah. Let’s go!”

  * * *

  It’s a long way back. The halls and annals of Blip’s past are somehow even more haunting with the lights on, somehow, which is fucked up!

  They’re following the painted lines on the wall, back up to the exit. The two of them are back upstairs now, approaching the level three security checkpoint, when the turrets start firing on them. The heat of ser beams just barely missing burns the vacuum near Blip’s face. That was close!

  Osprey tugs Blip out of the line of fire, pulling her into the cover of a hallway. The beams stop, for a second, and the ser-targeting sight scans around. Its harsh red eye scans around the end of the wall, seeking any and all unauthorized biological material.

  “I didn’t think the power coming back on would… shit. What do we do?”

  Osprey says, “I got this.”

  She reaches into her flight suit, and pulls out a live psma grenade. It’s a huge silver orb with a hold-down button trigger. How does Osprey have the space in her suit for that?

  Whatever the case, Osprey lobs it at the turrets. It explodes in a fsh of green psma, like an energized firework. It’d be beautiful if it wasn’t so destructive; maybe the destruction is its own beauty? Hard to say. Blip’s more of a builder, really. She’d rather see something come together over time than be destroyed in an instant.

  “Nice. You’re well stocked, aren’t you?” Blip asks.

  “I’ve also got a loaded pistol and several knives.”

  Blip smiles, “Oh, you’ve got weapons, too. Not what I meant though!” She sticks her tongue out. Osprey blushes. Got her. The predator instinct in Blip smells blood and demands more, more blushes, more Osprey.

  She can take it easy, though.

  “Ahem,” Osprey says, yes, she says ‘Ahem’ because she’s adorable, “Yes. Right. Let’s get back to our frames. And, uh, fight.”

  Yes. Fight.

  That’s what they’re going to do. That’s what Blip wants to do. Yes, that’s it, Osprey. She grins a shark-toothed smile.

  There’s no more major obstacles between them and the exit other than time. They pass by the security door, nice and open in the light. It’s just that easy now, on the way out.

  It’s around then, passing by the security door, that Blip gets a message on her suit’s long-range radio.

  “Blip, there you are! We lost your signal,” Commander Schubert says.

  “A magnetic storm hit, but we dealt with it.”

  “We?”

  Osprey speaks up, “Hi Miranda…” She’s looking at the floor, like she’s a dog who knows she did something wrong.

  “Osprey, hello. First order of business: consider our engagement over. Second order of business: Blip, we’re about to run the blockade. Are you going to be able to sit tight for a few hours?”

  “We’re about five hours or so left on oxygen in our flight suits, plus whatever we’ve got in our frames’ life support systems. We should be good.”

  Osprey mouths, “We?”, but doesn’t say it out loud.

  “Good to know. Stay safe, we’ll send you rendevouz coordinates after we drop off the supplies at the striking facility. Try not to get caught in any more magnetic storms in the meantime.”

  “Right. We will,” Blip says.

  The line shuts off. No signal.

  From there, it’s a brisk walk back outside. Osprey is picking at her suit and shifting around as they walk, which could mean something, or it could be a physical habit of hers. It’s hard to say at this point; Blip doesn’t know Osprey all that well yet. Best not to assume anything in this early stage of knowing her…

  Man, when did she become so sure that her and Osprey were going to be able to spend time together after this?

  She should speak up about it, at least. They’re almost to the front lobby now, and there is no time like the present.

  “Hey… Osprey.”

  “Hm?”

  “I… I’ve really enjoyed our time together.”Osprey ughs, “All three hours of it.”

  “No! Well, yes. Sort of. Okay. Listen.”

  She takes a deep breath, and finds it in herself to continue.

  “I think, if you wanted, you could come back to the SCR. With me.”

  Osprey stops walking. Her expression is hard to read, her body is tight and controlled, and Blip knows that was the wrong thing to say. Shit. She should have kept up the spikes and armor and not gotten all mushy and vulnerable.

  “Blip… they wouldn’t want me. I’m damaged goods.”

  “Everyone’s damaged goods, Osprey, because we’re not goods. We’re people. Look at me, okay?”

  Osprey looks.

  “Do you think depriving yourself of kindness is going to fix anything?” Blip asks.

  “...No. I don’t. But it feels good. I can’t control politics, the march of time, the inevitable destruction of everything I love, but… I can deny myself things. They say all you control is yourself and your own reaction, yeah?”

  Blip takes Osprey’s hand, considers it, toys with it.

  “Blip, what’s up with my hand? What am I missing about it? It’s just a hand.”

  “It’s nice! It’s your hand, and I think you’re neat. We don’t know each other very well, but I’d really like the opportunity to fix that! And it’d be great if you could make it to my Aunt’s Pesach sedar, and maybe we could hang out as friends, or go on a few dates? It doesn’t have to be a permanent thing, but…”

  The pressure of Osprey’s palm finds Blip’s hand. There’s comfort in that pressure, that tightness of grip.

  “Blip…”

  “Yeah?”

  Osprey sighs, “Okay. I do want all of that. I do! But… the SCR doesn’t want me. If I was the SCR, I wouldn’t want me.”

  “Well, I’m a part of the SCR, and I want you. I’m not saying it’s going to go off without a hitch, but if you try to come back, I will stick with you through it until it pans out.”

  Osprey says, “And if it doesn’t pan out? It could be a massive waste of time.”“I will stick with you through that, too. Time passes either way, right?”

  At that, Osprey lets go of Blip’s hand. The absence of her burns and presses on Blip more than the tightest and most painful grip. How did this happen? Why this girl, and not literally anyone else? There are plenty of depressed girls with destructive tendencies back home on Rhea!

  Who is Blip kidding? She can’t love someone unless she sees them in action in a frame. How can she trust someone until she sees the secret, ugly parts of them they keep inside py out on the outside? The guts and gore of the soul, that’s what Blip wants to see, and that’s what frames and combat in a frame is perfect at. Do the hot girls back home on Rhea show the heat of their passion by trying to snipe the shit out of Blip? No. They don’t.

  “Okay,” Osprey says.

  “Okay?”

  She nods. “Okay. You said forgiveness, or redemption, or whatever is worth fighting for? Sure. I’ll fight for it. I expect to lose, though.”

  “That’s a start.” Blip says, “back to the SCR, then?”

  “Yeah. I’ll come home.”

  * * *

  Osprey and Blip make it back to their frames, and part in the flesh so they can be together in the frame. The Crown boots up with a sputtering noise, like the old bird she is. Parts of her are as old as the war, and others new as yesterday, and those generations of mechanical pieces don’t always agree.

  When the Aves Crown boots up, there is a flood of angry emails waiting for her. The st one is the only one that matters, though.

  SGT WATKINS I HAVE ALWAYS HATED YOU. I HOPE YOU REALIZE THAT. THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS WITHOUT REPENTANCE UNDER GOD AND YOU HAVE NEVER REPENTED. YOU KILLED DOZENS OF MY FRIENDS IN THE WAR AND YOU AND YOUR LITTLE DEGENERATE COMMIE FRIENDS ARE SQUATTING ON LAND THAT SHOULD BE MINE. MY FATHER WAS THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE SATURN SPHERE AND HE’S NOW A JOKE ON EARTH.

  Bh, bh, bh. It goes on for a while like that, until…

  CONSIDER YOUR CONTRACT TERMINATED. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU. I AM GOING TO DRAG YOUR NAKED CORPSE THROUGH THE STREETS AND PROCLAIMING IT A MIRACLE BEFITTING CHRIST HIMSELF.

  And, in lieu of a signature or final FUCK YOU or whatever, there’s an audio file. Osprey has it scanned for viruses or spyware, and it has neither. She opens the file, and…

  It’s a recording of a radio conversation, from the cockpit of a frame.

  “Carrion One, Continuous Cutting Motion, unching!”

  “Carrion Two, Early Bird Gets The Worm, Launching!”

  “Carrion Three, Crion Caller, Launching!”

  “Carrion Four, The Parable Of The Scorpion And The Frog, Launching!”

  And stly, the captain’s voice, “Carrion leader, L’Appel Du Vide, unching. I’d say it was nice to know you, Sergeant Watkins, but it’s a sin to tell a lie. See you soon.”The audio ends, just like Osprey’s life will, in a short time. Fuck.

  “Blip…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have bad news.”

  Announcement And that's chapter three! If you couldn't tell, I love my bespoke mech names. See you next week! If you want to read the next chapter, and the epilogue right now, you can go to my patreon or my itch.io page!