(A Good Man Gone)

  Until recently Orson had never been in real danger before, in his entire life. He’d been very afraid before but he knew now that he’d never really been in real danger. He knew this now because his life had changed somewhat in the past few weeks. His conditions were certainly materially different these days.

  Orson knew now that real danger was when you were tied up and dragged to the edge of the roof of an eleven-storey building. You knew it was real danger because everything slowed down until you could see the individual frames and you peed your pants a little.

  Orson was thinking about how a thing that he’d heard somewhere, maybe in school, was that it took a fall of 15-20 storeys minimum to guaranteed perma-deorbit a person, depending on the local gravity. That meant that he might not die when he hit the horrible rubbish-strewn Konkin street below. That thought was what made him completely lose his mind with fear.

  Hitting the ground and splattering thoroughly on impact sounded just fine. Hitting the ground and lying there catastrophically altered, broken bits of him pointed in all the wrong directions- that was a horror Orson couldn’t operate in the face of. He couldn’t continue to function as a polite human, as a worker. He just thrashed and screamed and pee came out and drool came out and he fell off the roof.

  Things were confusing but not painful at first. Then they got painful.

  ----------

  Not for the first time, Hesper wished Pallas had an ‘off’ switch.

  “We have to go.” she told the machine. “Right now,”

  “No!” said Pallas. “Not without Dr. McPhail and Orson.”

  “I told you they’re going to meet us. We’ll pick them up.”

  “But if we don’t?”

  “We will.” said Hesper. “If we can get away from those nutters.”

  Pallas looked at the Home Guard ship view on the monitors. “They’ve got the captain.”

  “They’ll have us, too, if we don’t move. Come on, release the ship.”

  Hesper was pinging McPhail over and over. Where was he? She was sure he was fine- the doctor could take care of himself- but she really needed him to talk to his stupid bloody robot. Pallas looked dismayed, standing there clenching and unclenching its small fists helplessly. “Pallas!” said Hesper. “We need to go.”

  The robot usually listened to Hesper but being told to abandon McPhail and Orson was an order it couldn’t follow. Hesper stuck a memo to herself in her neural: tell McPhail to program some sort of workaround so this couldn’t happen again. Pallas shouldn’t even get a say in ship decision-making, let alone have the ability to completely lock down the AGMG and override any attempts to start the thing. It had crossed Hesper’s mind before that Pallas could exercise an alarming level of control over the ship if it chose to. Pallas never usually seemed to have any interest in exerting control though. It was easy to forget that Pallas could just stop the AGMG, like now, because it was panicking and McPhail wasn’t around.

  Hesper’s neural got a ping.

  “McPhail?”

  “Sorry, I’m here,” said McPhail. “I’ll talk to her.”

  ----------

  At first Orson thought his nightmare of surviving the fall had happened because he was still alive and everything hurt. “Shut up!” yelled someone and Orson realised he was screaming. He was also still falling. “Shut up, you’re fine!” said a familiar voice. “God, you’re heavy. We’re not going to be able to make it back up to the ship. Hesper? Hesper? Yeah, we’re not coming back…”

  Orson could see the ground still rushing up towards him but starting to rush a bit less.

  “We’re going down,” said McPhail unnecessarily. “Hang on.”

  Orson couldn’t ‘hang on,’ his hands were tied behind his back. He was lying across the back of McPhail’s little microlight with his bum up in the air.

  “You okay?” yelled McPhail. Orson groaned in reply. He couldn’t breathe. He’d landed hard on one side and it felt as though his rib cage had crumpled in like a fistful of crisps. He could taste blood.

  Orson was worried about his organs. He knew you could damage your organs with a hard impact. Daintree had made him watch a training video every six months telling him how careful he had to be with the grown-to-order parts he was incubating. You could cause unrepairable damage with a blow to the abdomen, or falling onto something. Like, damage that meant the organs just had to be discarded; they couldn’t be reconditioned or even discounted and sold-as-seen. At least it was only his own organs he was carrying now, not anyone else’s.

  Orson felt McPhail’s hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. “We’ll get you painkillers back on the AGMG,” said the older man. “You can tough it out ‘til then, eh? Just need to get back to the ship.”

  “Yeah,” said Orson.

  “Good lad.” said McPhail.

  Orson realised he didn’t have his glasses on. He wasn’t 100% sure, with his hands tied he couldn’t reach up to check but he was pretty sure. He could feel wind against his eyeballs in a way that, in his experience, wasn’t typical. He was sure that McPhail had everything under control, though, so there was no need for him to be able to see.

  “Hesper?” Orson heard McPhail say. “Pallas. Pallas, ssh. Calm down. He’s here with me. Yes, I’ve got him. No, we couldn’t get back to the ship but it’s fine- ssh, Pallas, wait- you and Hesper are going to pick us up. Yes. Yes. No, why would she do that? Pallas, go and track us if you want to know where we are. Hesper’s going to pick us up. She is, Pallas, listen to her…”

  ----------

  Hesper watched Pallas relax as McPhail presumably had a word with it. Infuritating that the absent McPhail had more control in this situation than the- present- XO. Who was really in charge of this flying skip? Well, Atesthas, of course. But he wasn’t here either.

  The console panels brightened as control was returned to the flight deck. Hesper swivelled and locked her seat and pulled the manual stick over. “Right.” she said. “Sit down. Strap in.”

  “He’s okay!” said Pallas.

  “I know, I told you.”

  “We just have to go down there and pick them up!”

  “Sit down, Pallas.”

  Just go and pick them up. Just get away from the Home Guard and manage to co-ordinate a rendez-vous and pick-up while under pursuit. At least their brave captain was delaying the Local Defence Volunteers. Hesper could see what looked like all of the Home Guard getting in a big pile on the ground, under which, she assumed, was Atesthas.

  Hesper started to lift the AGMG as Pallas was buckling itself into the seat next to hers. “Pallas, start pushing everything into the drive.” she said. “Everything. We don’t need life-support anywhere else in the ship so just seal us in here and freeze the rest,”

  “Aye-aye,”

  The Volunteers were all still absorbed in their pile-on. Good luck, Captain. thought Hesper.

  She pulled up the least obsolete local map she could find. At least one building within eyeline that was on the map was not in reality but you had to work with what you had. She pushed the ship off in the rough direction of McPhail’s last ping.

  ----------

  McPhail was trying to take a route that was quick but also convoluted enough to make them hard to follow, if anyone was following. Instead of flying on a straight shot out towards the edge of town where the industrial estates started and there would be space to land the AGMG, he had flown into the housing estates to wind through small streets with lots of direction changes and tall buildings to confuse any tracking attempts. It would make it harder for the AGMG’s systems to track them, too but his neural channels to Hesper and Pallas shouldn’t be affected.

  ----------

  “Have you found them yet?” Hesper asked Pallas.

  “No,” said the machine. “Signal here’s the absolute bunk. Oh, wait-”

  “Pin it, pin it, don’t lose it-”

  “There!” said Pallas, pushing the bead over onto Hesper’s rubbish map. “They’re wiggling around all over the place…”

  “Maybe they think they’re being followed,” said Hesper. “Anything around?”

  “No,”

  “Not yet,” said Hesper. “Okay. Find somewhere for us to grab them,”

  “I’m looking,” said Pallas. “They stopped,”

  “Huh?”

  “They stopped,”

  “Probably just dropped your connection,” said Hesper. She sucked on her lower lip.

  “No, I’m getting pings but they’ve stopped moving.”

  “Can you talk to McPhail?

  “He’s not answering,”

  Hesper tried getting him herself, because even McPhail sometimes just had to ignore Pallas. Nothing for her either. “It’s probably fine,” she lied. “Keep looking for a lay-by and we’ll both keep pinging,”

  ----------

  McPhail swung the microlight around a corner into the first Konkin street he’d navigated that wasn’t deserted. Seeing people gave him a shock. If he’d been flying any lower something unfortunate might have happened.

  It was a bunch of young lads, all boys maybe fifteen-sixteen years old. (Not that McPhail had a clue. They could have been anywhere between twelve and thirty by his reckoning.)

  For a second McPhail considered just climbing and flying over the group of teenagers. They were just far enough away down the street that he could probably gain enough altitude to just sail over their heads.

  In the next second, though, all seven or eight of the boys turned their heads as one to stare straight at McPhail. Without a word between them they all started running towards the microlight. McPhail threw all his weight back so he was almost sitting on Orson and tried to wrestle the microlight around to face in the opposite direction. It didn’t want to turn. It was carrying too much weight and slowing made it start to drop immediately. The kids were fast. McPhail tipped the microlight as far as he dared with Orson lying across the back. The microlight was creeping around with agonising slowness, sinking towards the pavement. McPhail though he could already feel hands closing around his ankles to pull him down off the little aircraft.

  ----------

  “What was that?” asked Pallas, wide-eyed.

  “Go and find out!” yelled Hesper. The idiot machine unbuckled its harness and slipped off the seat.

  The blast had rocked the AGMG, absolutely no warning. There was nothing in the air nearby, no sign of the Night Watchman. It had been a big bang but the AGMG seemed to be flying quite happily despite- according to itself- having a brand-new hole in the hull.

  Hesper sent Pallas over the damage report. Not big on detail, the AGMG. Hole in the hull. Vague location estimate. “Ship reckons it was very low hull,” she told Pallas over neural.

  “Okay,” said Pallas as it scampered off. “Good?”

  “Yeah.” said Hesper. “The basement leaks anyway, another hole isn’t going to make much difference. Hopefully it hasn’t damaged anything else.”

  Pallas put its own view onto one of the display screens. Hesper could see that the factors had joined it. The little shapes were darting in and out of the shot as they all moved along a corridor together.

  “Was it a bomb?” asked Pallas.

  “Like I said, that’s what you’re going to find out,” said Hesper. “Not out of the question. Feels like that might be beyond our Home Guard boys but maybe I’m doing them a disservice.”

  ----------

  “C’monc’monc’mon…” McPhail urged the microlight. He could hear the running footsteps approaching. The lads weren’t shouting or jeering. They weren’t mucking about. This was business. They wanted the microlight. Of course they did. McPhail had wanted it when he first saw it, too, which is why he had stolen it. Gritting his teeth, he hissed in frustration. He was about to lose his good microlight because of bloody Orson. Why couldn’t it be Pallas on the back, or Hesper?

  Pallas would be so disappointed if he lost the microlight.

  Hesper would think it was so funny if he lost the microlight.

  There was no way on this wretched moon he was going to lose his microlight.

  McPhail stood up on the footpegs and let the tiny aircraft tip enough to dump Orson down onto the pavement. McPhail grimaced at the sound it made when Orson hit the ground. Pallas would be disappointed in him for that, too, if she found out. Had to be done, though.

  Unburdened of Orson, the microlight seemed to shoot up sixteen feet. It spun around on its axis when McPhail even thought about turning. He reached down to his boot, where he stuck his blackjack when he was sitting. He pointed the microlight at the oncoming boys.

  Orson lay on his side in a heap on the ground. He could see moving shapes. He could hear the sounds of fighting. He’d been hearing fighting noises all day. Orson was very tired. If he was following the situation, what was happening here, McPhail was between him and whatever the problem was. Orson thought it was probably okay for him to have a bit of a nap.

  He was very tired. He wondered it was maybe because he wasn’t taking his vitamins any more. He never used to get so tired when he was getting a good dose of vitamins from Jack every day.

  He hoped Jack was okay. They’d arrested all the mechs from work but he felt like they wouldn’t arrest Jack? That would be like arresting the fulfilment centre. Jack ran everything, pretty much. Orson hoped he was okay.

  Orson closed his eyes.

  ----------

  Since the bottom level of the AGMG didn’t so much ‘leak’ as spray, they’d sealed it off from the rest of the ship years ago. That meant that to get into the lowest deck of the ship you had to go out the main crew airlock and go along and down to the lower, larger, cargo door that led into what they called the basement. It was quite a handy place to stash stuff you didn’t really want on board, like more worrying items they were transporting for clients or certain foods that Captain Allan objected to, or Orson.

  “Hey,” said McPhail, suddenly in Hesper’s head. “What’s this about a bomb?”

  She must have accidentally copied him in, or mis-sent something. Or Pallas had already told him. “We don’t know that it was a bomb,” said Hesper. “Your little goon squad are going in now to take a closer look.”

  “Watch out for secondary explosions.” said McPhail. Hesper wasn’t sure if it was directed at her or Pallas. “Let the factors go in first to check it out. No, Pallas, listen. While they go in, you can go and get the welding kit. Yeah. It’s under the- I’ll show you, give me a sec-”

  Hesper tutted. How was it possible that a crew could be more annoying when they were all in different places than when they were together?

  “Pallas, you’ll definitely need the welding stuff,” said McPhail. “There’s a hole. I can see from here that there’s a hole. No, not really. Go get the welder.”

  “Do you want a map update?” Hesper offered.

  “Yes,” said McPhail. “Please. Are you getting our position?”

  “Yes,” said Hesper.

  “Any idea of ETA?”

  “ETA…” scoffed Hesper. “I think we’ll arrive in precisely two shakes of a lamb’s tail, doctor.”

  Thanks,” said McPhail.

  “I’d say five minutes,” said Hesper. “Unless the ship gets more exploded,”

  “And us?”

  “About the same.”

  “Great,” said McPhail. “No, Pallas, not there. It’s on the other side, under the-”

  “Bye for now,” said Hesper, disconnecting.

  -----------

  Orson could see the one person who was left walking towards him. Just a blurry human form. He was pretty sure it was McPhail but not so sure that he was relaxing yet. He though he could make out grey-red hair. Couldn’t remember what McPhail had been wearing. Orson already felt pathetic, lying on the ground trussed up like a bag of rubbish waiting for the binmen. He couldn’t bring himself to make it worse by saying something like ‘Who’s there?’ or ‘McPhail?’. He wasn’t inclined to seek out information he couldn’t act on anyway.

  The booted feet approaching Orson started to come into focus. He recognised the boots. He’d worn those boots. They had really hard soles. The ground crunched underneath them. They stopped in front of Orson and McPhail dropped into a squat with a knife in his hand. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get you untied.”

  “Are they gone?” asked Orson. McPhail rocked forwards onto his knees and leaned over Orson. His sinewy thighs pushed against Orson’s soft chest. “Yeah,” he said. He was pulling at the zip-ties around Orson’s wrists and it felt like he was trying to wire-saw Orson’s hands off. “Not for long, I’d think, so we’re going to get out of here. As soon as we get you mobile again.”

  “Ow.” said Orson. There was a pull and a snap and suddenly his hands were free.

  “There you go,” said McPhail.

  Orson rolled onto his back, groaning.

  “Come on,” said McPhail. “They’ll be back. Probably with their dads. We need to move.”

  “Help me up,”

  McPhail rocked back onto his heels and grabbed Orson’s hands. The older man stood up fast, pulling Orson up with him. Orson made a terrible sound and staggered as soon as he was upright. McPhail steadied him with hands on his shoulders. “Okay to walk?”

  “Walk?”

  “Just to the microlight,”

  “Oh cool, they didn’t get it, then.”

  McPhail frowned at Orson. “Did you not...oh. No glasses.”

  “Yeah…” said Orson sadly. “Lost them up on the roof, I guess. What happened?”

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  “No,”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said McPhail, steering Orson towards the microlight. “Look what I got you.”

  McPhail pushed a foiled blister-pack of pills into Orson’s hand. Orson frowned at it. “What’s this? I can’t-”

  “Painkillers,” said McPhail. “Got them off one of the lads that I- one of the lads. They look legit.”

  “Thanks!” said Orson. He popped a couple of the capsules out into his hand and licked them off gratefully. He swallowed. “How many can I take?”

  “Eh, I didn’t get the instructions,” said McPhail. “Two’s probably plenty.”

  “Sure,” said Orson. “Doctor.”

  ----------

  Hesper already had the big hangar door of the AGMG half-open as she dropped the ship down onto her selected landing-pad. One advantage of an expensive custom-made atmosphere: you could open up with abandon to do things like quick pick-ups in dodgy places you didn’t want to hang around.

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  The space she’d chosen had had a big question mark over it until about twenty seconds ago. Some maps had it as an empty lot and some had it as a block of flats. Hesper had gone with the assumption that the flats were probably history and set a course to land there. What did you know? Vacant. Building razed to the ground. She dropped the AGMG into the space neat as you like.

  “Okay.” Hesper announced. “Let’s go let’s go. Wherever you are.”

  “Right here,” said McPhail. Hesper spotted movement on one of the cameras. McPhail and Orson were emerging from a close between two housing blocks that backed onto the vacant space. They were pushing the microlight between them.

  “Come on. Pick up the pace.” said Hesper. “Tick, tock, tick, tock…”

  “We’re picking, we’re pacing,” said McPhail. “Two ticks. Is the ramp down?”

  “Of course it is,” said Hesper. “How are you two?”

  “Great.”

  “Uneventful trip?”

  “Pretty much,”

  “Is that so?” said Hesper. “Pallas said you had to beat up eight teenagers in the street,”

  “She said that?”

  “Did you?”

  McPhail sighed. “No,”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I didn’t have to beat eight of them,” said McPhail. “I just killed one of them and the others ran away.”

  “Oh, good job. Did Orson join in?”

  “No, he just complained. The whole time complaining. Whinging because everything hurts. Whinging because he lost his glasses. Whinging because I saved him,”

  “I did tell you not to do that,” said Hesper.

  “And as usual you were right,” said McPhail.

  “You should know by now. I’ll accept your apology in writing later. Once we’re well away from this canker of a moon,”

  “...The captain?” asked McPhail.

  “That’s for later, too,” said Hesper. “For now let’s just get load, stowed and ready to go-d.” She laughed out loud and over their connection. “Did you get that, McPhail? I said-”

  He’d disconnected.

  McPhail and Orson had got to the end of the ramp with the microlight. Normally Pallas would bring the little craft aboard- it could carry the thing by itself- but Pallas and the factotum were currently playing at being welders in the basement. Pallas had already given Hesper doctor McPhail’s opnion that the new hole in the hull had been caused by the Local Defence Volunteers.

  “He showed me some pictures he has of damage caused by slap-on bombs and it looked just like them,” Pallas had told Hesper. “A magnetic one or a squishy sticky one, either kind.”

  “Those cheeky_______Free Zone __________,” Hesper had said. The Free Zone communications providers censored your data automatically, in most places. Like Konkin. Data carriers had the freedom to not transmit your rude language.

  They hadn’t found any other damage, just the one decent-sized hole in the hull, so Pallas was taking care of it. They’d have to test it before they hit hard vacuum but this patch would get them underway.

  Hesper started drawing in the ramp when McPhail and Orson were halfway up it and she almost closed the back hatch down onto the back of the microlight. The AGMG’s feet left the ground the moment the hatch sealed. “Come on,” said Hesper over the PA. “Flight deck. Pallas can stow that thing properly once it’s done patching the hole.”

  “What’s the big-”

  “Up here, now.” said Hesper. “We need to talk.”

  Orson followed McPhail up to the flight deck. Orson thought McPhail might offer Orson the other pilot seat, because Orson had been really through the wringer today. He’d been roughed up something atrocious and thrown off a roof but no, McPhail put himself straight into the other pilot seat and left the jump seat to Orson.

  “We’re all here.” said Hesper.

  “We’re not,” said McPhail. “Captain Allan.”

  “Yes,” said Hesper. “We’re all here except Captain Allan, so that’s what we need to discuss right now.”

  “Do you know where he is?” asked Orson.

  “No.” said Hesper.

  “We know the LDV took him,” said McPhail.

  “Did they?” said Orson. Hesper and McPhail both nodded. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” said Hesper. “They took him onto their ship and that’s all we know. We don’t know where they went. We were expecting them to come after us but…”

  She looked at McPhail. McPhail shrugged.

  “...They didn’t.” said Hesper. “Or haven’t yet.”

  “So what are we going to do?” asked Orson.

  “That’s what we have to decide,” said Hesper. “Decide quickly. We either ditch now and get away from this moon or we hang around and look for our Local Volunteer buddies to try to get Captain Allan back.”

  Orson looked at Hesper and McPhail. “You want me to decide?”

  “What, you think you’re Captain now that Atesthas is gone?” said Hesper. Orson felt his face start to go red. “We put it to a vote,” she continued. “Without the Captain we all get a say. Except Pallas,”

  “That’s not very fair,” said Orson. “Just because she’s not human-”

  “It’s not because she’s not human, it’s because she always agrees with McPhail and that gives him two votes,” said Hesper. “And your vote won’t count either because you’re not a crew member. So really it’s just me and Dr. McPhail who get to decide.”

  “Right,” said Orson, relieved. He did not want that responsibility. “So what are you going to do?”

  “What do you think we should do, Orson?” said Hesper. “We want to hear your opinion, even if you don’t get a vote,”

  “Eh..” said Orson.

  “You can have a bit of a think about it if you need to,” said Hesper.

  “Yeah,” said Orson.

  “Not for long, though.”

  The AGMG was flying quite low over the outskirts of the city, low enough that you could just look out of the window and see everything. If you had your glasses. Orson couldn’t see anything out of the port-hole nearest to him. There were some zoomed-in views from the ship’s external cameras up on the display screens that he could make out a bit of, though.

  “What a dump,” said Hesper, staring out at it. “Never coming back.”

  McPhail grunted in agreement.

  “Not the best regulated defense, but they were still-” Hesper was cut off by McPhail interrupting her.

  “Okay, Pallas,” said McPhail. “Yeah, send one up. Thanks.”

  “What did it want?” asked Hesper.

  “Pallas says the factors are excited about something,” said McPhail. “One of them was left down there and it’s talking to them.”

  “You want to go and get it?” asked Hesper. To Orson’s surprise she didn’t sound like she was being sarcastic.

  “Yeah.” said McPhail. “We should check it out. There might be something else there as well.”

  The AGMG flew over an area of what looked like warehouses or smallish factory buildings and might have been long-abandoned or just typical of Konkin. Orson started to see smoke outside the small jump-seat porthole. Naturally he assumed it was coming from the AGMG itself at first but then on the screen he spotted what looked like a partly-demolished building that was kind of on fire.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “I can’t see,”

  McPhail looked round at him with mild concern. “Oh,” he said. “Glasses. Right. It’s...it looks like some kind of accident,”

  “The accident might just be Konkin, though,” said Hesper. “Flattened building...another flattened building...fire..I thought the low-oxgen mix was supposed to prevent fires?..bits of metal...it’s probably always like this.”

  Orson gazed up at the screen, trying to focus. He couldn’t make out the details very well, but he could see enough to get an idea of what he was looking at. He felt a bit sick.

  Orson felt the AGMG tilt and start to circle. “We’re landing?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Hesper. “Kind of abruptly so I hope you’re strapped in.”

  “I am,” said Orson. “Did the military...the Home Guard guys’ plane crash?”

  “Looks like it,” said McPhail.

  “They weren’t military,” said Hesper. “And we don’t know.”

  “Do you think-”

  “We don’t know anything, Orson.” said Hesper. “That’s why we’re going down to have a look, if we can find somewhere to land.”

  “Got a place,” said McPhail. “Sending it-”

  “Atesthas,” said Orson. “You said he was on their ship so-”

  “We don’t know what’s happened,” said Hesper. “We’ll find out more when we investigate. Okay. Putting it down here,” said Hesper. “Brace, brace...”

  Orson felt the AGMG drop suddenly, not violently but fast enough to give him that sort of pleasant feeling in his tummy and crotch. They were still circling around so now they were corkscrewing quite tightly down onto the ground. Orson could see smoke outside the window again.

  He frowned up at the display screen and really wished he hadn’t lost his glasses.

  Hesper set the AGMG down gently, given how fast they’d descended. “We’re not hanging around here all night,” she said. “Let’s make this quick, okay? A quick look and then if we haven’t found...anything, we jet ”

  McPhail nodded. Orson unbuckled from the jump seat and followed him off the flight deck.

  Orson would have liked to grab a jacket as they passed through the accomodation section but he didn’t want to hold things up. He stayed behind McPhail. They passed from accomodation through to the inner storage area and then out to the hold. Pallas and the factors were waiting for them on the other side of the door, all beeps and excitement. The factors whirled around McPhail. He swiped at them good-naturedly.

  “Got it fixed, then?” McPhail asked Pallas. It nodded solemnly and saluted. The small robot seemed keyed-up, almost vibrating. Orson was concerned for a moment that it was going to try to hug him. He got a strong feeling that it very much wanted to hug both of them. Thankfully they were allowed to pass unmolested into the hold. Orson headed straight for the airlock while McPhail stopped to bourach about in one of his junk-heaps.

  “Orse,” he called when Orson was almost at the door. “Here.”

  Orson looked round to see McPhail holding up...something. He frowned, attempting to focus.

  “Boots,” said McPhail. “Can’t go out in those,”

  Orson looked down to see the fluffy slippers still somehow on his feet. “How…?” He shook his head and started to walk back across the hold to McPhail. Tripped on something. “Stop!” said McPhail. He held the boots out and one of the factors snatched them and flew them over to where Orson stood.

  “Thanks,” said Orson to the factor.

  “You’re welcome,” said McPhail. “Now, all of you-” He was addressing his menagerie of machines. “Stay inside. None of you are to leave the ship. Clear? Nobody leaves.”

  Orson kicked off his slippers, looking down. There were about half as many factors as there had been this morning. He couldn’t think about it. His eyes prickled and his vision got even blurrier.

  He stepped into McPhail’s boots- vile, without socks. Cold and they felt moist inside. That clinched it: this was the worst day of his life, so far.

  When the outer door unsealed Orson smelled the acrid air immediately. It stung his eyes. “Do you want a hand down the ramp?” asked McPhail, offering one.

  “It’s alright,” said Orson. “I can see that far. Just, not much further.”

  “Right,” said McPhail. They both started walking down from the ship. “Probably just as well,”

  “Is it bad?” asked Orson.

  “It’s not nice,” said McPhail.

  They were walking down into a debris field, the remains of a recently-crashed ship scattered all around and smouldering here and there. McPhail could see stuff that definitely looked like it used to be people. He swallowed and his throat felt scratchy.

  “It is a plane crash, right?” asked Orson.

  “Think so,” said McPhail. “Aye. The LDV lot, their ship. No way to know 100% but...”

  He saw a torn piece of colourful patterned fabric caught on a jagged brown-stained bit of metal. “It’s their ship,” he said. “Careful,”

  They stepped down off the end of the ramp onto the ground. Orson followed McPhail across the debris field, trying to only step where McPhail stepped as he carefully and slowly picked his way over the ruins and remains.

  “Definitely?” asked Orson.

  “Yes,” said McPhail.

  Orson didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how close the AGMG crew all were. They had been together for years from what he’d picked up. They were mean to each other quite often but he knew people often were with people they cared for.

  “I’m really...sorry,” he said, because he knew it was what you said when someone...but it was only when he said it out loud that a thought that had been piecing itself together in the back of his mind suddenly loomed out, awful, an unbearable thing that had only just managed to make itself unignorable.

  Orson stopped: he couldn’t breathe. “Alright?” asked McPhail, turning around but it wasn’t just the acrid air. Orson couldn’t breathe because it was his fault. This plane crash was his fault. Atesthas being dead was his fault. All the factors that had died were his fault. Everything today had been his fault, from the time he decided to take one of the factors with him off the ship.

  If he had left the factor on the ship, like he was told to, if he had just left it on the AGMG, none of this would have happened. He would have been mugged for one cheap old handheld and gone back to the ship with his tail between his legs. Atesthas would have made fun of him. He and Atesthas would have waited on the ship for Hesper and McPhail to get back. Then they all would have left. End of story. None of it would have happened if he just hadn’t- if he just hadn’t- all the people who died in this crash every one of them how many people-

  “Hey, Orse, what is it?” McPhail said, gently, not panicking, concerned. He had come back and put his arm around Orson. “Is it the air?”

  “No-” said Orson. He was starting to grey out. He tried to push McPhail away but the older man held him. “It’s okay, I’ve got you-” said McPhail. “I’d sit you down but it’s a real mess, I don’t want to sit you down in this. Let’s get you back to the ship,”

  “No…” said Orson again. He was never going back on board the AGMG, he couldn’t. He would just have to stay here. He would stay here until more guys like these ones he’d killed came and they would take him and throw him off a roof and this time no-one would catch him. Yes. That was what had to happen. He pushed harder and shoved McPhail away and McPhail swore at him and Orson ran away.

  He hadn’t bothered to lace the boots up so they were kind of flapping about and his feet wobbled inside them. He looked down at the ground as he ran. Ran? He jogged a bit. He jogged and walked. He was crying while he did it, like little children cry-run-walked when they were having a stooshie. He tried not to trip but he was tripping over everything. He staggered about but managed not to fall. He heard McPhail call after him a couple of times. He wondered how long he’d have to keep going before McPhail would give up and go back to the ship. Eventually he would: Hesper had said they couldn’t stay for long. They wouldn’t wait for him and they wouldn’t come looking for him. He just had to keep going for a while and they would leave him.

  Orson stumbled on, not looking up. He didn’t know for how long or how far. After a while he stopped hearing McPhail. He didn’t know if McPhail had stopped following him yet. He couldn’t look back to check. Even if he wanted to: he wouldn’t be able to see. He kept his head down and he kept going.

  After a while he was barely even trying to watch where he stepped. He stepped on red stuff, he stepped on purple slimy stuff, he stepped on a hand. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything other than how terrible he felt. He was in agony and it would never stop. He should be tired- so much had happened today, this had just been one day and so much had happened, terrible things that had all been his fault, he should be so tired but he knew he’d never be able to sleep again. He could walk around this moon forever until the AGMG left him and someone else came. He was shaking, more like rattling. Rattling along in his unlaced boots- not even his boots, McPhail’s boots, he’d stolen them, everything he did was horrendous, every single thing. He stumbled and staggered over to his right off the line he was drawing in front of himself. He started to course-correct, slipped on something, way off to the left now. He sobbed.

  “Hey, what are you crying about?”

  Orson stopped. He looked up. “Are you crying about me? Orse, I thought you didn’t care,”

  “Atesthas?”

  Orson could see a shape, a few feet away. A person sort of shape. “Of course it’s me,” it said.

  “But-”

  “You’re surprised to see me?” said the shape. “I saw you get thrown off a roof earlier.”

  “But-”

  “You look weird without your glasses.” said the shape. “Give him his glasses, I don’t like looking at him without them.”

  A grey blob detached from the Atesthas-shape and grew larger as it approached Orson. It floated into focus: a factor, holding his glasses out in front of it. It pushed them carefully onto his face. One of the legs slid into his eye. He took them off it and put them on himself. The factor flew away. “Better,” said Atesthas.

  Atesthas was sitting amongst the wreckage, booted feet out in front of him. He had a large brown bag by his side and he was eating what looked like a big all-day-breakfast roll. Brown sauce dripped from it and puddled on the ground between his legs. The factor orbited him slowly at a safe distance. Orson looked around, getting his first proper look at the devastation. “Is this real?” he asked quietly.

  “What?” said Atesthas. “You seem weird, did you get knocked on the head when they threw you off that roof?”

  “How are you okay?”

  “I don’t know about okay, I’m pretty banged up,” said Atesthas. “But we’ve already established that plane crashes don’t kill me.”

  Atesthas took a bite of his breakfast roll, groaning with pleasure. A piece of fried egg slid out of the bottom of the roll and landed in the puddle of sauce between his feet. He picked it up and added it to the half-chewed batter in his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Orson. ‘For what?’ asked Atesthas but his mouth was full so it came out “Hoh Whaa?”

  “For this,” said Orson, looking around, flapping his arms. “This...this…”

  Atesthas swallowed angrily. “Hey.” he said. “I did this. You weren’t even there,”

  “But…”

  “Don’t know how you think you’re going to take credit for this.” scoffed Atesthas. “You were off gallivanting while I brought down this whole can of spam single handed, on my own, with both hands tied behind my back, in fact. Oh, here’s McPhail, suppose he’s going to try to claim credit too? Say it was his factors that did it or something?”

  “They would never do something like this,” said McPhail, coming up behind Orson. “You alright?”

  “Never better,” said Atesthas.

  “I meant him,” said McPhail. “Are you okay, Orson? You took a bit of a funny turn there- oh, you got your glasses back?”

  “That was your factor,” admitted Atesthas. “They are quite thoughtful,”

  “Well, this is great, isn’t it!” said McPhail, very close to smiling. “We’ve got our captain back, and your glasses, too. Perfect.”

  “Perfect.” said Atesthas. He licked sauce off his fingers.

  “And you’re okay!” said McPhail.

  Atesthas took another bite of his all-day-breakfast. He didn’t look all that okay, to be honest. There were cuts and bruises all over his face and chest and shoulders. Some old, lots definitely new. His flight suit was half off him. Around both of his wrists were cuffs of blood and shredded skin.

  Atesthas wiped his mouth as he chewed. Brown sauce smeared onto the back of his hand. Under the brown sauce there was blood all over his mouth and chin. Orson was so hungry.

  “Can’t help wondering,” said McPhail. He gestured around at the strewn midden of men and crashed ship. “How are you okay and they’re all...not?”

  “I had my safety harness fastened,” said Atesthas. “So when we crashed, I wasn’t blended as much as this lot were.”

  “None of them was strapped in?” asked McPhail. Atesthas shook his head, mouth full of breakfast roll. “Not a one,” he managed to say after some chewing.

  “Huh,” said McPhail. “Is that what gave you the idea to crash the ship?”

  “Mm-mm. No.” said Atesthas, still chewing. “I was planning to do that anyway.”

  McPhail and Orson watched him eat for a bit, considering. Atesthas took a big cup out of the bag and pushed a straw through the lid. He took a long sook at it and then did a very wet-sounding belch. “Well,” said Orson finally. “That was...lucky, then,”

  “Got any of that food left?” asked McPhail.

  “No.”

  “Where did you get that food by the way, Atesthas?” asked Orson. “That looks like what we ordered for breakfast.”

  “It is.”

  “But we couldn’t get anyone to deliver it,”

  “Factor went and picked it up for me,”

  McPhail looked irritated. “That’s what started all this nonsense today. The mechs were all supposed to stay on the ship. Remember?”

  Atesthas shrugged. “I forgot.”

  “I know you did.” said McPhail. “You took one with you when you went to pick up your bloody breakfast.”

  “Leave it,” said Atesthas. “Don’t give us a hard time about it. It’s all in the past now,”

  McPhail glared at him, sitting eating a sandwich in the still-burning wreckage of Orson’s poor decision.

  “We get it, McPhail,” said Atesthas.

  “Do you?” said McPhail. He turned to Orson. “Do you?”

  “Of course I do. All this is my fault.” said Orson. Had McPhail not just seen him almost have a nervous breakdown? He got it.

  “My fault. I took the factor out with me. I got caught with it by that rotten kid. He called out the Home Guard on us and we all almost died. Some of- lots of the factors died. All those Local Volunteer guys died. All because of me.”

  He looked around the flaming mess and then back at McPhail. He raised both hands helplessly and let them fall back down to his sides. “I get it.”

  McPhail sighed.

  “Come on,” he said. “Back to the ship.”

  “I’ll just finish my food first,” said Atesthas. “Hesper will moan if it take it on board. Too messy,”

  “Hm.” said McPhail. “Need any help?”

  Atesthas made a show of looking down at his body. “I think I’ll manage,” he said. McPhail nodded and turned around to leave. He touched Orson’s arm. “Come on,” he said. “Leave him to it,”

  Orson turned and huffily started trudging back across to the AGMG. McPhail waited and let Orson stomp away for a bit, then looked around at Atesthas.

  “Do you need a hand up?” he asked. Atesthas looked up at him.

  “...Yeah.” he said. “Little bit.”

  McPhail offered a hand. Atesthas allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. “Okay.” he said. He sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”

  McPhail glared at him.

  “What?” asked Atesthas.

  “Litter,”

  “Eh? Oh-”

  Atesthas picked up his cup and his takeaway bag off the bit of tyre he’d set them on. “That’s better,” said McPhail.

  Hesper was waiting for them at the ramp.

  “Boots off, boys,” she said. “You’ve all been stomping about in corpses and plane crash juice. No boots on in the ship.”

  With sighs and grumbles McPhail and Orson sat down on the ramp to take their boots off. Some of the factors were bobbing in the doorway of the ship. The factor flew into the cloud of identical little robots and they all started beeping at each other.

  Atesthas came trudging up last and dumped his bag at the bottom of the ramp. He went underneath the AGMG. “Hey,” called Hesper down to him. “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing,” came Atesthas’ voice from under the ship.

  “Do it in your quarters,” said Hesper. “We need to shift.”

  “Two minutes.”

  “It will not be two minutes,”

  “Be quicker if you leave me alone to get on with it.”

  Hesper sat down on the ramp and looked out at the scene. The Night Watchman and its crew were strewn as far as the eye could see in every direction. What a mess. She picked up Atesthas’ bag and started poking around inside it. The receipt for the order was clipped to the outside. “You ate all of it,” she yelled down to Atesthas, looking at what he and Orson had ordered. “Two all-day-breakfast rolls with black pudding. One sausage roll, one sausage and egg roll. Some noodle thing-”

  She heard Atesthas retching and then some wet sounds. “A bagel with cream cheese, a muffin with egg, a muffin with hash brown..You could have left something for poor Orson. Or me.”

  Hesper crumpled up the bag. Atesthas was too busy to reply by the sound of things.

  Hesper looked out past the wreckage. There were some low hills far off in the distance. She yawned.

  “I hate the air here,” she said. “The low oxygen mix. It’s so depressing. I know it’s for fire safety so you have to and it’s meant to keep everybody calmer but...”

  She yawned again.

  “I don’t even think it really makes people calmer. I think it makes them sluggish and weary but they’re not inert, it makes them demented. I know my brain isn’t working like it usually does.”

  There were more wet miserable noises from below the ship.

  “Like you and Orson.” said Hesper. “I think even you two wouldn’t normally be able to cock things up quite as much as you did today,”

  She looked up at the purple sky. “Orson is dim but I don’t think he’d put one of the factors at risk in his normal state of mind. He’s very sentimental about them.”

  Hesper sat far a bit, thinking. “You didn’t think we were coming back for you, did you?”

  There was no answer but she didn’t expect one. Atesthas was still busy. She sat for a while longer watching things above them here and there that seemed to move.

  They should get moving, too.

  “You’ve been longer than two minutes,” she called out towards the darkness under the ship.

  “I’m coming,” said Atesthas.

  Hesper rummaged around in her trouser pockets. She had a lot of pockets. Lots of stuff in them. Eventually her searching came up with what she wanted: a pack of wet wipes. She worked the packet out of her pocket with some effort. She got a couple of wipes out of the packet for Atesthas. He emerged slowly from under the AGMG, steadying himself with one hand on the ship’s belly. He was moving very deliberately, his progress up the ramp laboured. As he got to Hesper he offered a hand to help her up and she pushed the wet-wipes into his palm. “Wipe first.” she ordered.

  He complied. He wiped his hands and face and shoved the used wipes into the pocket of what remained of his flight suit. “Thank you, Hesper,” said Hesper.

  Thanks,” said Atesthas.

  “No problem.”

  They clasped hands and Atesthas leaned back as Hesper hauled herself to her feet. “I do have to congratulate you on your flight-grounding prowess, Captain Allan,” said the XO. “You managed to bring it down out here, away from any residential areas. This was a pretty much abandoned industrial estate, I d be surprised if anyone got hurt. Anyone not on the plane, I mean. Very neat.”

  Atesthas shrugged modestly. He had wanted to bring it down in a residential area. He’d have aimed the plane straight at Murray’s house if he had a better sense of direction. He’d have felt bad for de-orbiting Murray’s mum but ultimately it would have been a kindness.

  “I knew you’d come back for me, by the way.” said the captain. “You wouldn’t stab me in the back.”

  Hesper gave him a small smile. She started teasing another wipe carefully out of the packet.

  “You enjoy watching me suffer too much,” said Atesthas. “When you stab me it’ll be in the front so you can look me in the eye when you do it.”

  “When?” said Hesper. “Implying that I haven’t done it yet? Blood on your face, still.”

  Atesthas took the other wipe she offered. He started scrubbing at his bloody face. “Like I said, I think when you do you’ll want me to know.”

  Hesper walked into the hangar to find McPhail and Orson talking.

  “We definitely can’t go back for them, Orson, don’t be stupid.”

  “It wouldn’t take long.”

  Hesper correctly guessed the gist of the argument immediately.

  “We shouldn’t even have stopped to pick him up.” she told Orson, nodding back towards Atesthas. He was cleaning his hands with a wet wipe as he walked into the hangar, rubbish bag tucked under his arm. “The arseholes we already met won’t have been the only ones who saw that kid’s broadcast.” said Hesper. “Everybody in this system would just love to murder little pansy foreigners like you two. They would be willing to travel for the pleasure,”

  “They would take a while to get here, though,” said Orson. “We would have time to just fly over, pick up the...dead...factors and then go,”

  “What’s the point?” said Atesthas. “They’re just litter,”

  “They’re not,” said Orson. “They could be fixed. We shouldn’t just leave the little guys,”

  “They’re not little guys, Orson,” said McPhail. “They don’t have personalities, they’re all the same.”

  “They’re not.” said Orson. “And you fixed one of them before, the one I…”

  “Sure, it’s better to repair them than waste the parts but it’s not worth taking risks for.” said Atesthas. “Don’t be stupid,”

  “We took a risk to get you, and you’re not worth it,” snapped Orson.

  “Agreed,” said Atesthas. He put the paper delivery bag down on a chair. Orson poked at it.

  “What a waste of food.” sighed Orson.

  “If I’d thought you lot were coming back for me I would’ve saved you some,” said Atesthas. “But how was I to know? All I saw was you dying and the rest of you leaving me,”

  “They left me, too,” said Orson. “Well, I thought they had. I saw the ship take off and then I got chucked off the roof.”

  “About that,” said Atesthas. “Why are you still alive? You didn’t explain.”

  “Oh, sorry.” said Orson. “McPhail was waiting for me,”

  Atesthas looked at him quizzically.

  “On the, uh, the little plane thing. The flying thing.”

  “Ah, his microlight.” said Atesthas.

  “Aye, that thing. I guess he had sussed out that they were going to do something like that,”

  “Mm.” said Atesthas. “Lucky,”

  “Yeah,” said Orson. “He couldn’t save you like that, I suppose. ‘Cause you would…”

  “Crash the thing?”

  “...Yeah,”

  “So there’s no choice but to ditch me,”

  Orson shrugged. “Nah…” he said. “I bet the plan was always to come back for you,”

  Atesthas grunted. “Based on prior experience, the plan is nearly always to abandon Captain Allan to his fate and then hopefully come back later to pick up what’s left of him.”

  “Is he sulking?” Hesper asked Orson cheerfully. She tossed the paper bag onto the floor and flopped down into the seat. “I’m not sulking.” said Atesthas. “I’m just making an observation.”

  Hesper rolled her eyes. “You’re still in one piece, aren’t you? We know you can take care of yourself, Captain.”

  “Seems like sometimes you could try a little harder to get me out of these things,” groused Atesthas. “Like on Raleigh when I got collared for tampering with an airlock door and they said I endangered the station.”

  “I remember that…” said Hesper. “You did endanger the station,”

  “It was an accident,” said Atesthas. “They were going to charge me with threatening life-support infrastructure and you all just evacuated”

  “What would be the point in us staying for your court appearance? Just sitting there? For maybe days?”

  “You all went to Haumea while I was on trial for reckless endangering of the lieges,”

  “It’s got such amazing views of the rings.” sighed Hesper. “And what could we do? You had a good defence guy, he got the charges dismissed. You didn’t even really go on trial.”

  “I had to go to court. You could’ve stayed for...moral support.”

  “Moral support…”

  “And you didn’t know the charges were going to be dropped. I could have gotten a death sentence,”

  “Death sentence! You didn’t even get detained.”

  “I did, they still made me do a night in that punishment nook,”

  Hesper snorted. “Oh, yes, the traditional Humiliation Nook. I forgot about that.”

  “I didn’t. The whole day and night. And you guys were away sightseeing, you just left me there all alone.”

  Hesper smirked slightly, kicking her feet up onto the low table.

  “Atesthas, even if I had known that you were going to have to spend a day in the punishment nook, I would not have crashed that party. It sounds like something you’d enjoy. I wouldn’t interrupt.”

  “Well, I didn’t enjoy it at all,” said Atesthas. He did sound sulky, Orson thought.