Sarah McFarlen should have been used to leaving home by now.
She had done all the essentials. Worked down the list like a show-hound through her hoops. Had done it often enough that she could have sketched out the process in her sleep. She had packed her life into neat, labelled boxes and watched them trundle, one by one, out the too-wide doors. She'd arranged fuel and food, docking clearances and flight plans, had run trials on the most essential of the Dunlin's petulant, sputtering systems until it felt like her eyes were ready to bleed more than her fingers already had.
She'd squared what debts she could and exchanged promises for those she couldn't. She had, ignoring the knotting in her gut, folded away the deep-blue dress she'd been so proud of when she'd slipped, flushed with newfound riches, into Curacao orbit with a promise that this life was behind her. That she was done with theft and revolutions and waking, wide-eyed, to the shriek of a decomp alarm and the infernal glow of emergency lighting. She'd believed it, then. Believed it with all the certainty of a heartbeat.
But, that was belief for you. Pretty to hold. Solid as smoke.
It wasn't yet morning on the ward's local cycle, and the corridor was stained the blue-black of pre-dawn light as she slipped from the penthouse. The cabin's quarter-G field relinquished its hold on her as she passed the threshold, the uncomfortable tug of station-normal gravity anchoring her to the deckplates with a ferocity that left her legs protesting the treatment inside a dozen paces. A breath. She should have been taking the steroids. Hadn't been. Hadn't seen the need. Hadn't thought she'd be going anywhere in a hurry. Ha.
She stuffed her hands into her jacket and pushed on.
She'd have to talk to James about that. How they set they gravity. Not the only thing to talk about. She felt a traitorous smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Ten years. Ten years, and he wasn't dead. Ten years, and he'd still answered when she called. God only knew what she'd done to deserve it, but the little ember of gratitude in her chest was doing her more good than the jacket was.
The lighting had been someone's hopeful effort to encourage something like a regular waking cycle for the denizens of this wing of Barrier Gate. It had, in her experience, only led to people doing the same sorts of things at night in orbit that they did at night down the well. But tonight was uncommonly quiet. There was distant laughter, and a rattle in the fans that told her that someone would be replacing a bearing before the fortnight was out, but otherwise she passed only a few on the way to the markets, made eye contact with none of them.
She bought two boxes of noodles from the cleanest-looking stall she could find, paid for them with the second card when the first failed and, steaming styrofoam carry-case in hand, turned for the docks to wait for James.
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
A small, and likely depressingly common scene has developed in Bravo wing's security checkpoint. An armoured figure, slung with a pair of hefty duffle bags - and one brown paper bag with a bok choy peering impudently out of it - argues with the dockmaster. Stewart, if James recalled. True to Sarah's word, the man had been honest. Honest enough to ask uncomfortable questions about the cheerfully undisguised contents of James' personal effects, which had included no less than five different firearms. Like a sensible person. While strictly speaking not illegal - not here - the scans had seen fit to flag him down for whatever the local security parlance indicated as "slightly worrisome". "Yes, I'm here to see one Miss McFarlen on the upper decks. No, I am not a creditor, troublemaker, legbreaker, insane ex, or any flavor of liable to do anything stupid. I'm here to join her," The word bears some consideration. "Crew," He settles on. It's not technically incorrect. A crew of two is still a crew. "For goodness' sake, I brought groceries."
Stewart is, eventually, unwilling to further escalate this silliness. He decides that if this is some kind of plot, it's dumb enough to deserve a shot. Terrible quality in an official, though maybe somewhat less so on Barrier Gate. James is eventually ushered through towards the elevators, grumbling quietly to himself.
Up, up towards the top docking levels, where the umbilical access bays to ships at moor lived. Sarah had certainly not skimped on the size of her - (their? Stop.) - new ship. She'd always liked big, open spaces, views, he seemed to recall. From what he'd skimmed of the schematics during his rush to Barrier Gate, she'd have that much.
James finds himself growing self-conscious, blended with an all too welcome feeling of a fresh start and a deja vu, as the elevator thrums on upward. Was he so different now, from when they'd set out on their voyage, so long ago?
Sarah and Leslie had been greeted back then, with, what he himself assessed, was someone's best attempt to construct a human being out of right angles and assorted structural cabling. Tall, dense, lean. Bordering on starved. No longer bordering, during the months of-
The thought is methodically shot, twice, and he waits for it to stop twitching when the elevator doors slide open.
James takes in the impressions of the massive umbilical bay. Semi-open layout. All-steel construction, much of it reasonably new. Rows and rows of large, numbered staging areas with separating walls between each. Too thin. Security probably wanted it that way, a hindbrain instinct rasps. He quietens it before it can comment further.
A row of hard metal chairs, the low static laced hum of arrivals, and the antiseptic tang of recycled air. She shifted in her chair, seeking an angle where the framing didn't stab at her. There wasn't one. There never was. She'd done this enough that it should have been familiar, hadn't she? That awkward, lurching, half-moment between one life and another. Had hopped that void more times than she cared to recall. Had come through it before. Danced across it, even. Had found her feet on the other end, caught herself, kept on keeping on.
She found her eyes creeping back to the arrivals board on the minute, all the same.
Found herself worrying at the loose threads on her cuffs, slow picking them away, stretching out another protesting piece of polyester. Found herself squinting out into the encompassing gloom of the Barrier, beyond the surgeon's mess of umbilicals and lines. As though she could out-spot the sensors. She should have loaded a book. She had loaded a book. She'd read the same paragraph six times. She tried a seventh and, distracted by the tantalising shudder of a docking clamp, gave up midway through an eighth.
Instead, she watched the slow filter of humanity through the blue-lit bay.
A man with a face like gnarled wood and a scorched databad he could not help but turn over and over in his twisted hands. The shadows of tears crawled down his face like rain. Outbound.
A pair of off-duty IC reps bounced bad jokes off each other at the front of a departure bar, lack of uniform rendered irrelevant by the duplicate company-issue headsets, company-issue datapads, company-issue laughter. Inbound.
A family huddled in the shadow of a mooring umbilical as children ignored whispered instructions not to stare at an implant-studded bounty-hunter lounging four rows back, the dull plastic sheen of her forearms a promise sure as sharpened steel. Outbound. With an unlucky guest before the night was out, if she was a betting woman. Which, she reminded herself, she was in no position to be.
Then, silent as a sunrise, James Arland.
The years had left him no less wolfish. No less a creature that carried the whisper of violence in the tension of his shoulders and the corners of his eyes. No less a uniform, whatever clothes he chose to wear. She spotted, incongruously, a paper bag where memory would have supplied a rifle and felt a smile tug at her lips. No less a friend.
"Hey, Spookshow." She hugged him. Brief and sudden and so tight that her arms ached. She half-expected the smell of cordite, was pleasantly surprised not to find it. Finally she stepped back, hands loose at her side, styrofoam box at her feet. "Trip out was okay? Lanes're getting a little twitchy, with the blockade. Wasn't sure you'd make it."
A jerk of her chin towards a shadow beyond the window. "I set aside a room for you on Windward, but there's - Uh. No shortage of choices. It's still a bit of a mess. Not due to sail for a week yet and I had a time fighting the transports for shore power, so still need to set to work a lot of the electronics. Aux generator's still waiting, need trials on long and short-range comms - "
The words spilled out. Plans and problems and rough, hopeful suppositions of schedule that she'd left unsaid in her solitary labouring for fear that they'd melt away on exposure to air. She'd done all the work. Knew that she had. It felt undone, all the same.
"I bought dinner." She said, finally. Cradled in her hands, the box was still the right side of warm. Barely. "Still have the room upstairs for a few days, if you have - Things."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
Thoughts that could only be labelled as treasonous poured in across lanes of inquiry James had thought long since dried with the dull, gray mass of time - and the chill of resignation. They originated, he realized, from some baffling, boyish place that had somehow clung to life. And this dawning realization, that this place had likely had an uncomfortable amount of sway over too many decisions - That was just another entry to add to the pile.
Would she be happy to see him?
Would he put his foot in his mouth the moment he opened it?
Get a hold of yourself. She's just a friend, not a bomb.
The tangled snarl of unhelpful sentiments James had been silently nurturing menaced towards deafening when he'd seen the first glimpse of auburn, approaching at speed just out of the corner of his eye. He'd turned about to address her, look at her - there was no mistaking her for anyone else, same autumnal hair and long frame and spacer's gait, bright eyes almost perfectly level with his own - and, he thought, with small relief, a growing smile.
James' mouth - a thin slash, most days - was still working towards a greeting of some kind. Still spinning on the roulette wheel of what degree of insincere nonchalance to inject.
Sarah McFarlen had closed the distance so quickly and completely an old alarm in the back of his mind span into life, shrieked you're going to die why are you holding that grocery bag but - there was no bladed implement, no gun barrel pressed into him. Just a pair of slender arms wrapped around his neck, a quick, tight squeeze and the simple warmth of another human being. The sensation stopped every thought - stupid or otherwise - cold in their tracks like she'd clocked him with a shovel. At least his hands were full, he'd have a good excuse for just having stood there.
She'd detached as quickly as she'd approached, motoring right into an array of practicalities, questions and concerns - by the time the word "Spookshow" had passed her lips , he could no longer stop the spreading grin or his shoulders from shaking with the barely audible laughter welling up within.
"Sparks, hey-" That's what Leslie'd sometimes called her. It was out before he could consider whether it was something he had a right to. "Easy. Dumb grunt, remember? Have to talk slow to our type."
They get moving at a slow, meandering sort of pace back to the elevators, Sarah leading the way - James composes himself, mentally files away the cutter that had been looking their way a few rows back under "dangerous." By the look of her, she was sure to be doing something similar. He turns his thoughts back to his new employer.
"No surprises on the trip here. Nobody pays much mind to a lone Raven on the lanes. Not worth the robbery, I suppose, but you never know out in the Taus. As for my stuff," He gestures with a shrug of his shoulder. A dufflebag swings heavily, off there. "You're looking at it - I've been living real, er… Light, I guess. I won't take a lot of space. And," He adds, conspiratorially, "Would you believe I brought dinner too? I figured I might be able to do something with the noodle monolith you've built somewhere. It'll keep, supposing you've got a fridge." He offers a smile again, hoping it didn't look as weary as he was. "Just show me the right locker to stuff me into, and we can get at that," he motions towards the cooling styrofoam. "Before it gets cold, then do the grand tour?
"Sure. C'mon." The words were half-buried under a snort of amusement, half swallowed by a smile she couldn't quite ward off. It was amazing; how easy it was to talk. How welcome it was, to have someone to talk to. They proceeded through the slow-waking halls, dull blue yielding to amber, conversation an eager hopscotch of history and hopes.
He had faded from the military after the war sputtered to its inglorious conclusion. Had taken odd jobs wherever he could find them and, in between the new demands of a life decoupled from the service, had spent his share of Charon's riches on the sorts of things that needed new warning labels invented for their users and new branches of medicine invented for their recipients. She did not ask after the purposes to which they had been bent. It was a familiar well in their conversation, and avoiding it now was as comfortable a part of their acquaintance as his shadow at her shoulder. Part of their friendship had always been a mutual agreement to silence and she found that she slipped back into the tradition like an old coat. There were some scars at which one did not pick.
So they talked of happier things.
She had spent her share on several prolonged stints out of Curacao, secure in the golden embrace of a Spa and Cruise liner, watching the aurora dance over Iridescencia. Had kept her hand in, more out of interest than obligation, with the motley collection of pop-up shipwrights and repair shops that came and went on the Barrier with all the regularity of the seasons. Had tried; despite all natural talent working in defiance of it, to learn to draw and had enjoyed enough success to have a sketch of a flowerpot displayed in the corner of a marketplace cafe for six months before the cafe's creditors rolled in and a hypnotainment den rose in its place. Had made dozens of acquaintances but very few real friends. The churn of liner passengers and freelance pilots that moved in her circles did not produce opportunities for intimacy. She had liked it. Had enjoyed; initially, the chance to be no-one again.
"But, you know. It was hardly the Galley." Less gut-wrenching terror, for one. Less wonder, too. She'd found herself missing the latter more than she feared the former, ever since Gate administration found an empty account where they'd expected a lease payment. "Sold up the ship shares I still had to make things right for a while. Leslie was leasing her as a cargo-runner to some Freelancers out in the Taus and bought them back up. Think she was happy to have the ship all her own again. I offered her a place back here as well, but -"
But she was happily retired. Happily living off the proceeds of several neatly-managed freighters. Had been, for all her talk, thoroughly, ruthlessly practical in her stewardship of the haul of a lifetime, rather than splurging on indulgence and ignorance. She had been delighted to point this all out in a way that would have chafed coming from anyone else but, from her, had left Sarah feeling about two decades younger and a good deal shorter. "She politely declined. Said to give you her best though."
The corridors unwound, elevators and cheerfully mislabeled wings.
"Here's us." Her quarters - She still thought of them as her quarters - Were something extravagant, something ethereal. All the luxury that untraceable currency and a willingness to spend it could provide. Manhattan-signature art-deco made haphazard by the mover's crates clustered in the corners, scarred by the outlines on the walls where screens had hung, rectangles of discolouration on the crisp white frozen like the shadows of an atomic blast. The skylight stretched across the entirety of the roof; the spiralling haze of the Barrier close in a way that had, the first night she had spent here, set vacuum sirens rasping in the back of her skull. There was still a fridge; still a too-large couch that she'd folded out for the first time in years as soon as James had said yes. She'd dressed it with sheets that had still been fresh in the plastic. She introduced him to both.
"It's a little sparse, but -" She let it hang. I hope you like it, still."-It's just for a few days, until we get things cleared up on the ship."
She surprised herself, at how easily the we slipped from her lips. Sarah retreated to the kitchen bench with the styrofoam case, left James space to tend the contents of his bag with at least the pretence of privacy. She retrieved a pair of bowls, the ceramic all but weightless in the apartment's dialled-down gravity and upended still-steaming boxes into them. The presentation did not, at least, worsen whatever meagre virtues the noodles had possessed.
She ferried both bowls and chopsticks, perched herself on the edge of the fold-out; legs folded under her. "Sorry. Table got taken before I got back and got the account sorted."
It had hardly seemed worth the effort to arrange a replacement. She'd been taking most of her meals on Windward, ever since she'd settled with the wreckers to haul the ship back to life. Had hardly subscribed to station-standard hours since, much less station-standard dining.
"Wanted to get your take on it, actually." She said, finally. There were a hundred other, more important questions burning at her; but there were uncomfortable warnings flashing up whenever she turned her attention on them. She'd dared far enough, hadn't she? Luck had treated her too kindly to push too far. "Where we go, next. Border Worlds was the notion, but - Who, what - I'm still puzzling out."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
James could never be sure what other people meant, exactly, when they implied something to the effect of "living well." To him, it meant being - for lack of a better term - squared away. Neatly organized necessities taken apart, arranged just so, inspected, attended, put back together, then out of sight. Rinse and repeat.
A place to rest your head and belongings. Belongings were expendable, and as a result, few. Enough to eat. Space enough for at least, privacy, or something close enough to it. The ability to pick up, move, and settle into the restless routine of going somewhere else.
There was only one item, one truly non-negotiable bulletpoint, placed just under the header in a blocky red-letter font ahead of everything else:
JADE.
The artificial intelligence instance embedded within the byzantine computing architecture that comprised his hardsuit's "spine". Once, a whole. This one, alone. James still, in silence, hoped that he could do more for her than keep her alive, functional.
An obligation she'd never asked of him, a debt he'd shouldered without question.
What Sarah would consider "living well", was becoming very clear with every second he spent in her penthouse, he'd stopped briefly just beyond the doors just to soak it in.
The Barrier's deep, swirling shades of blues and purples bathed the space, gently hushed the walls, strung soft contrasts in shadows from what remained of the decor. The world was cast in a light that tolerated everything save for unease. Even the packed up boxes looked like they were about to contentedly sigh.
He quietly told Sarah the place was lovely, and this had been sincere. He was almost grateful for the disarray of a move, however.
Hearing that Leslie was doing well was heartening. Satisfying, in the way only a welcome lack of a surprise could be, because Leslie had done something neither he nor Sarah had managed:
Leslie had thought long term.
Once upon a time, she'd tried convincing James to stop and think, suggesting -
His eyes followed Sarah a little longer than he might have intended as she bounced off towards the kitchen part of the space. Her loping walk transitioned into the barely-there gravity like she'd been born in it.
- suggesting none too subtly that he'd be much better off, if he stopped charging at windmills.
He hadn't listened, of course.
While Sarah busies herself - James decides to set down his bags - and begins the process of wrenching himself out of the suit. It's an ungainly array of seals, seams and careful balancing acts - but each motion is as economical and thoughtless as a manufacturing robot, and he's got the entire sequence down to about thirty seconds. It used to take minutes. By the time Sarah can return, he's already on the deck - fatigue pants and a thin black zip-up closed all the way to the throat. The shell he'd extricated himself from remains standing, still supported by its own frame - cradling the front chestplate rigidly. When Sarah perches on the foldout, he does the same along the opposite end. Accepts the proffered bowl, and jabs the chopsticks into it as he considers the question. Forced himself to just pick at the noodles. If he didn't, they'd be scarfed down with the complete disregard only a chow hall can teach.
"Border Worlds is probably for the best. Don't really care that all that much about who exactly we do business with, though-" His brows pinch a fraction. "Maybe keep away from House eyes, if we can? I don't believe they'll pay me much mind, but on the off chance a database flags something, I'd like to avoid anybody coming to knock. I have only one dealbreaker- " The tone does not brook even the faintest possibility of argument. "No Gauls." He moves on before the statement has time to linger.
"Other than that, I say we just pick a direction, pick a contract and start burning fuel. I'm guessing you have an idea of what Windward is best rigged for. I could help sniff something out," He skewers a tiny piece of green onion on the end of one of the sticks as he considers. "If you don't have anything lined up? I did live here a while." He avoids mentioning that anybody he used to work for while he was running freelance - mug's game, that - was probably already dead, awful, or out of business. But it was about as good a shot as he had - one way or another he was going to help.
A third voice chimes in, smooth and melodious, piping out from the collar of the incomplete mannequin hovering nearby.
"No. There are better uses for James than that, Captain." James shoots the motionless suit a look. She didn't usually gainsay him with a flat no. And, 'Captain'. She wasn't wrong, exactly. But he had the suspicion she was just trying to be funny again. He blinked, waited for it.
"He could do with some exercise. There is only one thing every shipyard that issues a Dunlin iteration agrees on. After retrofit, inspect visually, and in detail."
It was like seeing a dog without its coat, a beetle without its carapace. A patient iridescent thing. There would have been a time when it would have been a delight to circle the suit, to crawl over relays and servos, to match, point by painful point, supposition to reality.
Now she found it left her uncomfortable in a way she struggled to describe. The way it loomed patient and sharp as a scalpel, the way the surface of it seemed to devour light. There was some visceral part of her that twisted at the sight of it, uncomfortably sharp and inherently wrong, like exposed bone.
She had seen it before, of course. Dozens of times. But always, it had been James beneath it. Always, a smile or the warm crackle of a commset to soften the violence of it. Always, an addendum to James. A brutal one, certainly, but alone; devoid of the man, all that remained was the brutality.
She tried to ignore it.
It felt like ignoring a guillotine. She found she was tapping the points of her chopsticks together. She made herself look at James instead. Admitted, she had had to make do with far less welcome distractions.
"Right. Was thinking the same, on the Houses. Just - Cleaner, that way. Fewer databases. Fewer chances." Fewer cameras, fewer identity-checks, fewer chances for the fangs of yesteryear to rise up at a routine port call. That she could avoid the uncomfortable ache in her chest whenever Manhattan drifted by her viewport was mere coincidence. "Comes with its own messiness, though. Windward's not as proven as I'd like. Be nice to be somewhere someone'll hear, at least for a spell, if we blow a switchboard."
She listened as James outlined his options. She'd lived here, too. Knew the chances that his contracts were still breathing, findable, and friendly all at once were about as likely as summertime snow. Appreciated the effort, all the same.
"Uh-huh. Actually, thought maybe we could look to Pennsylvania. It's a little rockier than usual out there, and there's plenty of folks looking to -"
The suit talked.
She froze. It was a soft, lilting voice, remarkable only in how utterly unremarkable it was. She had heard its siblings in the recitations of a dozen flight computers, a hundred datapads. She had not heard it coming from her own living room. It was a chilling experience. Like a stranger had just stepped from behind the curtain.
She had heard of JADE. It had been impossible not to aboard the Galley. But it had always been at a comfortable remove, always someone else speaking of the AI. Never the system addressing her directly. Always some discussion of what it could do - And it could do a lot. Telemetry and trajectories, system monitoring and shutdown. Faultfinding and fixing. Targets and intercepts.
She remembered Leslie hankering after her own version for the ship and had been quietly relieved that it never came to pass. It would have been easier, of course. But that ship's systems had been hers. She'd come to know every flicker of that power grid like she knew the blood in her veins. Had known by the whine of the pumps and the heat of the coils when she was sick. Had known the weight of her; how she could turn, what would stretch her limits and what would break them. It would have felt too much like an invasion. Too much like -
Too much like finding a stranger in her house.
"It's listening?" The words clawed their own way out unbidden. Made blunt by surprise, a bluntness that she regretted as soon as it left her; a flicker of colour rising to her cheeks. She swallowed a mouthful of noodles with all the grace of a wayward rhinoceros and tried to recover. This was James' - Ally? Partner? She didn't even know what to call it. Didn't know where it fit.
The remark made James' face contort a fraction, as though actually hurt. It's gone as quickly as it appeared, but just for a heartbeat he'd looked like he was about to retort with something sharp. "Yeah, she is. I'm sorry, it's…" He pauses, as though trying to decide on something. "She's been with me for so long I plain forget she's there." He turns his light frown back to JADE. Trying to look in the eye of something that didn't visibly have any. "That's no excuse to not mind your manners, alright?" Silence, save for the cheery wink of a hairpin status light off the wrist. "Good enough," he grouses, around a pinch of noodles.
"Right." A release of breath. It wasn't comfortable, not by a long shot, but James' ease was catching. She'd done long hauls of her own, hadn't she? Had talked to things she had less reason to expect a reply from than James did from JADE. She told herself that was enough.
"It's fine. I- She's not wrong, though. Trials to be done, before we sail. Still need to spin up generation and propulsion. Could do worse than to have a second set of eyes when that comes, if you're offering. After that, figured we could make a start out Pennsylvania way, then clear house space for a while once we know her legs are good." A slow circle, traced with the point of a chopstick. "Could be a while before we're back. Have anywhere that needs seeing, before we go?"
There is a sudden tightening in the air, and James' prior ease disappears - freezes in the line of his shoulders. The bowl is, gingerly, set aside, after a moment. A reflexive stroke of a thumb, around a discolored patch of skin, a band circling his index finger. There's not just the one. A strange pattern of the little blotches - like a sunburn, almost - lined each joint on each finger.
"In a sense," he finally says, and James does not quite meet Sarah's eye. "Yes, I think there is a place I should see. I think-" The words trickle to a slow staccato, as though each was a costly effort. "You should maybe see it too. It might- You'd be doing me favor."
She'd stilled. It was impossible not to in the face of that chill. "Where's that, James?"
"Leeds," Terse and dense. Pain condensed into a single syllable, still as fresh as an open wound. "It would explain, a lot more than I can."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
The Marauder touched the pad with remarkable gentleness for a machine of its size. Sarah paused in the cockpit for a stiff moment, as though the shutdown sequences were something foreign to her. Finally she moved, lines and lights, intakes and exhausts. The woman scarcely less mechanical in her motion than the devices that surrounded her.
A cheerful chirp from the datapad in her hand as it devoured the contents of the fighter's log.
Some things you didn't leave on the landing pad.
Loading Attachment(s)…
8360427.txt
Code:
James Arland: And... There.
James Arland: I think that should suffice, as far as private sector comms gear goes.
Sarah McFarlen: "Hi." Her voice, made tiny by compression, made tinier still by the cheap flight-suit.
Sarah McFarlen: "You think someone's still listening in." An amused exhalation, marred by static. "This far down, they deserve it."
James Arland: "Ah, don't mind that. I'm just a- creature of habit."
Sarah McFarlen: "Like a bird's a creature of the air."
Sarah McFarlen: But, there was warmth in the jab. A pause. "Sure you still want to do this?"
James Arland: "I-" There's a hiss that might have been an intake of air.
James Arland: "I really should try, or so I keep being told."
James Arland: "Not *going* there, I mean. I do that enough. Explaining. Talking about it."
Sarah McFarlen: A lenghty pause, not entirely attributable to the ship's slipshod comms. The solid, mechanical /click/ of a switch. "Okay."
James Arland: There's something mechanical in the way he says. "Form up, please. Shortest route is through Tau."
Sarah McFarlen: "Want to -" She slipped into silence, as the comms crackled. The reply was as casual as his was regimented; "On it."
Sarah McFarlen: "God, it's been years since I was in something like this. For more than a handful of minutes, anyway."
James Arland: "I haven't had much use for this thing as much else as a runabout between odd jobs. I'm not a- Fantastic pilot."
James Arland: "But she's kept me alive well enough, and that's all I ask."
James Arland: "Jump hole here is a bit rough."
Sarah McFarlen: "Really?" There was a note of genuine surprise there. "I would've thought they covered that."
Sarah McFarlen: "You know. Knives, pistols, spaceships. The triumvia- Hrk." A brief, stomach-lurching swallow, as the jump point yawned wide.
James Arland: "I've had a varied education."
James Arland: "But this was never quite my - hm. Passion. If that is something one can describe the portfolio as."
James Arland: "Eyes open out here. Spotted a Corsair running about earlier."
Sarah McFarlen: "Good a word as any. Take what comes, I suppose." A pause. "Where /did/ you go to school, anyway? Never talked on -"
Sarah McFarlen: "-Gotcha. Eyes out." A drum of her console. Two fingers, in something like salute.
James Arland: "Military Academy on New London, after high school. You won't be surprised to know, it kind of ran in the family."
Sarah McFarlen: "Did you like it?"
James Arland: "Yes, but I also quickly realized it was not a matter of what I *liked*. Not really."
James Arland: "Mood, as they say, is a thing for cattle, love and the like. For me, it became something I felt like I was *meant* to do."
James Arland: "And I *did*."
James Arland: "Leeds never was a very pretty system. The smog clouds, I think have been here for generations. It doesn't look-"
James Arland: "So different, from the way it's always been, from here."
Sarah McFarlen: The pause echoed down the channel, her face obscured by rebreather and visor. "Just like that."
Sarah McFarlen: And, a shake of her head, as if to clear it; as the contact list populated itself.
Sarah McFarlen: "Yep. Never had much cause to pass through, before - You know. Even less, afterwards."
James Arland: "Let's get-" ...This over with, is swallowed back.
James Arland: "Let's get a closer look."
Sarah McFarlen: "Let's." A swallow, a crackle.
Sarah McFarlen: Her fingers moved across the console. The debris, pinged ceaselessly by uncomprehending electronic eyes. Unrecognisable.
Sarah McFarlen: No matches. Another sweep.
James Arland: "Debris field from Stokes station out here. Just one of many orbital industries that were destroyed in their totality,"
James Arland: "When the Gauls withdrew. They burned everything they could get their hands on. Imagine that - they did all this because,"
James Arland: "They *lost*."
James Arland: "Reconstruction is going nowhere particularly fast, I hear."
Sarah McFarlen: A softer crackle, marked only for a whispered curse by the cadence of it. "Just - Stupid. Senseless. It's - Yeah."
Sarah McFarlen: "Newer problems all around. Always and ever."
James Arland: "I overheard one of the crew on Durham talk about this place as, a highway built on top of a mass grave. Doesn't feel right-"
James Arland: "Referring to it all in those terms, not even after this much time."
Sarah McFarlen: A hollow laugh. There was no humour in it. "Not making me feel great about our flight path, James."
James Arland: "Well..."
Sarah McFarlen: "...God." The word, whispered. "You can see the craters."
James Arland: "I hate to say it. But it is not about to get any better."
James Arland: "Check your scopes. You should be seeing a lot of EM signatures. They're maintained this way deliberately."
Sarah McFarlen: She already was; though the steady trickle of sensor data reached down towards the planet's surface, rather than the monuments.
Sarah McFarlen: Climate readouts, radioactive clouds, cobalt-blast residue. "...Uninhabitable." She breathed. A shudder, as the helmet shook,
Sarah McFarlen: one side to the other.
Sarah McFarlen: "The -" Disbelief. The /what?/ The spite? The effort, expended on such idle destruction.
James Arland: A long, mechanical inhale. "I would have liked to say, 'it happened so fast.'"
James Arland: "It took days."
Sarah McFarlen: "You were here? When it -"
James Arland: "Yes."
James Arland: "If you look along the- well, what used to be western continent on your topological projection... There's a cluster of-"
James Arland: "Arcologies. Enormous industrial and residential complexes, essentially, and that's where my brigade deployed."
Sarah McFarlen: The sweep of scanners. A soft, shocked; "There's nothing left of them."
James Arland: "Yeah. I'm alive due to, what boils down to, the vagaries of *how* our force was deployed - my battalion, the one I led..."
James Arland: "Was on the outer edge facing north, along the border wastes. Containing a push across them from one of the more distant-"
Sarah McFarlen: She listened; made faceless by the helmet, made silent by the feedback-filter.
James Arland: "Complexes held by the enemy, was our main job, for a good long while. When the siege of New London broke..."
James Arland: "We had pushed out, a good distance from civilization, and when the first cobalt nuke went off..."
James Arland: "We were in the middle of staging an assault of our own."
James Arland: "Our original goal had simply been to create a foothold for exploitation."
Sarah McFarlen: "Lucky." Though, by the twist in tone, the sentiment fitted didn't quite fit in the skin it had been given.
Sarah McFarlen: *sentiment didn't quite fit
James Arland: There's another gathering of nerve.
James Arland: "You have to understand, we couldn't *stay* out there. Sure, we might not get instantly turned to vapor."
James Arland: "But the radiation would get us within days, if we didn't make it underground, to a shelter, *any* shelter!"
Sarah McFarlen: A bob of her head. Here was something like familiar ground. "Poison. No surer sort. Where'd you go?"
James Arland: There's a rising desperation there, now, an echo of the past.
James Arland: "I told them we were *completing our assault*. There was nowhere else to *go.* Threw everything and everyone who could move-"
Sarah McFarlen: She leaned a little closer to the camera; an awkward shuffling in the tight-packed cockpit. Some ungainly, make-pretend
Sarah McFarlen: -simulacrum for proximity.
James Arland: "Under their own power into it, and... We did make it that far. We killed every one of the bastards in our way, any of them-"
James Arland: "Who hadn't already picked up sticks for their own evacuations. They couldn't nuke it all *at once.*"
James Arland: "Took their dugouts, basements, makeshift shelters, whatever they had, for our own - what little was left of us."
James Arland: "By the time the assault had all culminated - I had maybe a third of my number left."
James Arland: "It wasn't the end."
James Arland: "No, it wasn't even the worst part."
Sarah McFarlen: Still, she listened. A crackle, not entirely attributable to the transmission. "What happened?"
James Arland: Something resembling a hollow laugh. Choked.
James Arland: "Happened?"
James Arland: "Oh, nothing *happened*. We did *nothing*."
James Arland: "We waited. Hid. For days. Wondering which of the flashes and quakes would finally, finally get us."
James Arland: "And over the time I spent hunkered in a cellar. Watching my Geiger counter tick, up, up up, more and more, by the hour-"
James Arland: "We dwindled. Not every hole we could find was created equal."
Sarah McFarlen: A pause. The slow-dawning horror. She worked with drives. Shields and fields, the feeble, man-made protection from that
Sarah McFarlen: certain, creeping-sickness that rotted bodies from the cells on up. Yes. She knew. She could imagine.
James Arland: "At first it was the wounded. Those with compromised suits. The civilians we found - oh, they had no personal protection gear."
James Arland: "We'd tried, you know? Put them in the best protected places we could find, but- But, it was no good when atmo started to *go.*
Sarah McFarlen: "God." She breathed.
James Arland: "I did what I could. Ordered what I could. Scavenge scrubbers, filters, meds, from those who couldn't use them anymore."
James Arland: "I could count the ones I had left on two hands when I was confident enough there wasn't more coming."
Sarah McFarlen: "So few."
James Arland: "I had started the deployment with about eight hundred."
Sarah McFarlen: "You -" A rattle, an exhalation. "-You did what you could. Saved who you could."
James Arland: "It'll never feel that way."
Sarah McFarlen: "It won't."
James Arland: "...That's all there's to the story, as far as I lived it. I fired up an emergency beacon when I figured we were clear, and to-
James Arland: "Give them due credit, the folks in orbit were quick on the scene. I was terrified nobody was there, couldn't hear it through-"
James Arland: "The electromagnetic interference."
James Arland: "Thanks. For listening, I mean- I've- I've told this to maybe two people so far."
James Arland: "Including you."
Sarah McFarlen: "What're friends for?" A pause. "I'm sorry. Wasn't there then. Wasn't here sooner."
James Arland: "Don't, don't, trust me, you didn't want to have to deal with me back then. I was a mess."
James Arland: "And definitely do not apologize for not having been here when it happened."
James Arland: "I'm glad you weren't."
Sarah McFarlen: A shifting of flightsuit, an attempt to rub at her nose, neatly obstructed by faceplate. "I'm glad you made it."
James Arland: "I tell myself, that if at least one person thinks that much - it's enough."
James Arland: James terminates his topological display, maneuvers his vessel facing away from this *thing* that happened here.
Sarah McFarlen: "It's - Hard, to get your head around." She said, finally. "A ship. A family. A - Household. That's okay. That -"
Sarah McFarlen: "-Fits. Sort-of. A whole /planet./"
James Arland: "I don't want to think about-"
Sarah McFarlen: "I don't understand it. How someone could give that order. How someone could follow it."
Sarah McFarlen: The ship hung, still, in silence. "A lot to - Yeah." Another brief, resigned crackle.
James Arland: "I meant to say," A huff of annoyance at the distraction. "I don't want to think about all the other stories running in-"
James Arland: "Parallel to that me and mine did. Within the next five klicks. Ten. A hundred?"
Sarah McFarlen: "It's too much. Doesn't - It doesn't fit."
James Arland: "And if I ever get the opportunity to *ask* who made the call..."
James Arland: "I am actually, very curious. To hear them explain."
Sarah McFarlen: "Think they'd be one? An explanation."
Sarah McFarlen: *there'd be one?
James Arland: "I somehow hope there is. Not a justification, but at least a - line of reasoning."
James Arland: "Something that isn't a *petty, kneejerk* decision made by a panicking junior officer shoved into a seat too big for them."
James Arland: "And again, if I had the opportunity, I would kill them for it no matter what the answer was. But I would at least have liked-"
James Arland: "To hear it."
Sarah McFarlen: "It'd be -" She hovered, disgusted, over /nice./ "-Something, at least. Some - Rationale."
Sarah McFarlen: She stiffened, ever-so-slight, at the casualness with which James administered his hypothetical execution.
Sarah McFarlen: "Back to Coronado?" She said, finally.
James Arland: "Sure."
James Arland: "I'll - I'll be thankful, to stop coming back here."
"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."
- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.
