The email arrived on my Twinnon Peregrine, through the address I had reserved for fan mail. This one was marked as priority, wreathed in blue highlights, apart from the others.
Polity was on their handheld, sitting with their head against my shoulder, tabbing between buffer entertainment and news stories about their art piece. Media outlets from Fingermarsh, Therevatti to Station 8, Mercury were reporting on it.
“Brightsail’s calling it ‘an act of terrorism,’ an act of terrorism!” Polity had said, “Oscar, baby, I’ve graduated!” They were elated, practically jumping for joy. “I’m an interstellar art terrorist now! My CV is gonna fuck!”
I asked them what that meant for their future.
“I have no idea!” They replied. “ Mre bounties, maybe? I don’t know!”
“You’ll have to change all your business cards,” I said. Polity straddled me and planted a kiss on my forehead. We both cheered towards the ceiling, only hushing when our upstairs neighbor thumped back in reply.
That had been a week ago. I watched the notification in silence. The distant crack of rocket a barrage made Polity jump--shook powder from the ceiling. In the silence that followed, they noticed I hadn’t moved. Polity looked at me, concerned before I’d even said a word.
“Oscar? You okay?” they asked. “I don’t think we got hit. Something spook ya?”
The email was from the Duke of New Caledonia. The display popped out content warnings from the message like branches from a tree. Marked: “personal threat, announced intentions, this account has been previously flagged.” A trashcan icon stood beside it, without ceremony. With all the effort of extending a finger, I could obliterate whatever he had sent my way without reading a single word.
“The Duke?” Polity asked. “That fucking guy? You filtered him, right?”
“I did,” I replied, “but… the intelligence thinks I might need to see this.”
“Oscar,” Polity said, resting the tips of their fingers against my wrist. “I know you know this, but you don’t have to look.”
I gave them a small smile. “Just a quick glance. Maybe we can make fun of it?”
“Yeah,” Polity said, their face between expressions. “Maybe.”
I opened the email. This is what it said:
To my unfortunately absent Sommelier and Dining Companion, Oscar Yasui.
I hope you find yourself quite well. I have been busy these last few months with a great deal of housekeeping. Your departure created quite a stir both within the walls of my villa and in the community beyond. Such was the uproar, that to my surprise, a number of individuals within my social circles saw fit to inquire about the welfare of my person. Casual acquaintances all, I assure you.
Now, through all this noise and flash, through this kerfuffle of my estate, you might think that I had forgotten our last interaction. I ask that you offer me the credit of understanding, and that you picture the difficulty one might experience in the Martian small hours, lying awake on silken sheets, breast too alight with dissatisfaction to find much succor in the dreams a great man may have.
Your adventures are quite well known to me. But for some time I have deigned to be the better man and trusted the justice system to deliver you back to my estate. That was, until, I received a rather odd missive.
“Saints be lost, get on with it,” Polity breathed.
At first, I dismissed it as some sort of gauche solicitation. In fact, I would have discarded it that very moment, had my hand not been twisted by the whim of fate and rage. Yes, you see, through your slanderous bit of audio faff, I recognized him instantly as Mr. Ungerson.
“Oh,” I said aloud. Polity’s nails dug into my forearm.
As I should have expected, he isn’t nearly the villain you make him out to be. In fact, he was more than helpful in reminding me of the damage you had done to my reputation, to my person, to my station on Mars. Through our correspondence, he illustrated, rather rudely I might add, that since you were on Le Straud, I could collect you at any time. And so, once you receive this message, you will be blessed to know that myself, a gaggle of my new servants, and a frankly obscene number of rough fellows have rented a deck of the railship Singular Devotion--and we are traveling, with a speed that the light of the stars might envy…
to you.
In that instant, all the humidity of Therevatti’s atmosphere failed to keep my mouth from going dry. The email continued.
I will see you in just a handful of months. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to toast your name each night in the company of the Captain’s Hearth and its very best meals. You will find, soon, I think, that the planet Le Straud can be very small for a man of my generosity, of my means, and of my unwavering devotion to settling accounts.
Until then, my Sommelier.
The Duke of New Caledonia, Mars.
“Saints,” Polity said. They glanced to me, to the small bag we always left packed near the door. Their pupils shook as they ran some calculation. When they spoke again, Polity’s voice was a whisper, “we’re fucked.”
I’m Oscar Yasui, formerly a professional food critic, currently an independent food journalist, and you’re listening to Gastronaut.
Ungerson had told the Duke where we were, that much was certain. And now he and his bounty hunters were making a railship journey to our front doorstep. We had months before he would arrive, but where could we run to? Therevatti was the only developed world in the system. And…
After Polity’s hijacking of Brightsail’s ode to Astra Dominus, Pacheco had transformed. A week after, I took a walk near the outskirts, sticking to jungle paths and the furthest edge of the settled spaces. I didn’t chance going any further. Listeners, do you remember when I met Green Eyes, for the first time? A lone mercenary putting me at gunpoint on the roadside? Those days were gone. Now mercenaries walked in quartets. Every unpaved mud road bore the tread of military vehicles, the deep mold of battledress sabatons. I had to work to find the once ever present ribbons of bicycle tires.
Slabs of heavy metals stood where Pacheco’s gate’s once opened to admit workers and vacationers. Each barrier was crowned with industrial grade hydraulic actuators, which only ever opened to admit entering or exiting patrols. Crowds had gathered a few days after the gate went up, Therevattin commuters red faced in the rain, shouting up at traffic control. Holding signs that, taken in aggregate, could be summarized as indignation that the entire community had been collectively fired by sixty one centimeters of armored wall.
On my walk there were no protestors. A few crumpled, rain-soaked signs melted slowly in the gutters. Burned spewgas canisters poked up from the mud like steel carrots, noxious and hollow. Rooftops bore the blackened and twisted frames of intercepted rockets, fired from somewhere in the hills. A house or two had burned down, resolidified plastic siding spilling out into the streets like so much tallow. The Pacheco walls themselves stood marred only by the rain–neither pigment nor plastic explosive could touch them.
I ended that walk early, retreating from the skin prickle of Brightsail’s UV searchlights, otherwise imperceptible to the senses. I found I had to fight my way through the underbrush now, its coils and fronds had achieved a choking pervasiveness. Entire roads had been swallowed by it. Distant settlements were cut off, some starving. Empty Jelly Pear cradles, browned nests of robbed thorns, dangled like forlorn Christmas ornaments. The endless harvest had consequences, and now without Jelly Pears to limit growth, the jungle surged in every direction, a faction all its own.
The Duke was coming, but how could we escape? The Pau Pau Starport was inside the Blue Zone–there wasn’t any way of getting off-world locally. The roads to Therevatti’s other starports were clogged with vegetation while Brightsail patrols and guerilla fighters snapped and snarled at each other, circling beneath the coil.
So, is it any wonder that we reached out to Grac au Mao?
I do think Dain saw the desperation in our eyes. He even poured us a drink.
“You look pretty miserable for a man who got exactly what he wants,” Polity said, nursing their liquor. I drank mine greedily. The alcohol aisle at the corner shops had been experiencing a shortage.
“And what did I get?” Dain asked.
“We watch the news, Dain,” Polity said.
“And um,” I spoke without thinking, but when Dain turned to me, his face seemed to lack his usual hostility.
“Go on, kid,” he said.
“Well, we can look out the window--or hear you fighting,” I finished. Dain’s eyebrows furrowed, just a touch.
“Isn’t always us you hear shooting. The jungle’s getting crowded, and it isn’t just the fucking foliage.”
“But,” Polity cut in, “you got your revolution. You’ve got your war.” Dain snorted at the word war. Poured himself another. Paused. Then made it a double.
“Lah-tahp,” Dain said, his voice a rumble. “What I’ve got, my… ‘war’ as you put it, won’t last four months. Sol, Cassiopeia, whatever, has sounded the horns of judgment. Military Railships are blueshifting like the devil himself to make our acquaintance.”
“Then we have something in common,” I said. Dain didn’t look up from his drink.
“A food critic and an artist are gonna to get a strike force up their ass?” Dain smiled, then laughed. But he didn’t laugh for long.
“Oh, yeah. The bounty. Or bounties. Slipped my mind.
Dain looked me in the eyes, looked away. Listeners, I like to think I saw the smallest flicker of sympathy there. “Shove it, spacer, you can’t stay here with us. Things are only going to heat up outside Pacheco, and besides, I’m not sure how long I can convince everyone that turning the two of you in isn’t worth the Nu on your heads,” he pointed to the cave’s exit.
Polity emptied their glass and turned it upside down. There was a sharp rap as it touched the table top.
“We know you have something cooking with Glory Ten. We know you’ve planned for reinforcements. We want in,” Polity said.
“Please,” I added.
Dain opened his mouth to speak, but Polity cut in too quickly for him to react, “don’t start. I know what you were looking for in Henry’s Crossing. I know about the Lea te Suldan strike.”
It was Dain’s turn to swallow the remains of his glass, to invert it and rest his hand atop. “And how would you know that?”
“I’m sure you can guess,” Polity said. They kept their face hard. Well, that’s what Dain got for letting someone like Polity develop his software bugs. To our surprise, a wry smile cracked across Dain’s features.
“Fine. I could use an extra pair of hands, and both of you have bled for the cause, willingly or otherwise.” He gestured to Polity, “I’ll need you for some tech work, obviously, but this time you’ll have to ride out on the road with us. And uh, kid,” here he pointed to me, joints relaxed with uncertainty, “well, we don’t exactly need anymore pears picked.”
“But you do need them concentrated, right?” I exchanged a glance with Polity. They shrugged.
“The Jelly Pears,” I said, suppressing a little jolt of smug satisfaction. “I was on the picking crew, I’m sure you remember. You haven’t sold a single one of them, you’re just letting them rot in a bin. Which means you want their tissues to break down and for the toxins to develop over time. You’re making something with them--I can help with that.”
Dain crossed his arms, leaned back, “And how could you possibly help Grac au Mao?” he asked.
“I worked the beverage beat for Palladium,” I said. “I mean, I ended up on the restaurant track for… personal reasons, but before that I did a number of deep dives on hard spirits.” Concern flashed on Polity’s face, but I plowed ahead, “I went the extra mile. I actually got a number of crash courses in distillation, among a few other uh… kickbacks.”
“That’s… wonderful Oscar, I’m really happy for you,” Dain drawled.
“And!” I said, “in all my research on Jelly Pears for uh,” I paused my babbling, not wanting to mention the podcast. Dain raised his eyebrow. “a– a project I’m working on, I found a number of old recipes that explain, in great detail, the exact concentration of Jelly Pear juice you don’t want to serve your guests or family. And included, is well, all the techniques you should avoid. To make poison. So I know how to make poison. And also some really excellent meringue pies.”
Polity snorted, Dain looked aside, red faced with embarrassment, but the curl of his smile remained.
“Fine. I’ll give you the details in a few days. Get some rest before then, because I’m going to put the two of you into the mud,” He again pointed to the door.
“Now go. You’re guzzling my Grassus ‘58.”
Dain promised he’d put us in the mud, and he did.
A few weeks ago, Polity and I had sat down for dinner in our apartment. Sliced fruit, Sweet potato pancakes on chipped dinnerware, honey, sour cream, and chili sauce in reused takeout containers. An easy meal. Polity barely ate it, regardless. Choosing instead to push their portion around their plate.
“You okay?” I asked. Polity’s arm slowed to a stop, with a ringing scrape of their plate.
“Just thinking about something,” they replied. When our eyes met, I saw they seemed a bit wetter.
“About Dain’s plan, yeah? Relay Five?” Dain had given us both briefing files on the attack. We couldn’t take them home with us, but we had good memories.
“The gas,” Polity said, pushing their plate a few inches towards me. “Want an extra pancake?”
“Maybe later, I’m still working on mine,” I said. The overlay Dain had shown us was a gradient, yellow to orange, an open sore of hot chroma positioned with the relay, and its staff of twelve, dead center. The intent, as we understood it, was to kill them all with gas. I dipped my pancake in its sauce.. “I’m…” I began. I stopped when I caught Polity tensing across the table.
“I’m not surprised. I know you don’t want your code to kill anyone.”
“Grac au Mao was going to use it anyway,” Polity said, under their breath, “basically took charge of it the second you plugged it into their servers. They’ll use my program to trick the mercenaries to cycle their filters and force an exchange failure. Only way to get the gas under their chemical protection, right?” they frowned. “No such thing as clean when you party in mud.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I said.
I reached across the table and took their hand.
“Maybe…” I swallowed. Polity searched my face with their eyes, lips parted ever so slightly.
“Maybe you can’t stop yourself from getting muddy, I don’t know. This…” I gave them a smile. “I’ve had to learn a lot of this cloak and dagger stuff on the job, so to speak.”
“Oscar?” Polity said. “I don’t really think I’m in the mood for jokes.”
“Okay,” I raised my hands. “Then I’ll say it: nobody has to die.”
“How?” Polity asked, they took their hand away from mine. “You’re going to mess with the recipe?”
I did not reply. Polity held a hand to their mouth.
“Oscar,” they said, “ that could get you kicked off the operation. It could get you-”
“Stop,” I said, “please. We’re in this together. If you wrote the code that made the mercenaries vulnerable, then I delivered it. If your code opens the vents on their suits, then my gas is what they’re going to be breathing,”
I kept my palm facing the ceiling, motioned towards Polity with my fingers.
“It’s all in the dose. The cookbooks I dredged up to talk about fairy wraps, Polity, the original settlers got downright obsessive with Jelly Pear recipes.” I wasn’t lying; Jelly Pears were the closest thing on Therevatti to fugu. Maybe not as immediately deadly, but make enough wrong moves in the kitchen and one day, you could wake up blind..
“There isn’t any way you can adjust the dosage to paralyze everyone without killing them,” Polity said.
“No,” I shook my head, “but we can give them a better chance than what Grac au Mao is offering. We can do things our way.”
Polity took my hand and kissed it. I pulled their arm back across the table and kissed theirs.
“Okay, Oscar,” they exhaled and the guilt in their limbs abated. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Of course, Polity,” I said. I pointed a fork at their stack of potato pancakes. “You still want to give me one?”
“Fuck no,” they said, guarding their plate with close-fingered palms, “I’m starving.”
We laughed. It felt like we had something to laugh about. It felt like our choice was the right one. So abstract. Risky, but at least we were in the right. It was an easy thing to be right.
Weeks later, that sense of determination hadn’t faded, even as I shimmied through the low squeeze of the cavern entryway, so smeared in mud, that I needed to use the little hose the guerillas had left off to the side for cleaning. I held a fan of water to each nook of my body, feeling the dull tingle of my neck scar as I did. When I approached the armored door, I had no chip to present. I stood, squelching in my shoes, eyes half-lidded before the entryway.
“Hey,” I said, (sarcastically) filled to bursting with joy.
The locks slid aside, and I pushed my way in. Rebels moved in all directions as I entered, carrying equipment in, taking trash out to the underground river, learning, conversing, eating. The kitchen staff had swelled from two to six and the gun corner had grown to a veritable armory, no doubt well supplied by Shah’s father, among others. And over the murmuring, the clatter of equipment, the scrape of shifting furniture, there was the high whine of drills and the chest aching bash of jackhammers. We’d be packed tighter than ravioli in a pouch if not for the tireless efforts at expansion that Dain had employed. Side passageways that hadn’t existed months ago now opened to reveal rooms lit with sparks, welders crouching around a truck, a truck, listeners, armored with salvaged plate. I think they might have gotten it underground with an elevator, which was also new.
I still got looks. The slightest squint. Small twitches near the mouth. When I passed a guerilla that day they looked me up and down. Thought for a moment, then gave me a small nod before pushing past me in that cramped shaft.
Progress, listeners.
I found Polity in the guerilla network center, a nest of cables and screens and uncomfortable chairs. A cave within a cave. Polity was once again pulling too many hours, fussing over a hot batch of code. I gave them a quick peck on the back of the head.
“How’s the stew?” they asked.
“Frustrating,” I replied, “and… really scary.” Polity pursed their lips.
“You feeling lightheaded? Any tremors? Your stomach okay?”
“Nothing, none of that, I’m fine,” I said.
“What’s fifteen plus one hundred and fifty-eight?” Polity blurted, leaning in to watch my pupillary response.
I paused, thinking hard. Polity’s expression melted into concern.
“One hundred and seventy three, saints Polity, maybe try a different test, I’m terrible at math even with a functioning brain.”
“Just want you to be safe,” they said. A pair of women in their forties shared a glance with each other across the room. The slightest ghost of a smirk on their faces.
“I dress for success,” I said, “and it makes me feel like I’m in a steam oven with a bunch of scared rats. But the suit works--I haven’t been exposed. It’s fine.”
“Do you check your seals?” Polity asked, fingers fidgeting.
“I do,” I said, exasperation melting into spreading warmth in my chest, “I check them every time I go in.”
“Do it twice because you like me,” Polity said, smiling through their concern.
“Twice,” I said, rolling my eyes. Then with more gravity, “I promise. Because I like you.”
“Okay,” Polity said with a breath. They leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Go work, find me when you’re done for the day.”
Down the cavern, away from the rest of the camp. Following the sticky reek of rotting fruit, a note that creeps high into the nose and leaves the nostrils smarting from its passage. Take a few deep lungfuls and you’ll feel the chilly claws of anxiety around your throat, paresthesia– that’s tingling– in the tips of your fingers.
As I entered what passed for the antechamber, with its piled up hazard suits donated or, perhaps, stolen from the Taldin River chemical plant, I considered a conversation I had with Dain. It went like this:
“Dain,” I said.
“Kid,” Dain said.
“Do you think that the uh… ‘brewing cavern’ should have some sort of airlock? Because I think it might be leaking gas out into the hall.”
Dain considered. Looked over my shoulder down the narrow strip of cavern behind me.
“How much gas?” Dain asked.
“A little,” I said. “Some? Dain, it’s-it’s poison gas.”
He folded his hands behind his head, considering. “It probably should,” he replied, after a time.
“Okay. Will you install one?” I said.
“No, airlocks are expensive,” Dain said. “Ventilation can handle it.” And then he left.
Which is why when I was putting on my hazard suit, I did everything I could to limit the size of my breaths, even if “just a little” gas had leaked. My suit was a light blue synthetic shell, acid eaten gloves, creaky seals that I would have double checked even if Polity hadn’t asked me so sweetly. A thin barrier that was the only thing between me and the test kitchen.
The test kitchen was a name used by exactly nobody but me among Grac au Mao. It was a tiny chamber containing a few salvaged hot plates, since the rebels never seemed to have mint ones on hand, a heaping pile of rotting jelly pears, and distillation equipment that was either donated or looted from a nearby vodka plant. Turned from the fine task of cranking out spirits to an altogether harder brew. Our job, that is myself and two other cooks and chemists, was to distill nerve poison from jelly pears. To distill death.
The process for jelly pear gas is remarkably simple. Crush rotting Jelly Pears in a press and collect the remains in a pan. Distillation occurs in a round bottomed flask through a series of salvaged drip piping with an attached vacuum chamber. Sprinkle crushed alumina boiling chips into the mix to keep the distillate from quite literally exploding, which presumably would send poison soaked glass shards in every direction in the room. Then you mix the resulting concoction with a skin permeable fluid provided by the guerillas, among a host of other additives for efficacy, stability, utility, and other impressive words that end with eee. The work would be pretty boring, watching fluid bubble between two flasks, if it didn’t carry the risk of lethal danger.
Between the three of us, on shifts to reduce the risk of fatigue and accident, we were just barely managing to stay on schedule. The lead chemist wanted extra time to address some potency issues the mixture was having, she was worried about efficacy, but delivery day was delivery day. We couldn’t afford to push farther.
For any chemists in the audience, if you feel that I’m being vague about the exact details of how to create nerve gas, remember that I’m posting this on the buffer. Obviously, I’m not going to instruct you how to do this. There are children listening, somehow, and for some reason. Saints know I’m already in enough trouble as it is.
I adjusted the temperature of the mixture, keeping it just a bit higher than the chemist requested. I checked over my own suit displays, alert for any disruptions that might prelude some kind of breach. Time flew so quickly that I startled when another suited hand nudged my shoulder and motioned for the door. Shift over. Didn’t even require words.
I found Polity at dinner, like they asked. Scooted up to a hot bowl of noodles and a plate of potstickers. The cavern cafeteria–the caverteria? Was bustling. We tucked in together, talked about our days.
“Do you think anyone knows?” Polity asked me. They said it as if they weren’t conspiring, as easily as if they were trying to jog my memory.
“No,” I said, “because I think at this point someone would speak up. We’re way too close now for them to be quiet about it.”
“Well,” Polity said, spearing a potsticker, “I guess we can say we tried.”
“We tried,” I echoed, “it isn’t as potent as they wanted, and you’ve managed to adapt your code to reduce the damage. Hopefully it will be enough. Now…” my shoulders slumped with fatigue.
Polity tapped the air, forming the ghost of a bullet point list, “Now we just have to not get shot, actually succeed, escape, and have nobody realize anything’s wrong.”
We let the chatter of other tables wash over us. Listened to other rebels gripe or groan or bounce with excitement.
We kept our attention fixed on eachother, but the thought was clear on our faces.
“What if this gets someone hurt?” I asked.
“If we don’t do it,” Polity said, “then people get hurt anyway. Fucking vultures, but… still.”
Polity’s voice was firm, but their eyes were downcast.
“Every day we get closer, I wonder if we aren’t going to get someone killed by altering the operation like this,” I said.
“Yeah,” Polity looked around the room, at Grac au Mao’s assembled people. “I worry too.”
“What worries us?” Shah said,
Polity and I both startled back, crying out in shock at the sudden appearance of Shah, formerly eldest sister, formerly the young woman who tried to stab me. And, now, a friend of the show.
“Shah!” we both said. Polity phrased it as a question, I just about cheered it.
“I am also going with you,” Shah said. “I want this,” she said, spearing a potsticker and eating it. “Yum.”
“You are?” Polity asked. Shah did not meet my eyes. “Yes. This one,” she motioned to me with her fork, tines smeared with sauce, “struggles to live and is constantly under attack by people and wildlife.” Polity nearly choked on their meal trying not to laugh.
“Shah,” I said. Now she looked at me. “Shah this operation could be dangerous. You can’t go for me.”
Shah didn’t move. Her face remained its usual mask. “Not just for you, Oscar. For my family. To hit Brightsail back, they…” She paused, and anger flared across her features, “hurt us. Hurt our business. Well, thanks to them, I now I have more free time… and Grac au Mao pays, too.” She grabbed another potsticker from my plate. “Now shut up, I’m an adult, I can make this choice.”
A week and some change later, we sped through the jungle as fast as our trucks and buggies could carry us, bouncing and drifting over the mud paths of Therevatti. With seven or so vehicles moving at speed in relatively tight formation, there wasn’t any such thing as stealth, at least not as anyone could understand it. Certainly the guttural growl of our engines could be heard before we arrived. So the best defense, it seemed, was to drive like complete maniacs.
My stomach seemed to brush against the roof of my mouth as our driver took another hill at a jump, shocks screaming, mud leaping up on every landing. Rain whipped at our faces, carried forward as much by the storm above as it was by our careening through the jungle, droplets snapped through the open frame. Home-modified vehicles, stripped down to passenger seating and bolted to engines that seemed to spill from the chassis. Steel skeletons with overlarge hearts, riding through ever narrower passageways between the vines. Green and purple tendrils reaching to snag us from the jungle.
With this sort of driving in these sort of conditions, It was a wonder that anyone expected to arrive at all. But our drivers were dedicated. No cheers or shouts from vehicle to vehicle. No excited conversation from my fellow buggy passengers. Shah had latched on to the nearby railings, head down to avoid looking at the blur of the surrounding foliage. Polity was bent low, body folded to shield both their portable from the stormclouds, giving their code a last minute read over.
I was curled low beneath both of them, where legs would normally go. Tucked into a tight oval of bent elbows and knees. Wincing whenever a bump would knock Polity’s heel against the side of my head. I felt them murmur an apology every time. I appreciated it, in my hell of kicking.
I felt Polity fumble for their portable, felt them stuff it into a nearby heavy case. There was a crash at the horizon, but no accompanying lightning. Grac au Mao’s mortar shells must have struck.
Shah shouted. It was the only thing I had heard her say the entire trip.
“We’re almost at the station!” Her voice was muffled from within the too small chemical suit that the rebels had scrounged up for her. She clutched an ungainly rifle to her chest, holding it more like a lunchbox than a gun. “Be ready!”
My breath fogged up beneath my lenses. Smushed as I was, I couldn’t see the impact of the shells, but the air around our vehicles had become hazy with smoke and the familiar pearlescence of Jelly Pear gas. Everyone, from the driver, to me, to Polity, to Shah, we all reflexively checked our seals.
Our buggy took one more hill, and we were upon the Brightsail outpost, Relay 5. We landed in a cascade of white gas and black, sodden soil. I wormed my way as deep beneath the seat as I could, keeping my head low. Shah leaned out, fumbling with her gun, pointing it this way and that above me.
There was silence, save for the whirr of our engines. Even the insects were quiet, most likely poisoned to death by the gas. A couple of guerillas called to each other, hopped out of their vehicles. A throaty roar of an engine, our heavy truck, paused beside us. I straightened up, spine popping back into position, just in time to see the container doors swing open to reveal eight men and women in chem suits rushing out into the yard. Someone bumped my shoulder with an outstretched fist: Shah.
“We’re here. All is quiet. The gas is working.”
I hurried out beside Polity, gas pluming around my shoulders and ankles as we ran. We raced over to a fallen mercenary, limbs splayed out in the mud, triple cameras beaded with falling rain, pointed up at the thunderheads above. We knelt at their side.
“Wait,” Shah cried out, even bassier in her suit, “is that safe?”
The mercenary was still. Their weapon lay at their side, uselessly biolocked to an unmoving operator. Polity and I held an ear to their helmet. Strained to make out what we heard over the shouting, the sloshing of boots through mud.
A high and thin sound crackled from within the suit.
“They are… breathing,” Shah said, puzzled. They motioned with their gun at the mercenary. “Should they be breathing?”
Polity and I shared a glance, faces unreadable behind our round goggles. Polity spoke first, their voice barely suppressing their excitement.
“I think… I think they'll be okay, Shah,” they said.
Polity and I walked among our accompanying guerillas, moving from fallen mercenary to fallen mercenary. Collected their carbines, their self-orienting grenades, the odd heavy weapon, and brought them to the collection point by the trucks. Nobody paid them a second glance, useless as they were outside the hands of their programmed wielder. Mercenaries lay in crooked limb heaps, fallen into ditches, collapsed across pathways, slumped in the lone guard tower overlooking the relay. We picked our way over them, circling the facility, the three of us pausing to lift a single mercenary who had managed to fall into a nearby ditch of rainwater when the gas paralyzed them. They were lucky not to have drowned before we found them.
Relay Five was hardly more than a concrete shed, sloped low and partially buried beneath the Therevattin soil so as to resist attack by settler and storm both. How they dealt with the flooding, I’ll never know. Behind it rose the familiar spike of a signal tower, seeming to point the way through the clouds above to Grac au Mao’s ultimate goal, far beyond the planet’s atmosphere.
Ahead of us, in the shadow of the relay, a few guerillas prodded the doors open with their weapons, kicking a fallen technician aside with the edge of their boots as they disappeared through the open door. Dain was squatting beside a paralyzed mercenary, scratching at his chin. He surveyed the surrounding jungle, before settling his gaze onto me. I saw his mouth twist, but a moment later he had risen to his full height and was back to maneuvering his people into a loose cordon around the building. The dull green of chem suited soldiers faded into the surrounding underbrush.
Shah pressed her palm to her ear, closed one eye, so as to better focus on some order in her earpiece. She said something in Thetti, so determined that her jaw nearly locked, then to Polity:
“We are going inside now, all of us. They need you to start working,” she motioned to me, “You should come too, that building looks strong enough. We’ll be safer there.”
“Still no word on Brightsail sending more people?” I asked.
“Grac au Mao’s modern enough to jam,” Polity said, casting a wary glance up the road, where vehicles were being moved to the side and covered with brush. “As long as nobody fucked up, we’ll have enough time.”
“And,” Shah added, “Polity’s program found us… ways for patrolling? Of?” Shah shook her head, “Nobody comes through at this part of the week. Not enough vehicles. They are on a different road,” Shah gave a smile and extended a cheery thumbs up, “You both did very good.”
“Aw,” I said, “thanks Shah.” Her face hardened again into seriousness. Polity looked to the lone concrete building, at the rain sheeting down its flanks. “We appreciate it kiddo,” they said, “but we only have so much time. Let’s go while we still have daylight.”
The interior of the Relay station still had a few wisps of gas twisting in the ceiling corners, shimmering in the electric light like opalescent cobwebs. Guerillas, under instruction from Dain, bowed their heads reflexively, cautious of the densest pockets despite their full body hazard protection. My companions and I shifted to the right as a guerilla dragged, to my surprise, another member of Grac au Mao. Dain stepped beside me and grumbled, voice softly pained.
“Girl checked her seals, but they chsheed’d out on her. Zuh. Surplus garbage.” he gave me a glance from behind his own suit. “We’re lucky the gas underperformed, or she’d need mechanical ventilation.”
“I’m glad she’ll be okay,” I said. I looked to Polity, but they were already turned my way. Our faces were unreadable to each other, with the hood and mask of the chem suit, but I could see the relief in their shoulders.
“As am I,” Dain gestured to a large wall of display panels, set above a heavy duty console alight with colorless buttons and rude sticky notes. Beside it lay a row of blue plastic gabions, filled with dull gray ballistic foam. “Get to work, you three. I’ll fall back to the treeline and keep us organized. Make sure you-”
Polity pushed past him, hooked their portable up to a proxy relay or “dental dam” as they liked to call it, then the proxy directly to the console. They opened their portable, its subscreens unfolding like a crystal blossom. The rest of Dain’s breath hissed out through his rebreather.
“Yeah, alright, good. Godspeed, then.” Dain hefted his weapon and exited. Shah settled into an uncomfortable chair, absentmindedly gazed at vandalized propaganda posters and racy calendars.
I paced. I fretted. I circled the room, occasionally pausing to right toppled furniture or kick coiled blankets away. I kept my eyes on the doorway, tried to focus my ears on the jungle din as it tentatively creeped back to our position. There was no engine noise. No gunfire or shouts. If I hadn’t just seen Dain, I could have imagined we were alone in some forgotten strip of tangle.
“How we doing, Polity?” I called out.
“Seeing how the other side lives,” Polity murmured without turning. They raised their voice, “their network organization is pretty clean, well commented--I think a failed novelist might have been in here.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“The dirty limericks, mostly. Relax, Oscar, we’ll get what we need.”
What we needed was a path forward. Lea te Suldan Station, operating at one of the stable gravitational points in the Dotter Syster, served as the single Railgate connection for incoming and outgoing traffic. It also was excellently defended. Hidden among the statues and floodlights and brassy arches of its exterior frame were a host of both long and short range defensive weapons, ready to lock down or destroy incoming ships. Whichever came first.
According to Polity, hacking the station was impossible because, in their words, “you can’t just breach an entire space station.” I had overheard as much in a conversation with Dain.
“Then what can we do?” Dain had said. “The station is locking down.”
“And who’s fault is that?” Polity had shot back. Dain crossed his arms, but they continued, finger tapping their portable.
“We can steal identification for a transport ship, but they’ll be able to cross check us pretty easily. Best thing we can do is… override their automatic updates with one of our own, force a system reversion, and slip in while they’re blind.”
And that was why we were at Relay 5. Trying to alter the update order to create a narrow window through which a vessel could slip in. Disrupt the station. Prevent the arrival of Sol’s reinforcements, of the Duke and his hunters. So far, things had gone alright.
“Do you hear that?” Shah asked, bending her broad shoulders to the ground.
“Hear what?” Polity asked, half turning in their seat, “the birds?”
“No,” Shah had gotten down onto her belly, lowered herself to peer under the technician bunk.
“There is a hole here,” Shah said.
“A what?” Polity asked. “A hole?”
“She means a sump,” I offered.
“A hole,” Shah said, then startled, before leaning forward, weapon at the ready.
“Shah?” I asked. She did not respond. “Shah?”
She thrust her hand beneath the bunk, into a lowered space beneath. It emerged clutching a wrist. She heaved her weight back, and out slid my fan, guide, and benefactor, the Brightsail Colonial Mercenary--Green Eyes.
He was wearing rumpled fatigues, stained at the armpits and back with sweat; sweat from the heat and humidity, sweat from the Jelly Pear poisoning he had obviously suffered. His face slouched, one eye moving between each of our masks even as the other lagged. His mouth was slack at the sides. His limbs shook, fingers clenched towards their palms like dying spiders. By tucking himself beneath the bunk sump, he had managed to avoid the worst of the gassing, but instead of an even paralysis, he had suffered enough of a dose to be rendered spastic and senseless.
My only thought, then was… “Why him? Why no one else?” How had he reacted so quickly to the gas attack?
Disgust spread over Shah’s features like a staining sauce. She shook Green Eyes a bit, and he groaned. One of his legs had found the floor beneath him, but the other hung slack.
“Saints,” Polity breathed.
“Shah?” I asked, approaching her.
“What do we do with this?” Shah asked. She gripped her weapon so hard that it creaked against its fixtures. But she did not threaten the mercenary with it. Her face had that same cold fury that she wore when she attacked me that distant night in the outskirts.
“He’s paralyzed, mostly, so just put him in the corner, on, um…” I gathered some blankets and laid them out, stood the pillow up on the bunk and patted the mattress. “Here, Shah, lay him right here.”
Shah complied, gently scooping Green Eyes up and laying him against the wall, patting him down for any remaining weapons. She moved like a hundred characters I had seen in film. Looking back, I don’t think anyone had ever formally taught her how to search someone.
“Double check, if you can, Shah,” I said, and her mouth twisted. “Just… please. We’ve had bad run-ins with secret sidearms in the past.”
She nodded. Gave him another pat down as he sat, trammeled by frozen joints. She knelt down and pulled his carbine out from under the bed, sent it skittering to a far corner with the tip of her boot. This satisfied me. When she was done, we stood back, the room filled only with the sound of his ragged breathing, and Polity’s typing.
The closer I looked, the more I realized his expression wasn’t entirely paralysis. Maybe at a distance, with the dose he’d suffered, maybe I could have confused his expression for the rigidity of misfiring neurons. But his eyes had locked to mine. His face was alive with fear. A numb tongue darted out to lick at a split in his lip. His eyes trembled in their sockets. He tried to raise a hand, maybe in placation or maybe in surrender, but he faltered.
“Are you…” I searched for the right words. I did not find them. Instead I asked something blindly stupid. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Green Eyes said back. “I’ve been… poisoned.”
Shah snorted a little. I gave her a look. She turned away.
“Seems…” Green Eyes choked out, “Seems to… happen… around you… a lot…”
Shah tensed, his eyes darted to her, back to me.
“We… we can make this work… no need to… no need to go any further… I’m fucked… man… you fucked me up…” he murmured, a thread of drool creeping down the front of his lips.
My brain in all its helpfulness, kept overlaying his expression during our evening at Henry’s Crossing. His shy smile. All it did was make me angry.
“His hands… they are working,” Shah said. “Should I… tie them?”
I considered before I spoke. Turning the anger around in my chest. Trying to cool it.
“Yeah, yeah you should. Just be careful, his muscles won’t move too well.”
Shah grabbed some loose cable and wrapped them around his wrists. She tried to tie them behind his back, but his muscles just wouldn’t bend that direction. They shook like trembling iron every time she tried. She settled with keeping them lashed together, in front.
“Oscar…you… gassed… us…” he said.
“I did,” I replied.
“Viking was… was right… huh?” he said, sadly, squeezing one eye shut. The other half closed, forming a crescent of its white.
“He was,” I said.
“Why?” Green Eyes asked. He kept clenching and unclenching one of his hands, stirring his feet in small circles. I thought he was suffering some kind of convulsion.
I didn’t know.
“Oscar,” Polity turned in their chair, fixed their eyes on me. They mouthed something. I couldn’t make it out at the time. I think they were saying, “don’t do this.”
“Green Eyes you…” I said. I stopped myself, crossed the room and sat on the bed beside him.
“Careful,” Shah advanced towards the seizing mercenary.
“He’s dangerous.”
I crouched beside him, looked at the cords biting at his wrists. Thought to loosen them. Thought against it. Instead, I spoke.
“Where do we even start here?”
“Wherever… you want…” Green Eyes wheezed.
“No,” I said, “that doesn’t work. How do I explain our situation to somebody who… who out of all the careers in the galaxy chose this line of work. Chose to take up arms for a company.”
“Just… wanted… to have my skills… put to good use,” Green Eyes said, “not… sidelined.”
“I know,” I replied, “I just wanted to be a food critic. If you really want to help people,” I said, remaining crouched, “you don’t even have to do anything. You can just stop. You can just leave, right?”
“Can… you?” Green Eyes asked.
“What?” I said. He flinched as if he had said the wrong thing. I motioned for him to continue. Kept my voice soft, “No, no. What do you mean?”
“Can you… just stop? Stop making podcasts? Can you just… quit your job?”
“That’s different,” I said, “I’m not shooting people.”
Green Eyes met my expression. He said nothing, only wheezing. Shaking from the gas. He experienced a coughing fit, I guess he tilted his head back too far. I did not move to help him. It passed, eventually.
“We’re all trying to walk a line here,” I said, “we don’t want to hurt anyone, not if we can help it. Grac au Mao wanted the gas to be lethal but I tweaked the mixture, cooked it too hot,” at this, Shah looked up at me in shock. Green Eyes nodded, haltingly.
“I know… you don’t like… hurting… people…” Green Eyes said. He flexed his hands again, pushing them from claws into tight fists, then let them relax into limp fronds. He kept repeating this action as he spoke.
“You’re a… good dude, y’know? I’ve always known that”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“We can… work something out…” Green Eyes managed, “with the company. Get… get some kind of deal for me going… maybe… maybe get you and your friends out.”
Polity caught my eye. Gave a small shake of their head. “No way,” they mouthed. Shah stepped towards me, worried creases around her eyes.
“Oscar,” Shah said, “you… you made sure no one would die?”
“Yeah,” I said, holding her gaze. “I did.”
“I am not… certain how this makes me feel,” Shah’s gun lowered slightly, “maybe you should not have done this but--I…” She frowned. “I do not know.”
I offered her a small nod in return. “Yeah, I know, Shah,” I said.
“I’m at about ninety-five percent here,” Polity said, “so get ready to leave when I unplug.” They cast a concerned look in my direction.
“Just about time then, Green Eyes,” I said. He still looked at me with fear
“I… always said I wanted… action, right?” Green Eyes said, “I’m lucky to have gotten to see it… even if I ended up just being some goon…”
“You were never a goon, Green Eyes,” I said.
Outside, there came a peal of thunder so close that I wasn’t surprised when a few coils of vine caught fire and toppled. Then, I heard the staccato of weapons, the rattling sigh of coilgun rounds. The sobbing wail of someone aflame.
Polity’s eyes were wide, fingers reaching to disconnect their proxy. Shah, clutched her gun. I looked outside and saw the brushline burning, the moisture of green growth rising up in a pillar of steam. And behind that steam, cannon flashing, was a Brightsail armored vehicle.
“You’re… right…y’know? You’re right,” Green Eyes choked out. Something about his tone chilled my blood.
Shah swiveled to point her gun at his chest. Her finger went to the trigger.
The image of Shah standing there is, to this day, burned into my brain. I think about it while chopping ingredients, or when the birds pause their singing, or before I go to sleep at night. Green Eyes lay there, arms bound in front. There was a soft mechanical whirr at his waist, a glint of something emerging at his hip. Something concealed. Maybe a holster. Maybe a bit of storage space in an undetected augment. It didn’t matter now.
Shah noticed, quiet, but always perceptive, even as the relay rocked with the sounds of battle. She already had her gun on him, but Green Eyes’ hands were a liquid blur. Her finger pulled the trigger, I don’t even know if she meant to, her eyes were so wide with fear.
Gunfire echoed through the space. Polity hurled themself down to the floor.
Green Eyes roared, toppling forward from the bed, falling onto numb knees. He gripped his dominant hand with its opposite, the only one he had left that was still intact. A trio of severed fingers were scattered across the sheets, red speckling gray. His ruined gun dangled from a surviving index finger, the grip blown away by a rifle cartridge.
“Fucker, motherfucker! D**** bitch, fuck,” he grunted, but he was already in motion, pushing forward on elbows, thrashing on shoulders. His needle pistol clattered to the floor.
Shah fell backwards with a strangled gasp, her foot slipped as her center of gravity shifted, her massive shoulder collided with a nearby folding table, flipping it like one might flick a card. She clutched at her throat, her hand too large, held too tightly for me to see what had happened. If she had been struck.
The back door exploded open, concrete dust pluming out from the deadbolt. Behind it, stood Viking, suited only in, I guess you’d call them power armored pants. Naked from the waist up. In the shadow of the storm, all I could make out from him was the blue of his eyes, the gleam of his hair, and the white of his teeth.
“Flatten!” He shouted. I saw Green Eyes dig his face into the floor, fold his hands over the back of his neck. Viking swung a gauss cycler, ready to pan it across the room like a digital camera. Polity grabbed me from behind, dragged me over the pile of gabions. I felt the small warmth of their body cover mine before the entire room splintered apart.
I’m not sure how long Polity kept me pinned. Long enough for Viking to stop shooting. For the gabions to stop squealing and shuddering from a barrage of magnetically accelerated flechettes. For the sound of actuated legs to doppler away. Leaving us alone with the distant sound of gunfire, and the close sounds of Shah. Her breath strangled, getting quieter and quieter.
I tried to stand, but Polity kept me in place.
“Polity, let me up,” I asked. No response. I wriggled beneath them, realized their limbs were like a cage of bent iron bars. I couldn’t hear their breathing.
“Polity? Polity you,” I thrashed in their grip, they clung to me still, like a backpack, “you need to get off me! Polity, get off me!”
I worked my way out of their grip. Glanced over them. No blood, no injuries. I brought a gloved hand in front of Polity’s face. Snapped my fingers, with difficulty. “Hey!” I shouted.
Their eyes finally flicked to mine. Their limbs relaxed. “Oscar? Oscar,” they said, as if waking from a dream, “I’m sorry I…” their entire body tensed, they scrambled to their feet.
“Shah!” They cried out.
We rushed over to her. She was prone, one leg atop the other, shoulder crashed down on a table, leaning against it, keeping it upright. Her hands hung near her neck. Fingers slack. Blood stained the entire front of her hazard uniform, spread out in a dusty pool that lapped at our feet as we approached. The entire room was cast a blotchy red. I looked up.
“Polity, the light.”
“Saints,” they said. The bulb was smeared with blood. Arterial spray. A roar sounded outside, so loud I felt… it was like the sound was a physical wall that pushed through the building. Something had exploded.
“Shah?” Polity asked, “Shah can you hear me?”
Shah did not stir. She did not moan. We drew closer, pulled away the hood of her chem suit. Her eyelids were almost closed. Tear tracks ran down her cheeks.
We tried to stop the bleeding. We tried to do compressions. It didn’t matter. Shah was dead.
Polity and I walked some distance away from her, getting clear of the blood. We both sank against the wall, put our heads against one another, buried ourselves in each other's arms. There were shouts outside--survivors from the battle calling to each other.
The door to the building burst inward, and Polity and I froze like idiots. Both trying to shield the other from gunfire that would, certainly, pierce through either of us.
The chemical suited face of a guerilla poked through, her gun swiveling between us. She yelled something in Thetti interspersed with some Sol--French, maybe. Polity answered back in Thetti. The guerilla shouted, but her rifle shook so terribly it rattled against the buckles of her vest.
Outside, the storm had only gotten worse. Vines snapped and coiled in mighty gusts of wind. Guerillas dragged equipment, the bodies of their fellow soldiers. The wounded. Frequently, the dead. The Brightsail vehicle sat atop the hill, sagging unnaturally on its suspension, sunk into the mud. Its turret was badly mauled. A hole gaped in its left flank, and fire guttered out of it.
I only discovered what happened later, through conversations with Grac au Mao operatives and, finally, through Polity offering me a birds eye view of the battle. They did it because I couldn’t let the evening go. Because I was, in their words, trying to tie everything together with red yarn and terror.
The Brightsail combat vehicle, a moderately armored APC or IFV or something, wasn’t due at Relay 5 for a few more days. Instead, it was on a patrol through the village of Petii’trang, deep in the tangle. A little over twenty minutes into their drive, the patrol encountered a road so strangled with overgrowth, that even their heavy ball treads and prow dozer couldn’t tear through. Sometime later I spoke with a Therevattin ecologist and their theory was that it was the result of wild domestic, artisanal, and guerilla Jelly Pear harvesting operations.
So they rerouted. The next fastest route to where they were going was Relay 5. They radioed ahead, failed to connect, and laughed off the communications trouble as “mud in the wires.” They remained unaware the relay had been overrun until the moment they crested the hill.
With a sound suppressed engine and infrared lighting, with guerillas in the treeline squinting into a heavy rainstorm, Brightsail and Grac au Mao essentially tripped their way into a fight. One that Dain’s people just barely won.
Barely.
Dain was dead. He was only identified later by one of the two survivors of his group of ten. A grenade had exploded overhead as he lay prone in the brush, rendered immobile by overlapping fields of strafing fire. His remains were in the jungle, but after catching sight of them I turned away. There wasn’t anything anyone could do for him now.
Viking’s body was tangled in a sling of vines, bullet wounds scattered across his unarmored torso, concentrated around his left side, where he had been outflanked. Green Eyes was nowhere to be found.
Grac au Mao’s surviving children fanned out around us to cover the appearance of secondary and support vehicles. The surrounding area was pocked with gauss fire, the walls were chipped and studded with flechettes, the guard tower still stood, but the steel burned with sickly flames that seemed impervious to the rainstorm. Fent and his meatwagon arrived in an armored ambulance that carved deep ruts in the mud. He and his people hit the ground running, equipment clutched close to their chests, approaching casualties so quickly they just about slid on arrival. They were supported by a second medical team that came in behind them, gathered walking injured, bound their wounds. A heavy industrial crawler rolled into view, tethered itself to the burning mercenary vehicle, and dragged it off. It brought to mind the Therevattin carrion beetle.
Polity broke off to report to Dain’s replacement. I slumped outside the relay station. Listened to the rain storm patter off my hood, to the whistle off the edge of my mask. The chem suit kept the water off my skin, left me with nothing but the smell of treated plastic and my own terror.
When the medics came by to check on me I numbly responded. Shook my head, motioned to the inside. They filed in, then filed back out, barely phased by what they saw. Eventually a few came by with a stretcher, and carried Shah’s body out beneath a blue, rainproof sheet.
I said a goodbye as they loaded her into one of the trucks. So softly that it didn’t escape my breath mask.
Eventually, someone walked to my side, leaned under the overhang and unbuckled their hood.
“Hey Polity,” I said, voice cracking, “I think I really fucked up this time.”
“Nah, not Polity,” to my surprise, it was Fent standing beside me, talking. “But you can still cry on my shoulder, if you want.”
“Fent?” I asked, then the memory of our last, unpleasant conversation caught up. Back when I was in shock and Polity was unconscious. “I… I don’t think I want to talk to you,” I managed.
(Fent laughs) Fent’s chuckle made me a bit ill. “Okay, sure Oscar. Look, I’m giving you an ear because… because this sucks. No fancy words around that. And it’s always going to be like this, forever. I think you’ll be sorry forever, Oscar. Because she’s dead, yeah? And your brain doesn’t want that.”
We watched the truck with Shah aboard pull away, cross over the hill and into the ongoing storm.
He squatted low next to me, leaned in, mouth a wry twist.
“So you’re gonna build a little Shah out of wicker and tears in your head, which you’ll try to save every night. Believe me. I’ve got so many that the faces are all blurred out.”
“I killed her,” I said. “She died because of me. Her father lost his daughter because of me.”
“Hoo, yeah, well,” Fent said, “speaking from personal experience, most of our side don’t die when they’re shot. They’re dead the second they pick up a gun and don’t have the kind of head for it.”
“And you just… you just live with that?” I asked.
“It’s a temporary arrangement,” Fent said, holding my gaze. “One day, maybe three years from now? This war is going to kill all the romantics and dreamers and heavy hearts. And all that’ll be left are people that want this,” he motioned to the burning phosphor in the vines. “That want to be here. I think it’ll be pretty nice then.”
My skin prickled. In Fent’s eyes was a hollowness. But not the hollowness that someone like… say… Ungerson had. A different sort of hole. A hole made with scissors and cut in the shape of a man. Born into the absence, made between the vertex of the shears.
But I didn’t feel any fear around him. It felt easy. The sky crackled with lightning above us. And in the flash, I had a thought.
“But that’s also a dream, right?” I said.
We stared into the storm together, watched the mud boil beneath the droplets.
“Yeah, yeah it is,” Fent said. “That’s what we all have in common, us sleepless fucks. We all got here dreaming.”
He gave me a pat on the shoulder, I felt the long bones of his fingers, gentle against the fabric.
“I’m sorry about the girl, Oscar. She was a good kid. Nobody deserves what she got.”
Polity came into view, jogging up to me. Lifting a hand to wave as they approached. Fent and I’s heads slowly swiveled, tracking them.
“Thanks, Fent,” I said. “I guess I’m sorry about… whatever your thing was.”
Fent smiled, closed his eyes, leaned back.
“Thanks, Mr. Food Critic,” Fent extended his hand to help me up. There was a ring of blood near his bicep, where a glove had failed to cover him. When I didn’t take his hand, his smile faded, but his expression was understanding. He walked away, waving goodbye without looking.
It was the last time I ever saw him.
Polity arrived, sank to the ground with me. I undid my suit’s hood, yanked it away from my head. The smell of my suit, of my skin, had become unbearable. We leaned on each other. The rain on my scalp was warm and driving. It trickled down the back of my neck, through the hairs there. Neither of us said anything. When the silence became intolerable, I began.
“Shah’s dead,” I said.
“Yeah, she is,” Polity replied, arm around my shoulders.
“She’s dead,” I said. “She’s gone. She’s… how old do you think she was?”
“I don’t know,” Polity said.
I wanted to cry, but my head felt hollow. It ached. A drink would make it hurt less, but I didn’t have one at hand. The despair welled up and out of me, unbidden. I was a tantruming child.
“I’m such a joke,” I said, “I can’t… I can’t… I can’t help…” it was hard to speak. I panicked for a moment, thinking I had pulled my hood off too early, inhaled some ambient gas. I was just out of control.
“I can’t save anyone,” I said, finishing the thought. Polity closed their eyes. Exhaled in frustration. When I looked at them, their lips were parted, their teeth flashed, gleaming with anger, and worry, and love.
“I can’t keep hearing this, no! You can’t keep doing this. Again, and again, every time this happens.”
They caught my head between their hands. Their fingers were wet with rainwater. Their grip was firm, but did no harm.
“Okay, so the Duke’s folks got burned, and you screwed over a subordinate at Palladium which was totally shit of you, by the way. And Cloudberry got shut down and you didn't save me, even though you totally fucking did, twice, and you didn't save Earnest, even though he was going to blow up anyway because he was a mushroom and that’s what they do, but you keep going,” Polity limited their anger. Their eyes seemed wet. “You keep going, okay? Because there isn’t… there’s no alternative, Oscar!”
They released my face, lips quivering.
“You have to keep going. Promise me that you'll keep going. Because you can do this. We can do this. We can try and try,” they pulled their knees up beneath their chin, twisted their fingers against each other.
“Until we get it right."
I watched them sit there. We both jumped at what sounded like a distant explosion. But no, it was thunder.
“Alright?” Polity asked, softly. “Please.”
“Alright Polity,” I said.
We watched the rain. Watched the meatwagon move the injured to safety. Polity took my hand, and squeezed it. So tight it felt like my bones were shining, and for awhile, we just held each other’s hand. The distraction was what I needed to finally remember how to cry.
Goodbye, Dain. Goodbye, Shah.
For Gastronaut, I’m Oscar Yasui, signing off.