The forest smells fresh and crisp, not overly heavy and thick like the jungle on Amethyst. It’s maybe a few dozen feet down a gentle slope to where my eyes give me the heat signature of the old ship baking in the sun. My head and right eye still hurt even after more painkillers, but it’s manageable. Fresh grass sprouts nearly the height of my knee. Branches of trees swoop low and gentle, birds singing but no large animals to be seen.
The air feels extra good in my lungs after a few days of recycled ship air—I didn’t check the oxygen levels on the planet but I’m willing to bet they’re higher than average.
“It’s so pretty here,” Yvonne mumbles, tucking her hands in her pockets and wincing as she leans back to look at the canopy.
“Out of the way. Not much industrialization.”
“It’s hard to believe places like this exist.”
It doesn’t seem that way to me. Sometimes I forget the majority of her life has been spent on Neyla Ve. “I’ve never been to Neyla Ve. I just know it’s populated.”
“Very populated,” she agrees, quiet. “Cities everywhere. It’s very…shimmery. It’s beautiful, just…different. I don’t know how to feel about it sometimes.”
“You seem like the type of person who would fit in there.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Do I?”
“I met you on Amethyst, you fit into that place really well.”
She shrugs. “That’s just knowing how to dress and act. Mostly it’s just having money. Doesn’t mean I’d rather be there than here.”
That isn’t exactly what I expected but it’s not the first thing she’s surprised me with these past few weeks. She mentioned wishing she could do something closer to what I do—sans getting beat to hell every two days, I’m sure—but I didn’t think she’d prefer being out here. I suppose she can fit in anywhere. Must be nice.
The crashed ship is tucked among trees, a half-shattered viewport reflecting sunlight. I do a loop around the belly of it, trying to find identifying marks, but its hull is clear unless the mosses growing have eaten away at the paint that used to exist. No heat signatures inside, which makes me feel better. It must have been here for ages, years at least. It’s not a tall vessel, maybe three times my height at the tallest part of the wing, the cockpit reachable with a good jump.
No jumping for me, not if I can avoid it. Boosting myself onto a moss-strewn rock butted up to the wing, I step gently near the viewport. I half expect to find remains of whoever crashed here—hard to imagine most people would survive it and there isn’t much help out here—but the captain’s seat is empty.
“Anyone in there?” Yvonne sounds about as nervous as she looks.
“Nope.”
Bat jumps alongside me, dropping down. Now that I’m looking at the old ship, broken and coated with dust and leaves and what seems to be an old bird’s nest between some of the control switches, I doubt there will be anything of use. But I’m right here, so might as well look.
“Give me a hand, will ya?”
Yvonne is standing at the bottom of the rock. It’s a surface without many footholds, but I’ve seen her get up way worse without a blink. Maybe it’s her knees she obviously smashed into the ground. Or she’s up to something.
I take her hand and pull her up, it’s easier than ignoring her and getting a pebble to the face. She leans against my shoulder on the small space until I ease myself down the sharp hole of glass to the bottom of the vessel.
“Don’t cut yourself,” I mutter.
I duck under a fern that’s gown through a tear in the metal of the roof, but there’s not much to see in here. The captain’s chair and console take up most of the space. There’s a cot built into the wall meant to be folded up and away, and a small washroom with only a sink and toilet. I check the cabinet under the sink and find it empty. Check the compartment over the bed and find it the same. I’d think of stealing the slim mattress, but when I nudge it it’s practically falling apart. Whatever synthetic material was used for the cushioning inside has been stolen, probably by animals looking for nesting, and strewn across the floor. The covering is rotting. I drop it.
Bat is busy pulling up the paneling in the floor, but I already see no temperature signature from a crystal. If anyone’s found this ship before us, the first thing they would’ve stolen is the crystal. The engine compartment is just as empty. Anything valuable is gone. I can see wiring ripped out under the control panel.
“This place is a little haunted,” Yvonne says. “Ya know, in a pretty type of way.”
I know what she means. There’s a strange silence to ships crashed and abandoned. I’ve been in a few in the past. With the number of ships out there and planets largely abandoned as this one, it’s not particularly uncommon. I haven’t the slightest clue where the body went of whoever crashed the vessel. Maybe they managed to walk out of here. That would be quite a shock.
I use the edge of my shirt to rub off the moss and caked-on dirt crusting the console beside the switches.
Well. If this ship hasn’t been rotting for years, that’d make me panic a little.
“It’s an Amerov ship,” I mutter. I hear Bat freeze as the click of his little toes ends. I glance at him, but he looks more surprised than worried. Like me, he realizes how abandoned this thing is.
“This is a single-person ship,” Yvonne says. “Don’t numbers travel in pairs?”
I shrug. “Mostly. There could be a lot of reasons.”
Bat cocks his head. “Lalia says there’s someone on the heat map.”
The hair on the back of my neck goes up, but he doesn’t look panicked. “Just one person?”
He pauses, listening. “Yeah.”
“Cyborg?”
“She can’t tell. It’s coming up near us, not the ship.”
I wrinkle my nose. Figures. I hadn’t seen any settlements or singular houses nearby, but maybe someone out there has heavy-duty equipment to keep an eye on their land. Or they’re just wandering. Either way, I’m not exactly in the mood to deal with a human.
Yvonne is staring at me.
“What?”
“Is it just one human?”
“Apparently,” I say, then mutter, “I didn’t bring my coat.”
Bat glances at me before slinking up a hole in the ship’s roof to get a better look. Hopefully, whoever’s coming either doesn’t notice us or has seen enough cyborgs to not be frightened of me. Not that seeing other cyborgs exactly prepares people for the way I look.
“Do you want this one back?” Yvonne shrugs the shoulder of my old jacket she’s wearing.
“I don’t think it fits me anymore. I’ll just stay out of sight if I can.”
Her eyebrows furrow. The situations I’ve been in with her have usually been on more populated planets where there’s an eclectic population—enough so cyborgs aren’t all that odd, even if I’m an exception. Backwater places like this, and Yayth, are more likely to have residents who’ve never seen anything other than a human, or at least no humans without easily hidden augmentations, like Anya.
I’m still not particularly thrilled about the way everything went down on Yayth, though I suppose not much has improved since then.
Doing my best to lean out the broken viewport without being seen, I search for signs of the person’s heat signature. There, bustling through the trees. It isn’t a large shape, whoever it is seems short and petite enough it relaxes me a little, though if it’s a cyborg that doesn’t mean much. The chance of running across a cyborg out here is ridiculously slim.
It’s a female. Definitely human. She pushes past a large, thin-leafed fern and shields her eyes against sunlight as she takes in her surroundings. There’s a small, square device in her hand, maybe some heat-seeking equipment. She’s pretty unassuming as humans go, unthreatening, an old-fashioned rifle slung across her back. Her clothes are an unusual, airy cloth of pale beige. Beads are braided into her red hair. All-in-all, she’s less threatening than any one of the humans I’m traveling with now. Well, maybe except Anya.
Still, I’d rather she just leave us alone.
Bat drops back in silently, crawling onto my shoulder. I scratch behind his ears. Yvonne peeks over my other shoulder, standing on her toes to try to see.
The woman looks at her little contraption, toward the downed ship, and crunches through the greenery toward us. Great.
“Who’s up there?” She calls, accent thick and unfamiliar. “That wreck is dangerous. It’ll crumble out from under you.”
When none of us respond, she says, “I know you’re in there. If you’re scavengers I’m not going to turn you in, I just don’t want to have to drag any of you out of that thing if it finally collapses.”
I press my lips together. She seems friendly enough, but the stars know that doesn’t mean much.
I nudge Yvonne a little gentler than I probably would’ve a few weeks ago. “Pop your head out. Tell her we’re just passing by and we’ll leave now.”
“Think she’ll shoot me?” she whispers.
“No, she’s not touching her rifle. I want you to show your face so she thinks we’re friendly.”
She side-eyes me.
“And yes,” I tell her. “I do understand the irony of that statement.”
She pinches me in the elbow but worms her way to my other side and steps onto the rusted captain’s seat to shove her entire head and shoulders out the broken viewport.
“Hi,” she says, more sheepish and shy than I’m accustomed—either she’s a decent actress or she’s becoming as jumpy about strangers as I am. “We’re just passing through, we’ll leave now.”
Through the crack I’m peeking out, I see the woman cock her head. I’m sure Yvonne looks much more beat up to her than she does to me. I’m getting used to it. And I’m obviously in here with her, not a cyborg to her knowledge, but probably a much larger heat signature on her little contraption. I suddenly realize how it must look to have a frightened and beat-up-looking woman pop up while a larger man hides inside.
“Why don’t you two come down?” the woman says. “You look like you need help.”
Yvonne glances at me. My expression probably looks as clueless as I feel.
“Believe it or not, we’ve had a lot of strangers shoot at us recently,” Yvonne says.
To my surprise, the woman stares for a moment, then shrugs and slips the rifle strap over her head, setting it on a nearby rock and stepping aside.
“As long as you’re not planning on shooting me,” she says.
A bit too trusting. I glance at Bat. Wordlessly, he slinks back onto the roof. He’ll be our backup in case this woman is up to something. Certainly, she sees him on that little contraption of hers, but I doubt she can parse out what he is.
“Let’s go down,” I murmur to Yvonne.
“You sure?”
“No, but we’re more armed than she is right now, Bat’s on the roof, and comparatively I think we’ll survive one small human.”
She opens her mouth, then nods.
Carefully, we maneuver out from the ship.
The forest smells fresh and crisp, not overly heavy and thick like the jungle on Amethyst. It’s maybe a few dozen feet down a gentle slope to where my eyes give me the heat signature of the old ship baking in the sun. My head and right eye still hurt even after more painkillers, but it’s manageable. Fresh grass sprouts nearly the height of my knee. Branches of trees swoop low and gentle, birds singing but no large animals to be seen.
The air feels extra good in my lungs after a few days of recycled ship air—I didn’t check the oxygen levels on the planet but I’m willing to bet they’re higher than average.
“It’s so pretty here,” Yvonne mumbles, tucking her hands in her pockets and wincing as she leans back to look at the canopy.
“Out of the way. Not much industrialization.”
“It’s hard to believe places like this exist.”
It doesn’t seem that way to me. Sometimes I forget the majority of her life has been spent on Neyla Ve. “I’ve never been to Neyla Ve. I just know it’s populated.”
“Very populated,” she agrees, quiet. “Cities everywhere. It’s very…shimmery. It’s beautiful, just…different. I don’t know how to feel about it sometimes.”
“You seem like the type of person who would fit in there.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Do I?”
“I met you on Amethyst, you fit into that place really well.”
She shrugs. “That’s just knowing how to dress and act. Mostly it’s just having money. Doesn’t mean I’d rather be there than here.”
That isn’t exactly what I expected but it’s not the first thing she’s surprised me with these past few weeks. She mentioned wishing she could do something closer to what I do—sans getting beat to hell every two days, I’m sure—but I didn’t think she’d prefer being out here. I suppose she can fit in anywhere. Must be nice.
The crashed ship is tucked among trees, a half-shattered viewport reflecting sunlight. I do a loop around the belly of it, trying to find identifying marks, but its hull is clear unless the mosses growing have eaten away at the paint that used to exist. No heat signatures inside, which makes me feel better. It must have been here for ages, years at least. It’s not a tall vessel, maybe three times my height at the tallest part of the wing, the cockpit reachable with a good jump.
No jumping for me, not if I can avoid it. Boosting myself onto a moss-strewn rock butted up to the wing, I step gently near the viewport. I half expect to find remains of whoever crashed here—hard to imagine most people would survive it and there isn’t much help out here—but the captain’s seat is empty.
“Anyone in there?” Yvonne sounds about as nervous as she looks.
“Nope.”
Bat jumps alongside me, dropping down. Now that I’m looking at the old ship, broken and coated with dust and leaves and what seems to be an old bird’s nest between some of the control switches, I doubt there will be anything of use. But I’m right here, so might as well look.
“Give me a hand, will ya?”
Yvonne is standing at the bottom of the rock. It’s a surface without many footholds, but I’ve seen her get up way worse without a blink. Maybe it’s her knees she obviously smashed into the ground. Or she’s up to something.
I take her hand and pull her up, it’s easier than ignoring her and getting a pebble to the face. She leans against my shoulder on the small space until I ease myself down the sharp hole of glass to the bottom of the vessel.
“Don’t cut yourself,” I mutter.
I duck under a fern that’s gown through a tear in the metal of the roof, but there’s not much to see in here. The captain’s chair and console take up most of the space. There’s a cot built into the wall meant to be folded up and away, and a small washroom with only a sink and toilet. I check the cabinet under the sink and find it empty. Check the compartment over the bed and find it the same. I’d think of stealing the slim mattress, but when I nudge it it’s practically falling apart. Whatever synthetic material was used for the cushioning inside has been stolen, probably by animals looking for nesting, and strewn across the floor. The covering is rotting. I drop it.
Bat is busy pulling up the paneling in the floor, but I already see no temperature signature from a crystal. If anyone’s found this ship before us, the first thing they would’ve stolen is the crystal. The engine compartment is just as empty. Anything valuable is gone. I can see wiring ripped out under the control panel.
“This place is a little haunted,” Yvonne says. “Ya know, in a pretty type of way.”
I know what she means. There’s a strange silence to ships crashed and abandoned. I’ve been in a few in the past. With the number of ships out there and planets largely abandoned as this one, it’s not particularly uncommon. I haven’t the slightest clue where the body went of whoever crashed the vessel. Maybe they managed to walk out of here. That would be quite a shock.
I use the edge of my shirt to rub off the moss and caked-on dirt crusting the console beside the switches.
Well. If this ship hasn’t been rotting for years, that’d make me panic a little.
“It’s an Amerov ship,” I mutter. I hear Bat freeze as the click of his little toes ends. I glance at him, but he looks more surprised than worried. Like me, he realizes how abandoned this thing is.
“This is a single-person ship,” Yvonne says. “Don’t numbers travel in pairs?”
I shrug. “Mostly. There could be a lot of reasons.”
Bat cocks his head. “Lalia says there’s someone on the heat map.”
The hair on the back of my neck goes up, but he doesn’t look panicked. “Just one person?”
He pauses, listening. “Yeah.”
“Cyborg?”
“She can’t tell. It’s coming up near us, not the ship.”
I wrinkle my nose. Figures. I hadn’t seen any settlements or singular houses nearby, but maybe someone out there has heavy-duty equipment to keep an eye on their land. Or they’re just wandering. Either way, I’m not exactly in the mood to deal with a human.
Yvonne is staring at me.
“What?”
“Is it just one human?”
“Apparently,” I say, then mutter, “I didn’t bring my coat.”
Bat glances at me before slinking up a hole in the ship’s roof to get a better look. Hopefully, whoever’s coming either doesn’t notice us or has seen enough cyborgs to not be frightened of me. Not that seeing other cyborgs exactly prepares people for the way I look.
“Do you want this one back?” Yvonne shrugs the shoulder of my old jacket she’s wearing.
“I don’t think it fits me anymore. I’ll just stay out of sight if I can.”
Her eyebrows furrow. The situations I’ve been in with her have usually been on more populated planets where there’s an eclectic population—enough so cyborgs aren’t all that odd, even if I’m an exception. Backwater places like this, and Yayth, are more likely to have residents who’ve never seen anything other than a human, or at least no humans without easily hidden augmentations, like Anya.
I’m still not particularly thrilled about the way everything went down on Yayth, though I suppose not much has improved since then.
Doing my best to lean out the broken viewport without being seen, I search for signs of the person’s heat signature. There, bustling through the trees. It isn’t a large shape, whoever it is seems short and petite enough it relaxes me a little, though if it’s a cyborg that doesn’t mean much. The chance of running across a cyborg out here is ridiculously slim.
It’s a female. Definitely human. She pushes past a large, thin-leafed fern and shields her eyes against sunlight as she takes in her surroundings. There’s a small, square device in her hand, maybe some heat-seeking equipment. She’s pretty unassuming as humans go, unthreatening, an old-fashioned rifle slung across her back. Her clothes are an unusual, airy cloth of pale beige. Beads are braided into her red hair. All-in-all, she’s less threatening than any one of the humans I’m traveling with now. Well, maybe except Anya.
Still, I’d rather she just leave us alone.
Bat drops back in silently, crawling onto my shoulder. I scratch behind his ears. Yvonne peeks over my other shoulder, standing on her toes to try to see.
The woman looks at her little contraption, toward the downed ship, and crunches through the greenery toward us. Great.
“Who’s up there?” She calls, accent thick and unfamiliar. “That wreck is dangerous. It’ll crumble out from under you.”
When none of us respond, she says, “I know you’re in there. If you’re scavengers I’m not going to turn you in, I just don’t want to have to drag any of you out of that thing if it finally collapses.”
I press my lips together. She seems friendly enough, but the stars know that doesn’t mean much.
I nudge Yvonne a little gentler than I probably would’ve a few weeks ago. “Pop your head out. Tell her we’re just passing by and we’ll leave now.”
“Think she’ll shoot me?” she whispers.
“No, she’s not touching her rifle. I want you to show your face so she thinks we’re friendly.”
She side-eyes me.
“And yes,” I tell her. “I do understand the irony of that statement.”
She pinches me in the elbow but worms her way to my other side and steps onto the rusted captain’s seat to shove her entire head and shoulders out the broken viewport.
“Hi,” she says, more sheepish and shy than I’m accustomed—either she’s a decent actress or she’s becoming as jumpy about strangers as I am. “We’re just passing through, we’ll leave now.”
Through the crack I’m peeking out, I see the woman cock her head. I’m sure Yvonne looks much more beat up to her than she does to me. I’m getting used to it. And I’m obviously in here with her, not a cyborg to her knowledge, but probably a much larger heat signature on her little contraption. I suddenly realize how it must look to have a frightened and beat-up-looking woman pop up while a larger man hides inside.
“Why don’t you two come down?” the woman says. “You look like you need help.”
Yvonne glances at me. My expression probably looks as clueless as I feel.
“Believe it or not, we’ve had a lot of strangers shoot at us recently,” Yvonne says.
To my surprise, the woman stares for a moment, then shrugs and slips the rifle strap over her head, setting it on a nearby rock and stepping aside.
“As long as you’re not planning on shooting me,” she says.
A bit too trusting. I glance at Bat. Wordlessly, he slinks back onto the roof. He’ll be our backup in case this woman is up to something. Certainly, she sees him on that little contraption of hers, but I doubt she can parse out what he is.
“Let’s go down,” I murmur to Yvonne.
“You sure?”
“No, but we’re more armed than she is right now, Bat’s on the roof, and comparatively I think we’ll survive one small human.”
She opens her mouth, then nods.
Carefully, we maneuver out from the ship.
