Conflagration

The Plane Burner

It was 06:30 and the ramp at Noémie Station Services was still quiet. In a half an hour, it would be a cacophony of tug and spaceplane engines, the clattering and banging and screeching of equipment. But now was the calm before the storm and Erin O'Connell was enjoying her coffee at the end of the runway as she stared out into the abyss of space.

Most days, Erin showed up to work early enough that she had plenty of time to get a bulb of coffee from the pilots' lounge and walk out to the FOD pit at the end of Noémie's runway. The narrow pit just below the end of the runway provided a place for Foreign Object Debris to fall where it couldn't be sucked into a spaceplane engine or damage landing gear.

Now standing on the FOD pit's catwalk, Erin was in the narrow gap between the end of the runway and the rippling forcefield that held the hanger's air in against the vacuum of space. Sometimes planes took off or landed just a few meters above her head, but that was rare. Before 07:00 there was very little activity on Noémie's runway.

Erin sipped her coffee from the sealed bulb container necessary in the ramp's 0.2G microgravity. At 06:45, the artificial gravity would be turned up to 0.6G to create a safer and more efficient work environment. During the night shift, however, the company turned the gravity down to 0.2G to save money.

Erin looked at the rippling forcefield only a meter or so from where she stood. She unhooked her safety harness and reached her hand out. Her fingertips reached to within mere centimeters of the forcefield and the cold, merciless void beyond. She hated her ugly hand with its ridiculous, splaying fingers. What fascinating technology that forcefield was. She hated the ugly, ropy muscles in her forearm. Here she stood, within reach of the boundary to nothingness, untethered in the microgravity. She hated her pasty skin. If that barrier blinked out for even a fraction of a second, she would be blown out over the railing and into the cold, quiet eternity. She hated almost everything about herself.

It must be peaceful, she thought. A simple push off the railing would launch her out through the barrier. One final flight and she would be free of all she had done wrong in her life, all the people she'd disappointed, all she'd failed at. She should just do it. She was alone. No one would miss her. The world would be better without her.

Erin wasn't afraid of dying. She stood at this railing almost every morning and though about it. Some days she thought very hard about it. Those days, the ocean of hopelessness rose up and threatened to carry her away. Those days, the sadness and the self-loathing provoked her to give herself that fatal push against the railing. She was sure that one day she would do it.

But not today. She re-secured her safety harness. Today, she would go to work. She sipped her coffee.

Erin wore the same, ugly uniform she wore to work every day. Tan slacks with a light blue stripe along their outseam (Noémie's company colors), white short-sleeved pilot's shirt with her wings and nametag pinned to it, tan Aviators' Guild tie, and tan shoulder epaulettes displaying two light blue bars. The epaulettes denoted Erin's rank of Journeyman Aviator, not within the company she worked for, but within the Aviators' Guild. Her hair, like everything else about her body, vexed her. She wore her blonde curls in a tight, professional bun which kept them mostly under control (though already a couple of flyaways stuck up from her head). Some days, she was tempted to shave that stupid hair off. Only the fear of how ugly her scalp might be prevented her from going through with it.

And of course, like any self-respecting Darklands pilot, she carried a semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster. Some regions of the Darklands dwarf galaxy were unsettled and dangerous. There were pirates and petty warlords who would kill or enslave pilots and take their cargo and their planes. Pilots who flew in those regions (usually smugglers) were wise to arm themselves. Erin herself never flew to the wild planets of the Darklands. Like most pilots who carried such weapons, Erin's was just for show. It was a part of the mystique of being a Darklands pilot. She didn't even own bullets for her gun. She didn't trust herself with them.