Conflagration

Fangs' Coffin

It was a long day for Lyssa. She was worried about her friend.

The last Lyssa had seen of Erin was when she'd climbed into that creepy, evil, old bag, Tolbert's plane. Lyssa had wanted to shout at her not to get aboard, but she knew it was futile. Like it or not, they were captives of these shit licks and if Tolbert ordered Erin to climb aboard, then she really didn't have any choice.

Also, Lyssa was afraid of what Erin might do. Lyssa could tell there was something unstable about her friend. There was a not-too-small chance that Erin might try to crash the plane if she saw a chance to take Tolbert down with her.

So, it was a long day for Lyssa.

She was distracted with worry as she oversaw some of the final repairs on the hardpointer. The plane was almost ready to fly again. All it needed was its control card and another day or so worth of work.

The HEVA suit was (and had been for a couple days now) ready to make its deep dive to the bottom of the lake. The only problem was finding somebody not too stupid to operate the rebreather manually. During that morning, after Erin and Tolbert had flown off, testing on the HEVA suit had continued. A few other victims were subjected to the HEVA suit, which the mercenaries had named "Fangs' Coffin." None who'd tried wearing the suit had proven capable.

The latest unfortunate soul to be put into the suit was none other than Lyssa's friend, Matty. Just like the other suit testers before him, Matty proved capable of operating the rebreather while sitting still, but he ran into trouble once he started to move around and practice his search pattern. He became overworked, overwhelmed, and lost control of the gas mixture he was breathing. Just like the others, Matty had to be pulled out of the suit barely conscious.

After Haynes had knocked her tooth out and given her a concussion, Lyssa had learned to stand well back and keep a 1kg machinist's hammer handy. None of the others had attacked her, but every failure resulted in several dirty looks in her direction. As Matty gasped for breath in the planet's thin atmosphere, he looked over to Lyssa. Unlike the others, he didn't have anger or blame in his eyes.

"It too hard movin', love," he said to her. Though Matty was fluent in Lyssa's native Estrellan, he spoke broken Gonian to her whenever his comrades could hear. They taunted him any time they caught him speaking Estrellan with Lyssa. "Like joints made stone, you know?"

By now, Lyssa had gotten used to Matty's broken way of speaking Gonian. He was telling her that the problem was that it was too hard to move in the HEVA suit. The suit's joints were too rigid with the power assist off. "I know," she said to him as his buddies helped him back to his feet, "but the power assist won't work on the lake bottom."

"It not work, take it gone. Like concrete slow and heavy."

This one Lyssa didn't understand. "What?" she asked him.

Matty looked self-consciously around at the other mercenaries watching the conversation. He sighed and then he said in Estrellan: "I said that moving in this suit is slow and heavy like walking in concrete. If the power assist doesn't work, maybe you should just take the servos out of the suit. All they're doing is making the suit feel heavier than it already is."

Several of the mercenaries standing around hooted at Matty and called Lyssa his "girlfriend." Matty made a rude gesture at them and Lyssa just ignored them.

But Lyssa saw his point. Without power to run the suit's power assist servos, the wearer was forced to pull against those dead servos. So Lyssa put testing on hold for the day as she began the process of disassembling the HEVA suit's major joints, removing the useless servos, and then carefully reassembling the joints.

Sometime after lunch, coded transmissions started to come in over the fast-cycling transceiver in the service platform's small utility shed. The transmissions told the story of Erin's and Tolbert's successful flyby on the enemy ship. The stunt became the talk of the platform. At first, most of the mercenaries celebrated the stunt, but then some arguments broke out over something to do with a vote of some kind. Lyssa didn't really care what these idiots were arguing about; she was mainly just happy that Erin was okay.

By the time Lyssa got the last servo out of the HEVA suit and got the last joint reassembled, the sun was beginning to settle between the mountains to the west. The mercenaries boarded their steam barge to return to the shore, but Lyssa wasn't eager to leave until Erin was back.

"Ruiz!" Scalps shouted to her. "You goin' ashore for the night or not?"

Lyssa stood up, holding her machinist's hammer and, with a resolve that surprised even herself, she said: "Not until my pilot is back safe, you got it?"

Scalps looked momentarily surprised, but then collected his thoughts. "Fine, freeze your ass off out here in the middle of the lake. Dumb bitch."

In the barge, Matty stood up like he was thinking about climbing back out.

"Sit your ass down, Moss!" Scalps ordered Matty. "I'm on platform watch tonight. I'll make sure your girlfriend is safe."

At that point, Lyssa realized belatedly that Scalps had called her by her surname rather than "Fangs." She was actually a little surprised he even knew her last name. She wondered what caused his sudden, apparent respect for her. She doubted if it was anything good.

As the steam barge chugged away toward the shore, the darkened platform grew quiet and unexpectedly cold. Other than herself, only Scalps, Haynes, and a third man whom Lyssa didn't know remained on the platform. It quickly became too dark for Lyssa to work on the HEVA suit, even by the light of an electric lamp. She covered the suit with a tarp for the night. Reluctantly, she joined the three men inside the little utility shed where they played cards around a small table. They were using bullets, grenades, and energy weapon power packs for currency. A small, electric heater standing on the floor near the card table was the shack's only warmth.

Lyssa expected the men to expel her from their shack, but to her surprise, they moved aside and made room for her at the table near the heater. They didn't even say anything disparaging to her as she took the offered seat. The men finished their hand and then, without even asking, Scalps gave her a starting stake (ten pistol bullets and an energy pack) and dealt her in on the next hand.

Something had definitely changed today, but Lyssa didn't know what. Why were they suddenly treating her with respect? It wasn't until a couple hours later that she found out what it was all about⁠—and none too soon, either. Lyssa was down to her last bullet and a bluff no one was buying when they heard the sound of a gunship descending from above.