Conflagration

How Small We Are

The card game wasn't going well for Lyssa, but it was something to do while she waited for Erin to get back. Lyssa was down to her last bullet and a bluff that no one was buying when they heard the sound of a gunship descending from above.

Lyssa abandoned her useless hand of cards and rushed out to meet the landing gunship. She hoped Erin would be aboard, and she wasn't disappointed. When the door slid open, there was the unmistakable, lanky shape of her friend silhouetted against the gunship's interior lights. Still in her Noémie pilot's uniform, Erin climbed down from the gunship. Her golden curls seemed to glow as they were lit from behind. Lyssa was so happy to see her friend that she ran across the small service platform and wrapped Erin in a bear hug. To hell with what the idiot pirates thought!

Vaguely, over the roar of the gunship's engines, Lyssa heard Haynes say something. She couldn't make out what was said, but whatever it was made Scalps laugh. Fuckin' jerks ain't got no more brains than a pouch full of dick holes!

Lyssa hugged her friend so tightly that she almost didn't notice the hard object digging into her chest as she hugged her. Almost. As she pulled away, Lyssa looked down and was surprised to see that Erin was wearing her pilot's gun in her holster again. Lyssa doubted if there were any bullets in it, but at least her friend looked like a legit Darklands aviator again. Over the gunship's noisy engines (which Lyssa's refined ear identified as Jaskowski 337s, but they were the newer ones with a cheaper fuel induction system) Lyssa shouted to Erin: "WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TODAY?! HOW DID YOU GET YOUR GUN BACK?!"

"I'LL EXPLAIN LATER!" Erin answered her. "FIRST, WE GOTTA GET HIM!" Erin pointed to what could only be a body bag lashed to the gunship's deck.

"WHO THE FUCK IS IN THE LEFTOVERS POUCH?!"

"THAT'S CAPTAIN ELOF! HE'S GOING HOME WITH US! ON A NOÉMIE PLANE!"

The realization that this bag contained all that was left of the pilot they'd originally come here to help, surprised Lyssa. She just nodded.

The men in the gunship's side turrets climbed down and prepared to help with the body. But a single, angry glance from Erin halted the men in their tracks. "HE'S ONE OF OURS!" Erin shouted to them. Lyssa wasn't sure if Erin was shouting just to be heard over the engine or if she was shouting out of anger as well. From the way the two gunners backed away, it looked like they weren't sure either.

"WE'LL CARRY HIM FROM HERE!" Lyssa said to them.

* * *

A few minutes later, after they had unloaded Capt. Elof's body and Scalps had waved the gunship off, the platform was strangely cold and silent once again. To Lyssa's surprise, Haynes had boarded and left with the gunship. Scalps and the other man had returned to their warm shack, their cold beer, and their card game. They had left Erin and Lyssa alone on the platform with Capt. Elof's body.

Though the night was cold, it was peaceful on the platform. There were no clouds in the sky and only one of the planet's four moons was out. This moon was a small, dim, ice moon which blotted out very few stars and seemed to make the night even colder every time Lyssa looked at it. Farther away, the other three constellations of the Darklands twinkled in the night sky. Lyssa, a born spacer, could easily make out the recurve shape of the Giant's Backbone Cluster where people were dying every day in a pointless war that no one understood.

She could make out the cluster of Nexus where her new home, Gonaways Station, seemed so close and so far away at the same time. And she could make out the Cable's End Cluster where her brother was doing some contract work for a hotel on some planet called Distortion. He was overseeing some kind of security upgrade on the hotel's servers. She remembered the day he'd left for Distortion aboard a starhopper. He'd been nervous about the job, but he was excited about getting to go planetside. He wanted to see animals. Lyssa had often wondered where her brother got his interest in animals. After all, he was a computer guy and a spacer. Lyssa looked up at the stars of Cable's End, wondering which one was Distortion's sun.