The stars twinkled through the portholes like fireflies against the black.  Angry, isolated fireflies.  In a vacuum.  In the god-forsaken cold.

Rick folded his arms across his chest, sucking in an unhappy hiss of air.  “You’d think they could keep it a little warmer,” he muttered, scowling out into the void.  “Big, fancy ship.  Filled with people.”  Ostensibly, the uniform jacket he wore was sufficient.  That’s what they’d been told, anyway.  It was the finest of plas-wool weave, they’d said.  In the event of a catastrophe, you’ll be comfortable even on a frozen moon, they’d said.

He was pretty sure that was a goddamn lie.  Maybe it was the fact he was sitting here on the fucking ship, shivering and shaking under the blow of the air handlers.  If their uniforms couldn’t handle their teensy office tucked over the docking bay, little more than a five-meter-square box, then whoever had sold his superiors on the whole ‘frozen moon’ business was clearly paying them off.

The sight laid out before him was too good to pass up, even despite the chill.  Portholes were a luxury on Solaran vessels.  Something about being a thin transsteel barrier between them and absolutely nothing at all, when more than a few factions were more than happy to take potshots at any given moment.  The higher-ups always made their excuses, but given how expensive these windows were, he was pretty sure the lack of a decent view through most of the ship came back to their wallets.

Rick snorted.  Didn’t it always?

“Somethin’ funny?”

He jumped, spinning about reflexively as his mind raced to catch up to his body.  “U-Uh-”

Clay.  The bastard stood leaning against a bulkhead, his shipsuit hanging down to his waist and a grin on his leathery face.  As Rick watched, he arched an eyebrow.  “Well?  You plannin’ on answerin’?”

“It’s nothing,” Rick said.  “I’m just...looking at the convoy.  It was nothing.”

“Really?”  The word was long and drawn-out on Clay’s tongue, pointedly smug.  “You out here laughin’ to yourself over nothin’?  Medical might have some thoughts on that.  Maybe we should head down there, let them strip you down and-”

“I’m on duty still, Clay,” Rick said, flushing.  “What do you want?”

“Aww, c’mon,” Clay said, crossing to one of the benches lining the spartan office and dropping onto it with a groan.  “We’re refueling.  There’s no duty to be done.  Relax.”  His grin glinted in the dim, carefully-regulated light.  “Take it from me, kid.  Ain’t no officer gonna be coming to the ass-end of the ship right now.  They’ve got other worries on their minds.  Sit.”

Rick cast a sidelong glare at Clay, but let the whole ‘kid’ matter slide.  Complaining would only set the older man off, he knew.  Once you’d let slip that something bothered you, well, Clay would just grin like the cat that ate the canary and go at it twice as hard.  Ignoring him was the only way out.  He squeezed his arms more tightly about himself instead, shivering faintly.  “I’m fine.”

“You idiotic ass, stop standin’ under the vent if you’re so cold,” he heard Clay say with a chortle.  “Good god, did you go and freeze off your last remainin’ brain cell?”

Rick’s teeth clamped together.  Clay was a good guy.  He was.  He’d been the senior pilot on the Rheasilvia from the moment Rick was assigned to her, and for all his teasing, taunting ways, he’d always looked out for Rick.  The fact he was a good man didn’t make Rick want to kill him any less.

“Was there something you needed?” Rick said, glaring icily at him.

“Thought you might need some company.  Gets quiet back here, with only the stars and the rest of the convoy hangin’ around.  You can thank me later.”

Rick snorted - and at the corner of his vision, he saw Clay start to grin.  Damn.  Once he knew he’d won, the bastard wouldn’t stop.  “Well, I’m good.  Look, if anyone catches you back here bothering me while I’m supposed to be on watch, they’ll-”

“Put in a bad word about your transfer?”

Rick froze, his heart skipping a beat.  Slowly, he looked back, half-turning away from the porthole.  “Clay.”

The older man was still smiling, but there was a wistful note to the expression.  “I heard the rumblings.  I ain’t stupid.”

Their superiors weren’t supposed to let things like that slide.  That didn’t mean the assholes would actually act like professionals.  Rick eyed Clay, the words sticking in his throat.  “Look...Clay, I-”

“I get it,” Clay said.  He was smiling.  Somehow, that was the worst part.  “It’s not that big a ship.  Not with my fat ass standin’ in the way of your promotions.”

“I just- I just thought, maybe if I moved to one of the newer ships, I could-”

“You could’ve at least told me, is all,” Clay mumbled.  “Would’ve liked to hear it from you, not some drunk sod hangin’ round the common room.”

“I would’ve,” Rick said, sliding half a step closer to his friend.  “Really.  It’s not- I was just putting out some inquiries.  Seeing what my options were.  I don’t *want* to leave, but…”  He shook his head, eyeing the docking bay beyond.  The Rheasilvia was a solid ship, and not the lowest in the corporation’s fleet, but she was small.  Only the bigger, grander ships got to service the Heartland Loop, and only people on the Loop had any sort of future in the corp.  “I don’t really have a choice,” he said at last.  “If I stay here, I’ll-”

“I told ‘em,” Clay said.

Rick stopped, cut off as sharply as if Clay had reached out and slapped him.  “What?”

The older man lifted his head, fixing his beady black eyes right onto Rick’s.  The corners of his lips curled up like rocky crags through his face.  “Put in a good word with the District Head.  Told ‘em some of what you’ve been up to.  The knack you’ve got with the inner workings of the Mons class.  Those new bitches ain’t easy, and it takes a steady hand to get them flyin’ again without rupturing the whole aether assembly.”  His smile was every bit as broad and honest as before, but it twisted, turning wistful.  “Have to say, I’ll miss havin’ you to handle those jobs.  Gonna be a pain to train the next asshole to be half as good.”

“Clay,” Rick said, starting to smile himself even as his embarrassed flush spread.  “Thanks, but I never-”

“I knew you wouldn’t be satisfied out here in the Dust,” Clay said.  He leaned back, stretching his glare-tanned arms as far as they’d go in either direction.  “You were just passin’ through, bound for bigger things.  Glad you slowed down as long as you did.”

“I wish I could stay,” Rick said, starting to grin sheepishly.  “Really.  If I could, I’d-”

He saw it, first.  It should have been impossible.  Their sensors should have been running nonstop - and indeed, even as his eyes widened, he could hear the claxon of the alarms beginning to shriek around them.

But he saw it - the flicker of light, the misty shapes that were just starting to take shape around the edge of their convoy.

No one knew how they did it.  The thought was just a whisper at the back of his consciousness, an oddly clinical sidebar to the surge of adrenaline and panic that washed through him in that frozen instant.  No one knew how they just slipped into and out of reality, like they’d teleported instead of using the skip drives favored by the rest of the known universe.

They just appeared out of the black, like a mirage slowly taking form.

Them.

Rick stared, wide-eyed, as the Tamani ships materialized from the black.  Small and sleek, with gently-curving silhouettes that marked them as indelibly different from the bulky, utilitarian Solaran vessels.

Reality snapped back to life in a rush of screaming noise.  The alarms.  They blasted from overhead, dragging Rick back to the present.  He flinched, jumping backward.  “Uh-”

Clay’s hand closed about his arm, dragging him away from the window.  “Rick.  The tethers.  Now.”

The tethers.  Right.  Rick hurled himself toward one of the office’s consoles, the chill of the room forgotten.  His fingers flew across the keyboard.  “Come on,” he muttered, eyes narrowed.  A diagram of the bay appeared before his eyes.  The Rheasilvia was a modest ship, but it boasted two shuttles of its own - shuttles that would have to be double- and triple-secured, lest they-

A flash of light burst from the porthole.  Rick jumped, glancing back its way despite his best efforts.  Most of what he could see through the porthole were stars - but here and there, ships dotted the black around their cruiser.  Other TerraCorp cruisers, sometimes, but mostly aether tankers, ferrying their precious cargo from the Dustworlds into the Loop.  Slow.  Ungainly.  Vulnerable.

Before his eyes, he watched a cluster of the Tamani ships start to flare toward a cruiser.  The Tharsis, his mind supplied in an eerily-calm whisper.  Captained by the-

The Tharsis shuddered.  And then it exploded.

Clouds of coolant and debris sprayed from its stern, its bow.  From the corner of his eye, he saw Clay stiffen.  “Jesus fuckin’-”

“Go!” Rick yelped, forcing himself back to his console.  Voices screamed from overhead, from the com unit in the desk.  Reports, and warnings, and alerts from the various stations.  He could almost feel the ship coming alive around him, awakening to the new threat.  Too fast.  The Tharsis had broken apart too fast.  It didn’t make sense.  Bolts of light sprayed from the Tamani ships, but...something else flickered from their ships, like...like missiles.  They fired toward the stricken Tharsis like almost-invisible dots.

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Back in the Rheasilvia’s ass, there wasn’t much he could do - but if he could keep their shuttles from bouncing around like pinballs until they smashed holes in the ship, he’d consider it a win.

It’d be the only win they’d get today.  The thought rocked through his mind, plummeting to the core of his being.  The Tamani never lost.  They kept to their own territories, minding their own, right up until they appeared like a force of nature to sweep through system after system and-

Stop it.  His fingers flew across the keys.  Lock the tethers, and isolate them from the rest of the system.  Close the fuel leads, then detach.  Disable the power linkages, and-

Another flash of light.  The voices filling the com system reached new intensity.  Before he horrified eyes, he watched chunks of the Tharsis break free.  The tankers were at full burn by then.  Did they have enough fuel to make the jump?  Reaching the velocity needed for the skip-drive to engage was a long, painful process, especially for the lumbering aether tankers.

More and more of the Tamani fighters were swarming with every second, billowing around the cruisers and freighters as though they were fish swimming through the waters of space.  The crippled hindquarters of the Tharsis rippled.

Rick and Clay shied back as a blinding wave of light exploded outside the portholes.  The debris of the Tharsis careened outward. Rick reeled, clutching at the console.  “What the hell was-”

“Reactor,” Clay gasped.  “Rick.  Don’t-”

The alarm gave one final, insistent peal - and then the Rheasilva lurched, listing dangerously to the side.  Lines of fire glowed behind the bulkheads as the aether seared to life.  “The dampeners,” Rick spat, clawing himself upright.  “What the hell-”

“Debris,” Clay said, springing back to his feet and pressing himself to the narrow window into the bay.  “Must be.  Keep the reactors in those bitches stable, Rick, or-”

“I know.”  If the shuttles went up, they were fucked.  All of them.  His eyes were glued to the displays by then.  And if they’d taken a hit, they were already halfway there.

Something flickered at the corner of his vision.  Something else struck the hull - something small and delicate, not the horrible crunch from before.  Rick whirled, eyes fixing on the window.

It was still black, but for the glowing, smouldering wreckage of the Tharsis, but he was sure he’d seen something go blasting past.  Bursts of light flashed by, barely out of sight.

His gaze flicked back to the screen.  The deck beneath him shivered, starting to hum faintly.  The engines.  They were starting to accelerate.  A relieved smile darted across his face.  Once they reached skip speed, they’d-

“Shit,” Rick whispered, his brow furrowing.  He stared down at the panel in horror, watching the numbers start to skew wildly.  “Shit, shit shit.  What the hell is-”

“Resonance,” Clay snapped, and Rick could hear the horror in his friend’s voice.  “In the lines.  The aether.  It’s-”

Rick’s spine stiffened.  “Fuck.  Fucking hell.”  It shouldn’t- It shouldn’t be possible, much less happening here on their ship.  It was impossible.  It-

The Tharsis flashed through his mind again.  Exploding.  Bursting to pieces, when any Solaran cruiser worth a damn should have been able to last ten times as long, even against a Tamani attack.

The bulkhead behind them groaned, flexing ominously.  Another hit.  Another lurch.

Something was wrong.  Something had changed.

“Clay!” Rick called, raising his voice over the ever-increasing scream of straining metal and blaring alarms.  “Clay, cut us off from the core before-”

“It’s fucked!” Clay roared back, shaking his head furiously.  “Move!”

“W-What?”

“Hurry up and-”

The world went black, falling away behind a surge of shrieking girders.  The compartment above.  It’d collapsed.  It’d-

Rick screamed, his back arching as a wordless, nameless pain ripped through him.  His arm. He couldn’t feel it - not behind the agony that plunged to the center of his being.  Something pressed against his cheek.  The deckplates.  He was on the ground.  When?  When had he fallen?

Rick

Something pawed at him.  Grabbed at him.  Turned him onto his side.  He shuddered, straining against a fresh wave of pain, and the pressure against him stopped.

Clay.  His friend stared down at him, his face a mask of worry.  His lips moved.  Rick couldn’t hear him.  As he watched, Clay turned, his expression hardening.

The pain.  It returned in force, strong enough to fill his throat with acid.  Amidst the blurry haze, he felt something give way that shouldn’t.  Something tore that shouldn’t be torn.  Metal rang against metal, loud enough to cut through the cloud of shock.

Clay’s arm slipped behind his shoulders in the next instant.  “Come on,” he heard Clay say.  He sounded afraid.  He’d never heard Clay sound afraid before.  “Get up.  Come on, Rick, just- just stand up.”

The deck disappeared beneath him.  His head swam.  Vertical.  He’d been pulled back to his feet.  A hand clutched his wrist, with another wrapped about his back.

“Walk.  Stay with me, kid.  Keep goin’.”

They were moving.  He was fairly certain he wasn’t walking.  Clay seemed perfectly happy to drag him along.  Each wobbling, painstaking step sent a fresh wave of nausea through his gut.  Something waved at his side.  Something red, something that dripped and-

Rick stared at the shredded, unrecognizable limb with bleary eyes.  His arm.  It was his arm.

“Almost there,” Clay said.  The older man was panting, gasping for every breath.  “You could- You could help a little, y’know.”

Smoke filled the air, even with the air handlers screaming at full blast.  Underneath the hum, Rick heard something else.  Something low and soft, but growing stronger by the second.  It traveled up the deckplates in steady, building vibrations.

Resonance.

The alarms overhead had changed.  Gone were the panicked-but-confident voices of his colleagues.  All that played was a single, pre-recorded track.  He knew it by heart.  It wasn’t hard, and as shitty a training program as TerraCorp had, even they made sure to hold annual abandon-ship drills.

His limbs wouldn’t respond.  He tried to shuffle a little faster anyway.

Clay’s hand tightened about his ribcage, as though he could hear Rick’s thoughts.  “Almost there,” he murmured, his lips right by Rick’s ear.  Pillars of light shone through the murk filling the Rheasilvia’s halls.  The aether conduits.  They glowed like fire, thrumming as the disaster burning through their veins took root.  That was the hum, Rick realized.

He smiled, almost giddy.  “They’re singing,” he mumbled.

“More walkin’, less bein’ an idiot.”  Clay’s voice rang with something else, though.  Relief.  Then, they’d-

Their shambling excuse for movement lurched to a stop.  Rick drooped, gasping for breath.  Even the light of the aether wasn’t enough, anymore.  The edges of his vision were dark, slowly shading to blurry grey.  Of course, his thoughts crooned.  It’s smoke.  Of course it’s grey.

Even through the loopiness starting to settle over his mind, though, he knew it was more.  It was bad.

Beeping.  Glimmers of light shone in front of him.  Clay’s fingers danced over a console.  A keypad.  With a final punch, he straightened.

Something opened before them.  A panel.  A door.  The pale, steady lights of an escape pod switched on, completely sterile and bright enough to make Rick’s eyes water.  The pod loomed closer.  Safe.  They’d go inside, and they’d be safe, and-

A deafening boom ricocheted through the Rheasilvia.  The sort that rattled through your body, shaking you even as the walls trembled.  The bad kind of boom.

He heard Clay curse, spitting profanities that swelled in intensity by the syllable.

He saw the aether conduits flare one last, final time, blazing like a sun.

And he felt the ship shudder, starting to warp around them as it came apart.

His vision misted over.  Maybe it was the blood loss, or the smoke inhalation, or the sheer panic and terror of the moment.  As if in a dream, he stared blankly ahead as the compartment wall bowed outward.  As it crackled, starting to give way.

Clay pushed him.  That much he remembered, even through the chaos of the moment.  He could clearly remember the man’s hands on his shoulders, thrusting him backward.  And then he’d...he’d stepped out in front, blocking the narrow hatch with his sturdy frame.

The sound of metal slamming into flesh and bone was one Rick would never forget.

Clay lurched backward with the force of the impact.  That was enough.  The door shot closed inches before his nose, triggered by whatever system had been programmed into it.  The pod wobbled, rocking free.

And then it dropped.

For a single second, they hung in free-fall, blissfully gravity-free.  The inertial dampeners fought valiantly to compensate.

Rick groaned as gravity set back in, driving him downward.  His arm.  His side.  Every inch of him protested its return.

The thump of something dropping to the floor beside him rang hollowly in the tiny pod.  Rick lifted his head a fraction of an inch, willing his eyes to open.

Clay.

The damage was...too obvious.  Too immediate.  Fragments of debris had scored any bits of skin unlucky enough to remain exposed.  Shards of metal jutted from his arms, his chest.  Not all of them were so small.

As Rick stared at him, horrified, a dribble of blood rolled down his lower lip.

“Hey,” Rick whispered, little more than a rasp.  “Clay.  Look at me.”

A cough rattled Clay’s frame.  Slowly, his eyes rolled back - and met Rick’s.

Rick smiled, trying to pretend he wasn’t on fire himself, that he wasn’t light-headed already.  “It’s- It’s okay.  We’re…”

They were in the escape pod.  TerraCorp was prepared for this.  The pod would put them in stasis.  It would make sure they reached safety.

There was nothing to worry about.

“You’re okay,” Rick whispered, his head pounding.  His pulse thundered in his ears.  The exhaustion pressing down on him wasn’t so easily avoided, now.  They’d rest.  Rest sounded pretty good.

But Clay hadn’t moved.  He just stared at Rick with eyes that wouldn’t quite seem to focus.  The trickle of blood from his limp form had become a river, somewhere along the line.

Somehow, Rick found the strength to move.  To slip his hand out, resting his fingers against Clay’s.

“We’re okay,” he whispered.

The pod around them had grown still and quiet, silent but for the blowers firing on and pumping the stasis chems into the interior.  The engines had cut out.  They’d be gliding, now, broadcasting a distress call to any Solaran ships in the area.  Someone would pick them up.  They had to.

“We’ll be okay.”

Clay’s breathing had slowed.  Each one seemed more thin and threadbare than before, with a low, wet rasp lurking in its depths.  Rick’s eyes drooped, sliding closed.

Mustering his last ounce of strength, he tightened his fingers against Clay’s.  The faintest pressure returned - and then loosened.  Rick smiled, the world fading out around him with the faint, chemically tang of artificial mint.

“We’re okay.”