"What are we looking at?" Blaze asked.

The program running on the main console came with the handheld spectroscope. It was outputting the results of Blaze's hard work. In its window, the 3D model of a molecule spun above the rainbow band of its spectral signature. Rsh, still seated behind the console, tapped the arrow keys and went down the list of samples Blaze had taken.

"Regolith," he stated.

"Huh?"

"Loose material over bedrock. Basic silicates. Nothing of value."

Although Blaze felt a pang of disappointment, he brushed it aside. Standing tall, he squared his shoulders and put his hands on his hips so his elbows stuck right out to the sides. The universe wanted to make him feel tiny. Defiantly, he pushed it back by taking up as much space as possible. His posture did feel a little clumsy and awkward, since he still wore his space suit, minus the helmet. But nothing would stop him from looking like the most confident gunslinger who ever ambled his way across the stars.

"Don't you fret none, hombre," he drawled. "This here cowboy'll find your gold for you, no sweat."

"I am deeply relieved," Rsh said, his deadpan sarcasm deader than finely-ground meat on a pan.

"What did Luci say about the engines? Are they alright?"

"They are fine … for now."

Blaze took another look through the canopy, at the dark world outside eclipsing the starlight that filled the universe. No matter how dark it gets, he thought, you gotta keep riding until you see the light again.

"It looks like this regolith stuff is all over the surface," he said. "I didn't see anything else when we were flying around. So … I guess we're heading into the crater, huh?"

"We must."

"Any idea what we'll find down there?"

"No. Ore may be deposited by meteor impact, so … potentially anything. Or nothing."

"Never say die, partner. Never say die."

Breezing through the door to the locker room, Blaze undid his gloves. He decided to leave the rest of his space suit on. No point taking it off for the relatively short flight to the bottom of the crater. He pulled open the locker that had his helmet inside and dropped the gloves onto the shelf next to it. Before he closed it, however, his reflection in the helmet's visor caught his eye. The world around him was warped by the curvature, but his face in the center was mostly undistorted. He stared into his own eyes, and at the look of doubt on his face. Then, with a confident smirk, he gave his image the same confident look he gave Rsh a few seconds ago.

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On the display screen, Blastburn's steel steed dropped towards the event horizon of the black hole. Falling down, through the shining disk around the infinite black abyss. An orb of nothingness, floating in space. A massive dent in spacetime not even light could escape from.

"Blastburn!" a voice squawked on the radio. "Don't you dare get yourself killed, you hear me?! Don't you dare!"

He struggled with the ship's controls like he was reining a horse in. They exploded in a shower of sparks, but he barely flinched. The black abyss expanded in the windshield, but he gave it his most devil-may-care smirk. Although a trickle of blood dripped down his battered face, it couldn't drain the life from his vivid expression.

As the ship sailed towards almost-certain death, Blastburn spoke. The frantic brass quieted down and allowed a quiet, yet heroic swell to take their place.

"They used to say old cowboys never die. They just rode off into the sunset. Well, light can't get itself free of a black hole, so I doubt I'll be seeing a whole lot of sunsets if I fall in there. Got no plan, no options, no hope. But there's one thing I do have. One undeniable fact, as old as the moment our ancestors learned to crawl out of the muck."

"What's that?" the grief-stricken voice over the radio asked.

"No matter how dark it gets, you gotta keep riding until you see the light again."

Grin widening, he grabbed the controls like he was choking them to death.

"Yippie ki-yay!" he shouted.

The image hard cut to black. In the quiet moment before the end credits popped up, Blaise's apartment was reflected in the glass. Blaise himself sat in the middle of the living room. Close to the screen, so everything seemed more epic. The sight of Blastburn falling into the black hole had stamped a shocked look on his face, and it was impossible to remove it. Oh, man! he thought. I can't believe they ended the season there! Shaking from the excitement, he wondered what he was going to do until the next season came out. Aside from watching the whole series over again from the start, of course.

His mom trudged through the front door, a plastic shopping bag in hand. Her feet scraped the ground, and she swayed as she walked. Like standing up straight was too hard. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, but a few frazzled strands had gotten loose. Every breath she took came out as a sigh. She passed all the pictures on the wall, not looking at any. When she and Blaise's dad were still married, she seemed to smile more freely. Blaise couldn't remember a single time she'd ever smiled like that.

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After the credits were done, he pushed himself off the floor and went into the kitchen.

"Um, mom?"

"Not now, Blaise," she said. "Mommy needs her coffee."

She sat at the kitchen table, too focused on her coffee to look at him. As steam wafted up from the cup, she tipped a bottle of her funny-tasting brown juice into it. Her eyes were fixed on it like somebody spotting a cake after a year without eating. When she was done pouring, she capped the bottle of juice and set it aside. Then, she raised the coffee to her lips, closed her eyes and shut the world out, and took a very long and deep sip. She slurped loudly, for at least fifteen seconds, and the sloppy wet sound filled the small kitchen.

Outside the window, the sun shone through the vivid orange skies of Nimbus, Blaise's homeworld. Some people lived on planets with solid ground below, but he lived in a giant floating city in the clouds of a gas giant. The city had been created to build starships. Big ones, that weren't meant to land on planets. It was easier to launch them from the atmosphere of a gas giant, people said. But they stopped building ships before he was born, and now the giant dockyards his mom used to work at were empty and decaying.

His mom lowered the cup from her lips, but she kept it up near her chin. Savoring the taste, she clicked her tongue and gave a loud sigh of relief. Her eyes snapped open. Twitching, they stared at the wall, instead of Blaise.

"Yes, Blaise?"

"Uh, at school, they made us write down what we want to be when we grow up. But when I wrote 'like Blastburn', the teacher said I had to redo it."

She took another sip of coffee and swallowed it heavily. Her eyes continued to stare at the wall.

"So what's the problem?" she asked.

"Well, I wanna be like Blastburn. I don't know what else to write."

She squeezed her eyes shut. The hand holding the coffee inched to her lips, but she stopped it from moving — with what seemed like an incredible effort, from the strain on her face. As her forehead wrinkled, she snapped, "Just put anything, Blaise." Then her voice softened, again with what looked like incredible effort. "All that, that's just … It's just meaningless crap they make you write. It doesn't matter …" Her hand wanted to go to her lips again, but she swirled it around a little instead. The tremble in her hand started getting really bad. "… in the long run," she said in a rush. Then she took another long, deep slurp of coffee.

"What other jobs are there around here, though?" Blaise asked.

The question made his mom freeze. Her eyes popped open, revealing her irises as suddenly as a ship coming out of FTL. They rolled over to stare at him, over the coffee cup covering the bottom half of her face. Slowly lowering the cup, she gave him the broadest smile he'd ever seen, even though her eyes looked haunted and hollow.

"You can be anything you want, Blaise."

She must've realized how sad her eyes looked, because she squeezed them shut. But she did it so hard it made her brow squeeze together too, and deep lines cut across her forehead that made her look even more uncomfortable.

"As long as you believe in yourself."

Behind her, through the window, the tall beams of the abandoned shipyards crossed each other and stood in front of the gas giant's cloudy orange skies like a cage.

Blaise asked, "'Anything'? Like wh—?"

"Anything."

She picked up her omnitablet. Moving her hand slowly and carefully, she used the app to turn on the kitchen's small display screen.

"Now, let mommy watch TV, okay?"

She started streaming the news from the city's worldnet while sipping her coffee. But her face soured when the first story turned out to be a report on the company that used to own the shipyards. Apparently, some of the people running it stole billions and threw wild 'aquarium' parties where they did things to underaged aquatic aliens. Blaise wasn't really sure what kind of 'things' they were talking about, but it sounded bad. Then, the report said, the company just covered everything up and lied to their shareholders about falling profits.

His mom turned the worldnet stream off. Took a deep sip of coffee. Lowered it and stared at the wall. The steam wafted up in front of her distant eyes.

"Let mommy have some alone time, okay?"

"Okay."

Blaise walked out of the kitchen, leaving his mom alone with her coffee, and went to stream Blastburn: Faster Than Light all over again from the beginning.

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The door to the crew quarters started to open. Blaze snapped his head up and spotted Philomena walking into the locker room. The instant she saw him, though, she came to an abrupt standstill. They stared awkwardly at each other, like they'd caught each other doing something they weren't supposed to. The door timed out and closed after her. As the hub vanished from sight, the ship's neck was cut off from its body with the swiftness of a beheading. Everything felt so much tighter, more cramped. Suffocating, without the open space behind her.

As Blaze gathered his wits, a wave of smoothness washed through him. He closed the locker and leaned against it, his arms folded over his chest like a heartthrob, although the spacesuit made his posture feel stiff and unnatural.

"How's it faring, Philomena?" he asked.

She cleared her throat, then said, "Fine."

"Ain't found nothing on the surface, but we're just about to saddle up and mosey into that there crater. Hoping to find something worth our while."

"Good," she said brightly.

He nodded at her in reply. Both of them lapsed into silence, and Blaze racked his brain for something to say. Time dilation seemed to draw the awkward moment out for an eternity. He wasn't even sure how he felt about her. She had such a volatile personality. Sometimes, she was alright. But he never knew what'd set her off. It seemed like every time he felt himself soften towards her, she opened her giant mouth and filled the room with so much shrill screeching he wanted to gouge his eardrums out.

The door to the hub opened again, revealing Luci. Her eyes were fixed on some point a million miles beyond the flight deck. She took one half-step forward through the doorway before she realized there were two people in the locker room already, blocking her way. Her eyes flashed upwards. Took them in. With one foot still in the air, she got sucked into the bubble of time dilation that turned everything into awkward, eternal silence.

Then the door timed out and slid closed while she was still in the doorway. Although it stopped when it sensed an obstacle in its path, the impact was enough to make her teeter sideways. Blaze started forward to grab her, but Philomena was in the way …

Philomena threw her hand out and steadied Luci, who gasped at the hand on her shoulder like she'd just been gifted a billion valex in cash.

"Tell me I'm a good boss," Philomena grumbled.

"You're the best, Philomena!"

Philomena spun around and walked to the flight deck. As she edged past Blaze, her copper hair bouncing up and flaring out behind her, she eyed him while he resumed his casual heartthrob lean against the locker.

"That's what I like to hear, Ramirex."

She walked past him, opened the door to the flight deck, and breezed through it. Luci shuffled down the deck in her wake, moving like an awed, excited puppy.

"Get in here, Corvo!" Philomena called. "Find us something to mine!"

I guess maybe if I kiss her ass and suck up to her like Luci does, Blaze thought, I'll stay on her good side too. But … nah, that's not how Blaze Corvo flies. Like a true space cowboy, he strode into the flight deck and got ready to take the reins of his steel steed once again.