"I’-We’re on the way to a mark Kingston, so I don't really have time to do whatever favour yer gonna ask me about this time."

"Nice to talk to you too, Dvall," I answered while stifling a sigh. Having her come to Station 26 had been a long shot in the first place, but it would have been good to have some old-fashioned support down there.

"Yer tellin' me that you weren't 'bout ta ask me for help?"

"You know me too well."

"I know the relationship we got at this point," she corrected, "an't just sayin' hi but care enough to keep each other outta the grave."

"Yeah, well," I sighed again, couldn't do it too much, or she might understand the other point behind the call. "Sorry about that."

"S'your fault."

"I know."

"I know, you know."

"Yeah, well, it was a shitty thing back then, and it's still a shitty thing now," I pointed out, "so- that's all, I don't know."

Dvall went quiet for a moment, clearly on mute and likely waving S'Vennitah away from the console so she could speak in something close to privacy on a shared ship. "Where's the snark Kingston?"

"Don't think I've got it in me today."

"I don't like it."

"Sorry."

"So y'er just callin' to check on me and tell me you're sorry?"

"Guess so," I answered. A datapad blipped on my table; it was almost time for me to slip out of the field and into the line of mining ships pouring into the Crash.

"Well shit, that's almost sweet of ya."

"I have my moments, I guess."

"Where are ya right now?"

"Space."

"Why heck, me too," Dvall said in a way that let me hear her rolling her eyes. "Gonna be a little more specific?"

I glanced back at the Mako on the table. She didn't need to know that I was going into Station 26; she'd been half the people I'd made my promise to never return to. The other was me.

My silence answered enough of the question for her to keep going.

"Was your client too pissed about the ship?"

"Back on Mythellion?" I asked.

"Unless that's happened twice."

"I've heard about it a couple of times over the week," I answered as I got into the pilot's seat in the cockpit. I almost looked to the co-pilot's station as I spoke out of habit. "Think we've moved past it."

"Good, good," she paused momentarily, trying to find a string in the conversation to hold onto, "and that job?" she asked.

"Coming to a head soon, I think."

"Don't die."

"Never have."

"Keep it up."

"Yours?" I asked. It was my turn to try and hold onto the conversation before I went dark back on Songlai.

"S'Vennitah's taken care of all the logistics, so I'm mostly just the tag along. Kinda fami- Refreshing. S'nice to not be in charge."

"You are pretty good at the pointing and shooting part."

"Better than you."

"Let's have a rematch before you act like it's fact."

"Oh, so you're inviting me out again?" she asked. Honestly, that was better than I was used to; most of the time, there would have been a comment about leaving her behind stuffed in there somewhere.

"You deserve it."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You're just lonely in space without me."

"No. You just deserve it."

"God dammit, you're laying it on thick today."

"In a mood about it all, I guess."

"Kingston, it's- well, it's- it ain't fine, but you don't need to be all mopey about it, alright?"

"Sure."

"Y'er not as bad as you think, and I- well. I'd say I need time but y'know, and I- Well, maybe I just need more of it than some people. I don't know."

"It's fine, Dvall, doesn't need to be something we figure out today," I offered, pushing down the hopeful air in my chest about the idea of getting back onto terms with her. Or I don't know, maybe at least getting into a situation where I didn't need to keep thinking about it during our conversations, that would be a start.

There was quiet for a moment.

"You said things are coming to a head for you, right?"

"Yeah."

"Same on this end," she added, "S'Vennitah said that I gotta go dark soon, so-"

"Okay," I sighed, "don't get shot out there."

"I'm more worried about you, Diadonna."

I smiled at that. "Worry about yourself, Mishuli."

"Let's make up for Mythellion after, kay? I got the-"

"Don't say shit like that; that's how one of us gets shot," I pointed out.

"Fine, no plans. See ya soon."

"Bye, Mi- Dvall."

"Later Kingston."

Dvall ended the feed before I had the chance to, cutting the audio in my cabin and leaving me alone in the quiet of space again.

The Datapad chirped, it was time.

I brought the Gunboat Diplomat back to life, and it shone out as the lone lights in the middle of the field of wreckage. The burned out hulls weren't from Jie's rise on Station 26, but it still felt like something was symbolic about a ship coming out of the dead and bringing me back to Station 26.

Well, it would be symbolic if I managed to get to Jie. Everything carried a little less weight if I took a bullet on the way in.

I set the ship to track the first of the mining vessels returning from their shift. All I had to do was cut in behind one of them, and as long as Sevita had done her job, someone would ignore me when it came to flagging the ships on the way back in.

Once the ship started pulling away from the wreckage and I was at a safe distance, I was able to step away from the console and back to the table. Over the wait, I'd managed to put all of my guns back together and to their places. In the end, the Mako was the only one still sitting in the middle of the table with a perpetual battery left to the side.

The last piece of the puzzle was the thing that would let the Mako evolve from an antique into a weapon of war. I turned away from the table and grabbed the Hammerhead off the wall first.

You could only carry so many guns into a fight before they got in the way. No matter what you did, you wouldn't be able to arm yourself for everything. That was what made guns like the Mako so effective; they were generalists that performed well at most ranges against most shields.

Aside from the Mako, all I knew was that if I was doing this, I wanted to get up close and personal about it.

Hammerhead. Basking. Mako & the hard light harpoon. I'd always dismissed that last one as a gimmick weapon before I'd gotten to using it, but it had proven its worth several times now.

I stared back out the window of the cockpit to see the ship passing into the maw of the crash. There wasn't really any more time to be sentimental about it.

One more deep breath before I pulled my combat shield off its resting place on the armoury wall. I was still missing the jacket, but that was just back at Moldieki's.

I snapped the battery into the Mako, and it hissed to life, almost like it was sighing in relief at benign brought back into service. Like it had been waiting for this.

"Landing code rejected," the gunboat diplomat chimed.

"Wha-"

"Incoming ballistics."

Flash.

Force.

Falling.

Sound caught up with me, the horrid crashing of tearing metal and seizing engines as the floor vanished from beneath me in the seconds before I was thrown out into the Foundry by the force of the Gunboat Diplomat getting shot out of the sky.

There wasn't time to force a breath before I slammed into something, but I was too turned over to tell what it was. I could only tell that my vision was filled with sparks and flashing.

Nothing hurt, the shield had caught it, but it didn't make my body any better at processing what had just happened. Instead, I was stuck on the ground as my instinct tried to catch up with instant.

Above me, the chassis of the Gunboat Diplomat tried to stay in the air, hovering in place as systems failed and a second volley of turret fire crashed into it.

There was a breath in the Foundry.

Then the ship's battery sundered, and everything shattered all at once in every dimension before a shield erupted up in all directions, obscured by the searing haze of the Foundry's slag.

The dust remains of the Gunboat Diplomat drifted down through the steam of the Foundry. The flashes and sparks that had been covering my vision were the reactions of the shield I was lying on, a thin layer of energy between me and the molten river that ran through the heart of Station 26.

I let my eyes close for half a second as the pain started to set in. Even if I hadn't hit anything and the shield had done its best to arrest momentum, my body still understood that I'd been thrown, and it wasn't happy about it. My head listed to the side, and I didn't really have the energy to stop it. I could feel the blood sloshing around in my ears.

Someone was walking toward me, cautious and slow steps across the shield.

Shit.

They continued toward me.

Not like this. Not off some bullshit like.

They had a gun at their side.

I couldn't get all of my muscles moving at once, but I willed my arm into place, pulling the Mako off my side and dragging it across the shield into place between myself and them.

They didn't stop walking toward me; their pace didn't even falter.

I couldn't say anything; my tongue was too heavy.

The figure pulled the gun off their side and-

A Mako erupted behind me, a perfected pace of fire that crashed through the shielded man I'd been staring at. The sound was enough to snap half of me to life, but a hand caught my wrist before I could try and stumble to my feet.

"T-" I started before the girl tore me up to my feet with one hand, and I caught a glimpse of the silver eyes behind the facemask. Victoria.

I could only half stubble as she pulled me along the shielding, occasionally glancing down at the sparking magma under it. I could hear some of the voices from the walkways pointing at the body on the shield. Telling stories about what had just happened.

A spiral of rumours about a ship trying to sneak back into the station, now pricking on the web that led all the way back up to Jie.