It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up on the floor of the Foundry in Songlai, not that it was something that I’d ever wanted to do again.

And like the first time, I wasn’t sure when I’d managed to fall asleep.

Fall asleep? Pass out? Didn’t really matter as long as it wasn’t from head trauma.

I tried to get an arm under me but a mix of tiredness and pain kept me from moving more than halfway. Based on how I felt I imagined that over time I would end up as one big bruise. At least that would keep me from being recognizable to Jie.

“Welcome back,” Victoria commented. She’d been sitting in the red tinted darkness of the room, her head poked just high enough to see out the window. Both Makos were laying against the chair between her legs.

“How long was I out?”

“Depends how you count.”

“Hours?”

“Not that long this last time,” she answered, “depends if you remember the others.”

“Others?”’

“You’ve been up for a few minutes several times now,” she pointed out, “last one was a while ago.”

“How long overall?”

“Six or seven hours?” she commented.

“And I’ve-”

“Been here the whole time,” she affirmed, “didn’t have a lot of options for places to bring you. Dead weight is hard to move.”

“Sevita.”

“Can’t tell her where we are if I can’t connect to the network,” Victoria pointed out. She took her eyes off the window to look down at me. “You sticking around this time?”

“I think so,” I tried to sit up again and almost got there this time. That seemed to be enough for her.

“Didn’t think I’d see someone survive getting shot out of the sky like that.”

“Wouldn’t have if the ship’s shields were up.”’

“I’m glad you did.”

‘Me too.”

“I’m starting to think your reputation just comes from being hard to kill though.” she tacked a small smile onto the end and I tried to manage one back. Levity was a good thing.

“Lesson one if you’re taking up my job. Last one alive wins.”

“Who said that?”

“My mother,” I answered, “she was always really adamant about it whenever I’d started getting too into the ‘killing’ part of the job when I was younger. She’d remind me that surviving everything was more critical than shooting people. ‘Killcounts don’t show up on gravestones.’”

“Hm.”

“What’s that?”

“You kill a lot of people with your, Mom?”

“More than most,” I admitted, “she was with me on the first few jobs, ensuring I didn’t get shot up too much.”

“Where’s she now?”

“Dead.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” I started as I finally got an arm under myself and pushed up off of the floor. “Took a bullet on a job when I was here.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“Don’t think we’re moving until you can walk,” she pointed out.

“Somewhere in orbit around Mastokr Beta,” I offered and Victoria offered me a blank stare, “it’s a Angro world on the far rim. Middle of nowhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s how it goes. Station 26 is the middle of nowhere to most people. We’re just lucky enough that I have a story to tell here.”

“Is lucky the word for it?”

“Maybe not,” I admitted.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Don’t think luck has anything to do with it,” she added, “but then again I didn’t know there was a Fotuan word for luck until I’d gone out into the room and heard it through a translator.”

“Then what would you call luck before that?”’

“Statistically unlikely. Same meaning, different perspective. Nothing spiritual about it.”

“There’s nothing spiritual about luck.”

Victoria offered a skeptical glance about that comment but didn’t say anything, instead she grabbed the emerald Mako from between us and offered it to me now that I was sitting up.

“Where’s your Mom?” I asked before it hit me that, based on previous conversations that might not be the easiest question for her to answer.

“Mom translates weird for me,” she offered, “so does parent, but they’re on Fotul. Don’t know much more than that.”

“What should it translate to?” I asked.

Victoria considered for a moment before pressing the silver disc on her neck and turning off her translation. “Progenitor.”

“Pardon?”

She switched translation back on. She’d tried a couple of times to pull it off in previous conversations since I’d learned about it, but her English wasn’t nearly as steady and quick as her Fotuan. “Most Fotuans born to a high rank are genetically altered clones, me more than most.”

“So-”

“I’m a genetic copy of them,” she said, “just perfected for the program I was put into.”

“Perfected how?”

“If I knew the list I’d tell you,” she pointed out, “it’s more complicated than some other enhanced soldier programs. Like I said, if I could tell you all the details I would but it’s- it’s like a million tiny things.”

“But aside from that?”

“Aside from that I am a clone.”

“And that’s common?”

“Among the successful in the Meritocracy yeah, from what I hear,” Victoria explained, “I wasn’t exposed to the larger scope of everything too often so it’s hard to say how things are everywhere.”

“I get it,” I offered as coloslation, “I’m not really that up and up with all the human traditions, considering I was a station kid and I was raised by an Ovishir for the most part.”

“And yet you’re judged based on your humanity.”

“S’how it goes.”

There was quiet in the room for a moment as I struggled to my feet, taking an extra second to ensure that I was steady before bending down to pick the Mako off of the floor. Victoria watched the gun in my hands, but didn’t make a comment about it.

As I was wrapping my arm back up, I noticed a silver shimmer on the skin Victoria spoke up as I was staring at it. “You got burned on the shield. Didn’t know where your skin was.”

“It was on the ship,” I answered, “so somewhere scattered around the Foundry now.”’

“Does it feel okay?”

“The skin?”

“Yes.”

“Colder than mine,” I pointed out. I didn’t notice it unless I focused but I certainly wouldn’t want to cover my entire body in the stuff.

“You are weirdly warm.”

“I’m a normal temperature.”

“Galactically you’re not,” Victoria pointed out. She was right, on the overall scales humans ran hot but nothing living ran that cold either way. A couple degrees felt colder on the skin than it was in the grand scheme of life.

“This is where we’re going with the conversation?” I asked. She looked back out the window instead of responding right away.

Then, after a moment, “I don’t know what to do.”

The honest answer was that I didn’t know exactly either. We couldn’t connect to the network to try and track down Sevita and if she wasn’t at Moldieki’s place then we were wandering out into the open without a plan which-

Maybe it wasn’t begging to get shot considering I couldn’t know if Jie’d heard about my attempt to get back on the Station, but if nothing else it was a risk that Vic didn’t seem keen about. Then again, I couldn’t ask her to take the lead on this, considering she just-

Right, she’d shot someone again. That-

Well I hadn’t asked how she was feeling about it, but getting moving was probably going to make her feel better than sitting back and trying to discuss her feelings on the subject. Hell, for all I knew she was fine with it.

“Alright, then let’s get going, don’t know exactly who were going to see but staying here isn’t going to help us and Victoria-”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Someone needed to get you out of there,” she pointed out. “That’s what we’re in this together for.”

“Don’t wanna take it for granted. Not everyone would run out onto a magma shield to get into a gunfight over me.”

“Isn’t that just what partners do?” she asked.

“Supposed to be, yeah.”

There was quiet in the moment after that as Victoria got up and grabbed her things. Twice it looked like she was going to turn around and ask something, but she never really did. Once she almost spoke up a third time I cut in.

“What are you thinking?”

“You and Dvall used to work together, right?”

I bit my lip at that one, “Yeah. Left this Station with her in the first place.”

“What happened?”

“Just ain’t.”

“You met up with her on Mythellion and called in a favour but you never tried to convince me to hier her or anything-”

“She was on a job already.”

“That it?” Victoria asked.

I opened the energy chamber of the Mako to ensure that it was still stable after the fall and because the crackle of it was loud enough to replace me talking.

“Fine,” Victoria sighed.

“We’re already dealing with my bullshit from Songlai,” I pointed out, “let’s not invite more reasons into the place.”

“That’s-” Victoria finished gathering her things and started the process of rewrapping her arms and face. “Yeah.”

“Appreciate it.” If I was being honest with myself, which I tried not to do, there was a chance that Victoria would back out of everything if she understood everything that had happened. Well, not quite ‘everything’ as much as the main thing.

The main thing being that I’d been the one to leave her behind for the sake of finishing a job. I’d been the one who’d spent time pounding the mantra of ‘anything for the job’ in her head and then-

Well Sevita had said it before, one of the critical parts of learning to live as a Merc was learning when you were supposed to take a step back from the rules and- I didn’t need much retrospect to tell me that that had been one of those times.

I’d gone back to her once I’d caught our mark but- by that point the damage had been done either way. It didn’t matter if you ended up being fast enough that it didn’t matter. You’d still left them behind in the first place and-

Dvall was closer to forgiving me now than she’d ever been but I doubted we were ever going to be partners like that again. How the hell was she supposed to buy into the idea that I’d changed when Jie could still tell me everything I was going to do and here I was…

Planning to shoot up Songlai.

Just repeating the steps of the past and-

“I know where we need to go,” I offered after a second. Victoria looked up from her wapping and cocked her head at me. “We can check for Sevita first, but if she’s not exactly at Moldieki’s then there is someone we can reach out to.”

“And that is?”

“Just getting us deeper into the web of bullshit from the last time I was here,” was the closest thing I offered to a name, Victoria wouldn’t have known it either way.