CW: suicidal ideation
I drifted over the top of Diver’s Cliff in my spacesuit and considered going for a swim. That’s what we called giving up on Sapphire Alpha: going for a swim. Gravity out on the cliff was weaker than on any other part of the asteroid prison, and it would only take one slice into the fragile tether holding me to the surface to swim out into the stars.
Out here, away from the confines of the rock tunnels where I mined sapphires to exchange for necessities at the commissary, I could breathe. With my back to the rest of the asteroid, I could almost imagine I was flying again.
I reread the response to my medical request for reassignment, where the med-bot had documented my panic attacks in humiliating detail. Denied. I turned off my helmet’s text display and looked out over the cliff; I hung suspended over the massive nearby planet. During this part of the year, the looping orbit of the asteroid mine passed tantalizingly close to Paradise, and its blue-green oceans made the swimming metaphor even more poignant. I can’t go back. I stared at the tether.
A flash at the edge of my vision pulled my gaze away. From the direction of the planet, a small, agile ship sped toward the asteroid. Cutting it close. For a moment, I saw the Gull, before I remembered she was gone. My fingers twitched in memory of the years I’d spent at the Gull’s helm before we both shattered. No, this ship wasn’t my Gull, but she was nearly the same model, favored by slingshot racers and supply runners alike for nimble handling and a compact form that could slip through the cracks in any planetary defense grid.
Pull up! I watched the silent disaster, remembering the sound of the alarms on another bridge as the ship lurched past the defensive perimeter of the prison. The ship shuddered as the automated EMP hit her, but momentum kept her moving. In the distance, she glanced off the surface at an angle, bouncing a handful of times before skidding to a stop. I felt every bounce in my bones, remembering the way the Gull struck the surface of a no-name planet after the police shot me out of the sky. I activated zoom on my helmet cam; the ship hadn’t broken apart! A one-in-a-million crash landing. Survivable, for a lucky pilot.
Then again, being stuck on this rock was no prize.
Or maybe… the ship might be salvageable. Could I get her spaceworthy again? They used to say I could fly anything.
I circled the wreck. I’d been in the business of flying ships, not fixing them, but even I knew a hole big enough to walk through in the hull wasn’t a good sign. The ship’s name was still visible on the side: Peregrine. I rolled my eyes. A bird of prey. How original.
I pushed through the breach into the ship. Peregrine looked so much like the Gull that my breath caught. A fairly modest vessel, a single person could crew her, but she could fit up to half a dozen for short flights.
I cleared the small quarters at the rear and eased open the door to the bridge. I found the pilot still in their seat. They’d engaged their survival suit before the crash, but the bridge had crumpled inward, leaving them pinned in the seat. Just as I reached them, their eyes fluttered open. I switched to an old smuggler comm band on a hunch.
“Helluva emergency landing you pulled off,” I said. “How’s your O2?”
I waited as they blinked and brought me into focus. I knew how disorienting a crash could be. “Three hours,” she said, her feminine voice telling me what her loose-fitting spacesuit didn’t.
“Well, you’ve got less than two to decide how you want to handle this,” I said, keeping my tone neutral. “You know where you are?”
She tapped a few spots on the arm of her seat, no doubt to bring up the external cameras, before noticing the spiderweb of cracks running across the busted screen in front of her. She made an impatient gesture with her one free arm.
My laugh was hollower than Diver’s Cliff. “You’ve just won yourself an all-expense paid trip to the prison asteroid mine of Sapphire Alpha.”
She froze. “Are you a guard?” she finally asked.
My next laugh was ocean-bitter. “Guards? What kind of place do you think this is? Everything’s automated — remote security feeds, drones, AI prisoner counts.”
She shrunk back into the seat. “You’re a prisoner.”
I held up two hands to show I meant no harm. “Guilty—at least according to the judge. You can call me Cap—most people do—I used to captain a ship a lot like this one. We’re not a bad bunch on Sapphire; the violent offenders get sent to Emerald Delta.”
“You were a smuggler?”
Like recognizes like, I reckon. I hummed noncommittally, grabbed an adjustable wrench from the emergency repair kit behind her, and started pulling out the bolts holding her chair in place.
“I’m Nova,” she said once I got the first bolt loose.
“You got a lifepod, Nova?” I hadn’t seen one in the cargo bay.
She shook her head. “Ditched it for cargo space.”
I sighed, unsurprised. It was a common tactic for short-range runners.
Nova watched me work for several more minutes before speaking again. “You said I had two hours. What did you mean by that?”
“The drone patrols are slow, but they’re thorough, and I’m thinking it will take them about that long to find your ship. If you trust AI built by the lowest bidder to correctly classify your threat status, you could wait with the ship for rescue.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked.
“I can bring you inside to plead your case to actual humans when next week’s supply run comes in, but escape prevention protocol for derelicts abandoned on the surface is to incinerate first and ask questions later. Bright side: the authorities won’t be getting a close look at your ship.”
“Is there a third option?”
I grinned as she fell into my trap. “We get your ship towed into a crevice to fool the next drone patrol, then see what we can do to get her back in the sky.” I loosened the last bolt on her seat and wiggled the chair free, giving her room to push away from it.
She stood slowly, testing each limb, before answering. “How far do we need to tow it?”
The half-dozen prisoners in the commissary all turned to stare as I brought Nova inside and helped her out of her suit.
“What’s going on, Cap?” one of the latest batch of new guys asked. Dave? Dan? Something like that.
“We’ve got a live one! Best crash landing I’ve seen in a long time. Shame drone patrol got to the ship before I did.”
Faces fell at the loss of a potential escape from the asteroid. I scanned my wrist-chip for double protein rations and passed one to Nova. I guided her to a table in the corner, and she tore into the ration bar without complaint.
“Think they bought it?” she whispered once the rest of the room had settled.
I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t they? Easier to believe bad news than good in here.”
“So what are we going to—”
“Not here.” I stood. “Let’s walk and talk.”
Halfway down the empty corridor, I turned to her. “If you want any hope of getting out of here without getting caught, we need an engineer.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop, spinning me around to face her. “Why are you helping me?”
I ran a hand down my face. “I want what everyone in this place will want if they figure out what we’re up to. A ride off this rock. If you’re willing to promise the same for his help, I can get you an engineer.”
After a moment, she nodded and let go of my arm.
I suppressed my sigh of relief and led her to the equipment repair bay, activating the magnetic hold on my boots to counteract the weaker gravity in the area.
An enormous man with gray hair and a short beard to match sat at a workbench, his giant hands surprisingly nimble as he soldered wires to a circuit board sitting under a magnifier.
I waited until he finished and stood, drifting slowly in low grav toward a small table with a few chairs around it. He beckoned us over and we strapped into the chairs.
“Something I can do for you?” he said.
“Bam-Bam, meet Nova,” I said, gesturing to the woman beside me. She reached out a hand for him to shake.
He returned her grip carefully. “Heard we had a crash survivor.”
Prison gossip really did travel faster than light.
“What you didn’t hear,” I whispered, “is that most of her ship survived, too. Hid it in a blind crevice.”
Bam-Bam sat up straighter and gestured for me to continue.
“No room for passengers,” I said, “but we have room for an engineer. We’d need your discretion, along with your expertise.”
Bam-Bam studied my face for an awkward moment, then nodded. “I’m in.”
Three days later, we sat around the same table. Between coming up with creative ways to avoid reporting to my duty station, trying to figure out Nova’s endgame, and working on the ship, I’d barely slept, and I rested my head in my hands while the other two argued.
Finally, I’d had enough. “We only have four more days to get the ship functional. What can we do without?”
“If you want to survive reentry, we need those replacement refractory tiles,” Bam-Bam said. “It’s not something I can pull from the stores without a lot of red flags going up.”
Before he and Nova could start arguing again, I interrupted. “Is there anyone who can?”
Bam-Bam hesitated, then spoke. “Only one.”
“Don’t tell me,” I groaned.
“Magpie,” he said ruthlessly.
“Who?” Nova asked.
“Cap’s ex,” Bam-Bam explained. “She can get anything.”
“For a price,” I muttered. “I’ll talk to her.”
I found Magpie in her cell with what looked like broken bits of trash spread around her on the mattress and floor.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
I gave my most charming grin. “Got a deal for you.”
She scowled. “I don’t deal with liars.”
I winced. “Come on, baby, you know that was just business—”
“So’s this!” She lunged toward the door to slam it in my face.
I blocked the door with my body. Ow. “You’re going to want in on this one. Once in a lifetime.”
She said nothing.
“Please,” I forced out.
She stared at me for a moment. “You must be pretty desperate,” she said, half-smiling as she backed up to let me in.
“So desperate,” I agreed, picking my way around the stuff on the floor and getting inside just far enough to close the door.
“How would you like a way off this rock?”
She cocked her head. “I’m listening.”
Two days left, and the ship was almost ready. Magpie promised the refractory tiles would be waiting for us in the equipment bay tomorrow and told us not to ask questions.
I forced myself to take deep, even breaths as I hooked my tether in at the top of my assigned mineshaft. My commissary account was far enough in the red that it had denied my request for a double ration at breakfast. I’d told Nova I wasn’t hungry. My stomach growled as I triple-checked the tether connection. Quit stalling. If I wanted to eat, I needed to earn out my mining quota. Just one more time. My hands shook around the tether as I swung myself out over the shaft. I closed my eyes and lowered myself into hell.
My calming breaths turned to wheezing gasps as I choked on rock dust. Bam-Bam told me that there was no way rock dust could get through my suit and into my O2 tank, but he had a cushy work assignment in the equipment repair bay, so what did he know? I counted striations on the rock in front of me until my breathing steadied, then ran my handheld scanner over the surface. When I heard a beep indicating a high purity section, I switched the scanner for my sonic chisel and pressed it to the surrounding rock, teasing out the raw gem and putting it in my satchel. The needle on my quota indicator barely moved. I groaned and moved to the next section. Scan, chisel, repeat.
The second the needle clicked over my quota, I scrambled back up my tether toward the surface. As I neared the opening, my radio picked up a signal. Magpie?
“Cap! Where the hell have you been?”
“Down-mine,” I gasped, still catching my breath after the rapid ascent.
“Oh.” She paused for an awkward beat, as if searching for words. “You okay?”
I scowled at her unnecessary concern. Does everybody know about my medical request? “What’s the problem?”
“Looks like your pet falcon is making her move. Central command center.”
“Huh.” I’d asked Magpie to monitor Nova until we could figure out what she was really doing here. “What’s she up to?”
“Why do we care as long as she takes us with her when she’s done?”
I voiced agreement, but my feet turned toward the command center anyway.
“Cap?” Magpie said. “Be careful.”
I hesitated outside the command center door, and Nova almost hit me with it on her way out. Her eyes widened when she noticed me, and a lost, vulnerable expression replaced her professional blankness almost fast enough.
I folded my arms. “Enough innocent-victim bullshit. What are you really doing here?”
Nova dropped the act and raised a single eyebrow. “Do you really care?”
I mirrored her cool expression and stepped forward to hold the door open for her. “I hate surprises.”
She smirked. “Let’s just say I left a parting gift for the owners from their friends at Emerald. They should have minded their low security business instead of bidding on that violent offender contract. We’ll be long gone before it goes down. Good riddance, right? This place is a hellhole.”
I huffed out a breath. “Yeah, good riddance.” I let go of the door and watched her saunter away down the hallway.
“You catch that?” I whispered to Magpie.
“She’s right, you know. It’s not our problem.”
I caught the door before it could finish closing. “What about the other prisoners?”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Magpie called.
I stepped up to the command readout and shared my first-person camera feed with her, showing her the array of measurements that the system monitored.
“Dammit, Cap! Don’t get involved!” She continued cursing at me, but I ignored her.
My eyes scanned over the various sensor displays, watching the readings fluctuate—all except one section that stayed suspiciously flat. “Why would she turn off the sensors for the mining vehicle refueling system?”
Magpie’s cursing intensified. “I’m on my way.”
“Not that panel, your other left!” I stumbled to the indicated panel and tapped out the key sequence Magpie screamed at me. We’d been working for what felt like hours to counter the Trojan that Nova had introduced to overload the fuel system, blowing up the mine and everyone inside, without making the monitoring systems suspicious enough to look our way.
“You know she’s probably working a double-cross on us right now, right?” Magpie said, her fingers flying on the keyboard. She pointed to another panel, and I scrambled over to it.
“Bam-Bam can handle it.”
Magpie snorted. “Are we talking about the same Bam Bam? He collects puppy posters! She’ll have a knife in his back while he’s still apologizing!”
I sighed and started prying off the panel cover.
“Last one,” she said. “Same sequence should do it.”
I keyed it in and held my breath.
“Aaand, clear!” Magpie cackled. “We saved the prison.” She paused. “Why did we do that again?”
I ran a hand over my face. “Can you check on Bam-Bam?”
Magpie nodded. “Go.”
I darted to the closest hatch and prayed that I’d make it in time.
Nova wasn’t on the ship. The ripped-up floor of the crew cabin revealed a custom-built smuggler’s hold underneath. Big enough for the lifepod she said she didn’t have.
My comms crackled. “Tiles are gone,” Magpie said. “Bam-Bam is fine. She only knocked him out.” She paused for a moment, and her voice muffled as she covered her comm to shout to Bam-Bam. “Oh, stop whining, you big baby!”
I jumped out of the blind crevice and onto the surface of the asteroid. A lifepod-shaped betrayal floated in the distance between me and the planet. I changed my comms to the old smuggler’s band where I’d met Nova.
“Why?!” I screamed into my headset.
“Nothing personal,” Nova said. “Odds of us making it past automated planetary defenses with a ship taking off from a prison mine didn’t seem to be in my favor.”
Planetary defense systems bypass emergency lifepods automatically, I realized. That must have been her escape plan the entire time. We’d only sweetened the deal by getting her those tiles that would let her slip into atmo instead of waiting in orbit for rescue.
“I could have gotten around planetary defense! I was a smuggler!”
“You’re in prison,” she said. “Can’t have been a very good one.”
I’d been a great one until I trusted the wrong person. Apparently I haven’t learned a damn thing. I cut off comms and watched the lifepod disappear.
Bam-Bam and Magpie found me on top of Diver’s Cliff, knife poised above my tether. I faced Paradise and imagined I could feel the cool blue-green water surrounding my body as it pulled me further out to sea. Magpie took the knife from my shaking hand, and Bam-Bam pulled me into a surprisingly gentle hug before setting me back on my feet.
“Bitch had a hidden lifepod, huh?” Magpie said. “I never trusted her.”
“You don’t trust anyone,” I said with a watery chuckle.
She spread her arms wide. “And now you see why!”
“We just need to figure out another way,” Bam-Bam said.
“Even if we could, why risk it?” I said flatly. “You can just finish your sentence and forget this ever happened.”
Bam-Bam and Magpie exchanged a long glance.
“Can you?” Magpie finally said.
“We’re worried about you,” Bam-Bam rushed to add.
“I don’t need your help!” Awkward silence met my lie. I’d dragged them both into my crazy plans, and the only reason they wanted to escape was to save me? I didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty.
Bam-Bam started again, his voice tentative. “Maybe we could—”
“It’s over!” I said. “This was our one shot, and I blew it.” I hung my head.
“I never took you for a quitter,” Magpie said softly. “Surely there’s something else that can shield us from reentry.”
I sighed with frustration. Why didn’t they get it? We’re done. I’m done. I kicked the surface, sending a small fleck of rock spinning away from us into space. I watched it fall toward the planet.
One last, insane hope filled me, and I forced a laugh, putting a hand on each of their backs.
“Do you know the difference between an asteroid and a meteor?”
We strapped ourselves into our seats and activated the ship’s systems, dialing the inertial dampeners to their highest setting. The exterior cameras displayed only the rock walls of the mined-out section under Diver’s Cliff where we were hidden, so I turned them off.
“For the record, I hate this plan,” Magpie said.
“It’s a brilliant plan!” Bam-Bam argued, and I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Of course, someone nicknamed ‘Bam-Bam’ thinks it’s a brilliant plan,” she muttered.
I interrupted their chatter. “All systems live. Set the bait.”
Bam-Bam transmitted a signal to the prison defense system requesting permission to take off. With our ship surrounded by rock, it took a minute for the signal to make it through.
“You’re sure you got the calculations right?” Magpie said, her voice squeaking.
“Are you questioning my math?!” Bam-Bam said.
I checked the console above the pilot’s seat and clicked the button to receive the automated communication.
“Power down your engines. I repeat, power down. We will fire.”
I didn’t respond but kept comms active to listen to the countdown.
“Three.”
I took a breath.
“Two.”
I let it out.
“One.”
The ship shook slightly as the prison defense systems fired on our location.
“Dampeners are holding!” I said.
“One more hit ought to do it!” Bam-Bam shouted, excitement in his voice.
“You are both insane!” Magpie shrieked.
With a shudder that the dampeners couldn’t overcome, the thin section of asteroid we’d further undermined came loose, sending us spinning off into space.
“Heading?” I asked. If Bam-Bam’s math was even a little bit off, we were all going to die in the void of space.
Bam-Bam laughed. “Steady as she goes! Perfect.”
I powered down the engines, and the prison defenses stopped firing.
“They think they got us,” I said.
“Now we just need to get through planetary defense,” Bam-Bam said.
“Not to mention surviving reentry,” Magpie sniffed.
Meteors (okay, technically it was still an asteroid until we hit atmo) are slow. I dozed as we drifted toward the planet, caught in its gravity well and spiraling toward the surface.
Bam-Bam shook me awake. “We’re about to hit atmo. Time to shine.”
I reached for the controls. “Clear to power up?” If we powered up too soon, planetary defense would target us. They might target us anyway, if the meteor was too big, but we’d made it as small as we dared and aimed for the ocean to fool the grid.
Bam-Bam pressed one ear to the hull. “Almost. Give it another minute.”
The ship shook, jolting Magpie awake.
“Reentry initiated,” Bam-Bam said.
“Clear yet?” I said, my voice edging toward panic.
“Not yet!”
I closed my eyes.
“Now!”
I powered through the fastest startup sequence I’d ever done.
“I’m opening the door!” Bam-Bam said, hitting the button to set off the charges he’d planted on one side of the meteor. We were a spinning object inside a spinning object. Our exit window was too short to wait for sensors to read which way the opening in the meteor was facing, so I kept my eyes closed and swayed with the movement of the ship, then pulled the controls toward where I felt the opening.
Bam-Bam’s cackle (and the fact that we were still alive) told me I’d chosen right, and I opened my eyes. Blue ocean, dropping away from us over the curve of the horizon. I hovered over the sea long enough to watch the meteor splash into the water below, then set a course for the nearest island.
I sat on the beach and watched the sun set over the sapphire-blue sea. I felt pretty good for someone reported dead in a failed prison escape attempt. Bam-Bam tossed a tennis ball down the beach and laughed as his new puppy raced off after it.
Nova was still out there somewhere, and I doubted she’d believe the exaggerated reports of my death. Let her come; we had unfinished business anyway. Today, though…
I sat back in my beach chair and raised the fruity drink in Magpie’s direction, eyeing her bikini-clad body as she stretched out on the chair next to mine. She opened one eye long enough to glare at me before returning to her nap.
I shrugged and sipped my drink, tossing a baseball-sized sapphire up and down in my other hand.
I sat my empty glass and the sapphire on the table next to my chair. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”
Morgana Clark grew up in the Midwestern US but achieved escape velocity after engineering school. The kit to build her included sea witch, research scientist, and mama wolf. The leftover parts probably weren’t important. See more of her writing about magic, science, and how people relate to them at www.morganaclark.com.
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