Part Two
The track looked like empty, gentle verdigris compared to the compressed, heavy trash build-up that was the old spleenching tracks of the Extedges. A shopping trolley spun daintily through the air, bumped against what Steve recognised as a huge, abandoned prow. Straight-backed stones the size of cathedrals drifted placidly, peacefully. They each individually contained enough accumulated inertial force to smite the Impressing to tiny spinning shards. They didn’t look it.
The track started by the ruins of the YOZZ megacapital-centre and when you looked at them from far away, they didn’t look so ruined. The paint came off at the corners, sublimated and hovered around in dry flecks, and frozen merchandise spilled from puncture wounds like thick colourful blood, but it was, generally, all together, all hefty and rectangular. A nearby sun–unofficially named the YOZZ, after the megacapital-centre it shone on–roared behind it, turned it black, scorched it.
The ships were ready. They were testing their engines. The Assistance Impressing hummed. Patchwork plating and graffiti and a pulsing, vaporous undercarriage all came together into something strangely sleek, strangely consistent, in a manner like various bits of garbage and scrap were all hacked together but then gently, lovingly polished and sculpted so as to affably meld with one another.
The Vibe City rumbled. Thin plumes of smoke already sublimated from its vents. It was a sharp triangle, fat engines and thrusters at its back thinning to its cockpit. It was clean, white, with rectangular splotches of orange by its wings. Its chassis was completely new. It looked like a giant surgical tool. The only graffiti on it–the only semblance of any kind of mess or ugliness at all–had been added by Enfive, distinctly without the permission of Max Jones. A crudely sprayed mouth with sharp teeth and bright lips and a pair of thin, raging eyes around the front of the cockpit, and, on its side, in big red text, the phrase: GET OUTTA TOWNNN.
The Does Your Mother Know, the surprise third contestant who had zero place at all in the rivalry between and Impressing and the City and who seemed, all around, kind of out of place, rattled. It was slick, round, egglike. It had chain eruption thrusters that rumbled and rotated at its back.
The cam-ships orbited them idly. They were round, quiet things that made smooth movements and occasionally chirped to one another. Their lenses narrowed, twisted, gazed.
The footage they were capturing was being broadcasted, live, all across the spiral arm.
At the Plesdephont Market Day on Tuxus-Veik it played, grainily, on a huge flat monitor set up on what was normally a nukesmithing plane. On Fangore Fangore, in between piles of ramshackle colourful junk, a series of fat televisions depicted it. It permeated out of sniffcomms in various churches across Ranigrous. Somebody working in the Alliance Ambassadorial Centre on Staphas had dragged their television from their own apartment and set it up in the entrance hall, where a crowd gathered around it, chatting and passing snacks.
It broadcasted back to Alliance Base 17, where the supervisors of the ships sat in their various offices, barked various orders.
‘Do a couple twirls, yakknow? It’s gotta be a show, sponsors love shows. Do a spinny, one of them alerie rolls, whatever it is, a crate roll,’ Max fathomed through his psimic, popping another rhye-encrusted staphcore into his mouth and lounging even farther back on his bright red velvet couch.
‘The reports are in,’ said Fodd Do, the Reugennite supervisor of the Does Your Mother Know, who had installed a computer system into her office window and who was attached to it by her suckers on an almost permanent basis. ‘Whatever you do: do not crash. Do not turn around and drive the opposite direction. Do not be last, unless temporarily.’ She liked giving orders more than anything else in the galaxy. She gave as many orders as she could.
‘Remain calm. This is the most important thing,’ said Robyn, both hands pressed to her desk. ‘Keep your perspective and retain a sense of collected wellbeing. Understand? After all, if we lose this, our careers are certainly over. At least, mine is, and without a career, frankly, I have nothing. I might even go on a violent rampage. I have been considering it, of late. Was this strange to admit? Well. Ahem. Please do remain calm, everyone.’
It was broadcast, finally, to the announcers.
Zsst-ksst-shrr was a Staphan who worked as a ranger for Atmospheric Services until they decided that admin work spoke to them more. They were part of the Alliance Secretary-Council which meant that they were someone’s boss, or, rather, a lot of someoneses boss. Their chitin was daintily polished and looked almost syrupy, was decorated with blue paintdust, dotted with tasteful and professional yellow circles. Staphans were telepathic, specifically, with other Staphan lifeforms. They had an interpreter–Farsouthleftsegment–a shrubbery, also from Atmospheric Services. He spoke by moving specially shaped leaves into intricate patterns and then rustling them together. His pot had a cheesy red bowtie.
Next to them, hulking out of her chair, was Scutzca: Irithreemes, the longest lasting champion of the Exterior Edges Grand Spleench, having won consecutively for nine years until she was finally beaten by her rival, Porter-7762. She was long retired, by now. Her keratinous exobody was marked all over with scratches and dents and scars. Of her five sensory horns only two were totally unscathed–she had lost the leftmost one in her third Grand Spleench win, had lost the rightmost one in her fifth win. Three of her arms were cybernetic. She had lost the first two in her sixth win. The third one, she just replaced because she thought it looked better. They had pictures of curling snakes and narrow-eyed reptiles coiling over them. When she flexed it sounded like gravel was shifting.
‘Tensions might be high but the solar activity is smooth in this sector, the trash is drifting gently, and it is all looking to be a clean, smooth spleench. What do you think, Irithreemes?’
Irithreemes grabbed her microphone with a hand the size of a cement brick and said: ‘Well, Zsst, I hope it isn’t clean or smooth. Good spleenches are never clean or smooth. I always measured the quality of my victories by just how many appendages I damaged, and how much they were damaged.’
Zsst and Farsouthleftsegment nodded at that. ‘Very wise words, Irithreemes.’
‘Let’s go! Let’s gooooo! Let’s GOOOOO!’ Sophie chanted, swivelling the gun controls back and forth.
‘This is exciting,’ Mickey said, politely in his seat.
‘Mrrmpgh,’ Beth agreed through the foil chip wrapper they were eating.
‘I’m gonna puke,’ Steve said to nobody, adjusting the ship interface plugs that lined the comms on his back and which connected his brain to the controls of the Impressing through a set of thin black wires. He glanced up at one of the A-Serv vents.
‘I appreciate it, yakknow. You guys are alright.’
There was a series of faint chuckles and then a sardonic voice: ‘We put money on this. Don’t get your ass kicked too hard, slime baby butt-boy.’ The vents echoed with smug fungal chuckling.
Steve regretted even mentioning it.
‘Folks and folks and folks, with the engines all warmed up and the thingamajoos prepared, we are just about ready to get started. Irithreemes, do you have any final words of advice for our spleenchers?’
Irithreemes grabbed the microphone again. It folded slightly under her grip.
‘Crush! Eachother!’
‘Yes, ahaha, wise words, very wise. Crush eachother indeed, spleenchers! Safely. Now…’
The floor rumbled and grew warm. Something rattled in the piping. Life flowed in the Impressing’s veins.
Steve turned his playlist on. Vussugunan throat-swindling pounded through his speakers. His body wiggled in rhythm. His face was completely still with terror.
‘Go!’
CRACK!
The sound of a cannon shot blew through their speakers.
The Impressing’s vapour thrusters spewed mountains of gleaming white idoido salt-vapour.
The Mother’s eruption thrusters spewed globular droplets of rafractan semi-magma.
The Vibe City’s inertia thrusters cracked, sparked, coughed, and then suddenly exploded into colossal plumes of iridescent plasma. White burning blasting razing light erupted everywhere and then vanished, suddenly.
There was a trail of superhot plasma and shattered asteroids. The City was a raging dot at its end. It grew smaller and smaller.
‘What?!’ Sophie yelled.
‘Oh my gawd,’ Steve said. ‘Nuke-pods?! And this early?!’
Robyn’s voice rang through the speakers: ‘So this was their plan. They intend to use their tougher hardware to leave us so far behind, and so quickly, that we cannot possibly catch up.’
‘This wasn’t our plan!’ Max screamed through the psimic. ‘You used the nuke-pods this early?! What’d I just say about sponsors?! This was meant to be a show you idiot–all you’ve done is turn them into underdogs. Sponsors love underdogs! Hello? Enfive?!’
Odeon’s voice, dull and slow as ever, dribbled through: ‘Hello Yes Max. We Are Busy In Here As We Have Used The Nuke-Pods Early. Did You Need Something?’
‘Where’s Enfive?!’
‘Laughing Maniacally.’
In the background, through the sound of the Vibe City apocalyptically shaking, threatening to come apart, Enfive roared with joyous laughter, occasionally shouting: ‘speed! speed! fast!’
‘Sorry. What was that? I don’t think I was paying attention,’ Mickey said, baffled and slightly scared.
‘What now?!’ Sophie yelled, clasping her head.
‘The vapour hyperproduction tabs!’ Steve hissed. He rammed hard on the thrusters, felt the recoil of the ship’s systems through his body, felt it cold, electric. He felt the sharp edge of outer space, vaguely, felt it sliding past a great metal body that wasn’t his. It wasn’t fast enough. Spinning rocks, space junk, ruined ships floated past, agonisingly slow. ‘They’re in the drawers!’
Beth and Mickey frantically tore the drawers open.
‘No, the other drawers,’ Steve said.
They tore open the other drawers.
‘Purple or red?’ Beth asked.
‘Oh gawd purple! Don’t even touch red, it’s the engine self-destruct tab!’
Mickey grabbed a purple one and said: ‘Why do we have that, and why is it in the same drawer as the other one?!’
‘Just insert the tabs, oh, gawd!’ Steve yelled.
‘Where?!’ Mickey howled.
‘Calm, everyone,’ Robyn said. ‘Mickey, please take the tab to the engine room. I will direct you to the propellant depository hole. We just need to remain calm.’
‘You’re right,’ said Mickey. ‘Calm. I’m calm.’ He smiled down at the hyperproduction tab. ‘If my girls could see me now…’
‘But hurry,’ Robyn hissed, and Mickey squeaked and scuttled out of the cockpit, down a corridor and into the depths of the Impressing. It was suddenly very quiet.
‘We’re gonna have a lotta crap coming at us real quick,’ Steve said, glancing at Sophie. ‘So–you remember you gotta–’
‘Shoot anything inside my “Safety Cone”, yeah, yeah, don’t hit anything too big cos it’s gotta be small enough to be eaten by the debris thingy, yeah, yeah.’
‘No trickshots,’ Steve emphasised.
‘Nothing fun,’ Sophie repeated.
‘It’s in, everybody!’ Mickey said, proudly walking into the cockpit. ‘Actually, it was very easy, I simply had to just–’
Nobody heard what he said because they were all stretching into bands of spaghetti. The spacejunk around them turned briefly into long grey lines. The cockpit elongated, curved slightly. The lights flickered.
‘Do we have anything like that?’ asked Jo-Hatties of the Does Your Mother Know from her piloting chair on the ceiling. She watched the Impressing vanish into a thin line of violently spinning vapour on the tail of the City. ‘Nobody told me we needed anything like that.’
‘We’ve got dese, kinda, fireworks from Fodd’s birthday,’ suggested Corprogaggus, scratching one of his facets and holding up a box of fireworks. ‘They’re non-toxic.’
‘It’ll have to do,’ Jo-Hatties said, taking a tired sip of reverse-gravitational coffee.
The Impressing zigzagged through the asteroid field. Steve grunted and sweated with every turn. He shrieked frequently, which was the worst thing you could ever hear from the pilot of your ship, and which made everybody else shriek, too.
He jabbed the ship suddenly aside, rounded a long curve around a ruined billboard advertising some revolutionary new kind of socks, darted like a panicked fish. Sophie was grinning like a kid. The more danger they were in, the more she grinned. She leaned hard in, bared white teeth. Gleaming corkscrews erupted from the Impressing–THHHH-TUNK, THHH-TUNK, THHH-TUNK, shattering anything that entered her safety cone. Asteroid dust, pebbles, spinning debris were vapourised by the debris membrane as the Impressing drew near, faint blue marks showing its normally invisible curves and bounds and then dissolving away.
Every now and then, the City appeared, a dot swinging behind a shattered trawler, a ruined ramen store. Flashes of light erupted from far ahead as they fired their own gun.
It grew. Its nuke-pods had run out–the Impressing’s vapour hyperproduction still ran strong.
Steve made a noise like ‘Uuuaaannnnnnghhhhhhhh,’ directing the Impressing between a pair of jaggedy asteroids. Hard black shadows fell over them as they passed through, scraped out the other side, debris membrane buzzing.
The City rocketed ahead of them, dancing up and down.
Sophie’s comms went off. She held them to her ear with her left hand, awkwardly swivelling the gun around with her right.
‘I’m busy! Who is it?’
‘Hiiii Soph,’ came Xeq’s voice, placid as ever. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m doing–’ she grunted as an ancient and ice-encrusted toilet flew suddenly into vision which she shattered, immediately, into dancing atoms. ‘I’m doing good. You?’
‘Oh, haha. I’m just kinda racing–uh–spleenching some guys.’
‘That’s us,’ Sophie said.
‘You’re spleenching too?’
‘Yeah, you’re spleenching us. That’s us behind you.’
‘Oh, oooh, you’re right. That’s exactly what I called you about.’
Sophie adjusted the comms against her ear. ‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Sophie?’ Mickey asked. He had been clutching his chair, utterly absorbed by terror for the last few moments, until this point.
‘Yeah. So, I’m going to shoot at you really soon.’
Sophie blinked. She shot another asteroid to dust. ‘You’re gonna shoot us? Is that allowed?’
‘Going to shoot us?!’ Mickey squealed. ‘Who?!’
‘No, no, not like thaaaat,’ Xeq said, chuckling languidly. ‘We’re gonna shoot the sorta, the rocks near you. You feel?’
‘Oooh, right, righty,’ Sophie said, understanding, nodding her head.
‘Just thought I’d let you know. Maybe you should do that to ussss, haha, I-D-K. Or not. Actually don’t. Max will be mad if you do. Byeeeeee Soph. Good luck with whatever you’re doing.’
‘Bye, Xeq,’ Sophie said cheerily, hanging up her comms and stuffing them back in her pocket.
‘Sophie,’ Beth asked, eyes wide. ‘What was that?’
‘Oh, it was just Xeq. She’s just gonna shoot at us.’
‘Shoot at us?!’ Steve howled. ‘What?!’
‘Is that allowed?’ Mickey asked sincerely.
‘No, not at us,’ Sophie explained. ‘At the rocks near us.’
‘The rocks near us?!’ Steve repeated.
‘Technically it is allowed,’ Robyn’s voice chimed in helpfully.
Xeq shot the rocks near them. Darting purple lights, a noise like vssssss-SHT, and an array of asteroids suddenly split into jaggedy chaotic fragments. They rained towards the Impressing, dinging off the debris membrane, fizzling into it. Blue light flickered and thrummed.
‘Wow-wee. Is that even allowed?’ Zsst asked.
Irithreemes had thrown her head back and was shaking with laughter. ‘Of course it’s allowed!’
‘Oh gawd Sophie you gotta shoot defensive,’ Steve shrieked, swinging the Impressing to the side. The City aimed again–vsssssss-SHT–purple lights barraged around them, sending lumpy asteroid bits and erratic clumps of concrete buzzing at the Impressing. Steve swirled, spun, darted past a floating wall for cover. Sophie gritted her teeth silently, evaporated a cloud of junk here, an approaching rock there–but not enough. Their debris membrane fizzled and danced.
The City kept firing.
‘Uhhhm. What is “debris absorption overloading”?’ Mickey asked, looking at the various moving pointers and glowing needles on the dashboard. ‘What does that mean? I can guess, but I want to be sure.’
Steve howled.
And the City kept firing. Vsssssss-SHT, an ancient tanker blew up sending shrapnel everywhere. Vsssss-SHT, the crumbling remains of a mining rig split across space. The Impressing flew wildly, pointlessly, taking hopeless sudden turns and strange angles. The asteroid field shook and spun outside their viewports.
Steve watched, impossibly slow, as a lump of concrete, small and raggedy and the size of a pebble, slipped, unharmed, through the debris membrane.
He glanced at the reading on the dashboard. It was bright red. ‘DEBRIS ABSORPTION OVERLOADING. DEBRIS ABSORPTION OVERLOADING.’ It daintily floated through space and bounced against the Impressing’s side.
Ding! It went on the hull.
The sound echoed through the cockpit.
‘Oo-oh,’ said Beth.
Robyn spat through the speakers. ‘Steve, if you don’t do something right now–’
‘I know, I’m thinking! I’m thinking! I’m thinking!’ He shrieked as he flew the Impressing through another cloud of debris, spinning it sideways, rocketing towards a ruined truck for cover.
‘That thing! That–rock, thing! There! Fly at it!’ Sophie exclaimed, pointing at a huge white asteroid with a strange, lumpy texture. It was one of the biggest ones they had seen so far–it nearly filled up the entire viewport.
‘Fly at it?!’ Steve hissed. More purple beams flared around them and Steve ducked, darted. He could taste iron, and his body ached from where the plugs went in. When the debris membrane fizzled and glimmered he felt it, vaguely, like a tiny, cold, metal prick on his skin.
‘Please! Fly at it! Slowly–uh–fast, but not too fast. This thing shoots zet corkscrews! That rock is made of–the–the stuff! They’ll go right through, I promise!’
‘You’re nuts, why would I–’
‘Why make me the gunner if you’re not even gonna trust me to gun?!’ Sophie yelled, holding her goggles above her eyes. They had been digging into her face, had left red marks.
Mickey shuffled up and placed a gentle tendril on Steve’s back.
‘Steve–she knows this. She will know this. It’s OK. You’re hyperventilating. Breathe with me–’ he began to count.
‘Gawd, you’re just like Beth,’ Steve grumbled to himself, breathing as Mickey counted. He strafed the Impressing once more aside as another volley of stones scraped the debris membrane, and began flying right for the asteroid. He kept thinking of everybody watching him, waiting for him. Everybody behind those screens. He thought of all their eyes, fishlike and focussed and heartless, analysing his every move and failure. He wanted to puke. ‘Alright! Do it.’
Sophie grinned madly and aimed: THHHH-TUNK, THHHH-TUNK, THHHH-TUNK.
‘Oh, gawd,’ Steve whispered. The asteroid was unmoved.
THHHH-TUNK. THHHHH-TUNK. THHHH-TUNK.
Another volley of purple shots came. Debris blossomed around them.
Steve rammed on the thrusters.
‘A bold strategy: crashing into a rock. But how will this play into the long run?’ Zsst wondered aloud.
Irithreemes said nothing. She had long crushed the microphone in her hand. She leaned into her monitor and watched. A very large smile was creeping over her face.
THHHH-TUNK, THHHH-TUNK, THHHHH-TUNK.
‘Stupid thing!’ Sophie wailed.
THHHHH-TUNK.
The corkscrew flew at the asteroid like all the others had. It rammed into it, dug in, vibrating wildly, flinging iridescent light, slowly disintegrating itself under its own energy.
It hit something in the asteroid. Something the other corkscrews had barely missed, or had helped dig out. Something, very deep inside the white asteroid, cracked.
It gave way all at once. The corkscrew, spinning wildly, drilled in, tearing it open. THHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, it went slowly piercing the asteroid’s flesh. TUNK! It went, blasting cleanly out its other side.
The Impressing stared down a huge, dark, jaggedy hole.
‘It’s a vuskite asteroid,’ Sophie said, pulling her goggles off and leaning on the gun controls. ‘I forgot the… uh. Name. Zet corkscrews are made to go right through them.’
‘We can fit through that, yeah?’ Beth asked.
Steve didn’t say anything. He was sweating hard. He was venting moisture, shrivelling slowly. He rammed hard on the thrusters, propelled the Impressing into a sudden silent darkness.
‘That was–amazing–Soph,’ Steve said. ‘Gawd. I can’t believe after all this time, I still don’t trust you. You guys really are just, just, the most–’
‘Sorry, I can’t find a better time to interrupt,’ Robyn said, suddenly. ‘You are nearing the end of the tunnel. It is imperative, Sophie, you fire on the offensive once you are free. Understood?’
‘Yeah. Yeah! I can be offensive. And, uh, its OK Steve, nobody trusts me, so I’m used to it!’
Steve used the next few seconds of that silent moment to feel like a giant asshole and then, as suddenly as they had entered the asteroid, they burst from it, white sunlight bouncing off the trash and the ruins and sliding over their viewports.
Sophie’s comms went off again and she picked it up as the City slid into view on their right, from behind a big conglomerated hunk of shopping trolleys and trash.
‘Heyyyy, Soph! Gosh I’m glad you’re ok, I thought I disintegrated you or something, haha,’ Xeq said.
Sophie chuckled back. ‘It’ll take more than that, Xeq.’
‘Well… OK then,’ Xeq said, and immediately began firing on the Impressing.
‘Aaah!’ Sophie yelped, frantically firing back.
For a brief moment the space between the ships looked like a neon rainstorm, like a bunch of glowsticks had been flung around and blown up. Raging electric light flashed, made strange shadows on the floating asteroids, then shattered them. The clump of shopping trolleys exploded and they all came apart, soared around like fat awkward birds.
Steve rammed the accelerator.
The City, briefly trapped in an awkward webwork of shopping trolleys, burst through, and followed.
‘Oh gawd, their acceleration,’ Steve said, almost weeping. Smoke spiralled from the City’s exhausts and hovered in dirty clumps. They circled each other, breaking through rocks and trash, ducking and weaving. The City approached them steadily, inevitably. Its plasma jets winked.
The trash planet spread wide beneath them. Pale yellow clouds swirled in long, thin spirals.
Steadily, inevitably, the City overtook them.
Steve had a desperate, stupid idea.
They sunk. The City rose away. The trash planet grew, closer, closer.
‘The Impressing is, ah, entering orbit? This is unexpected,’ said Zsst. ‘Mayhaps they intend to just land and quit all together–a technique, certainly, never before seen.’
‘They’re using the gravitational pull to speed up,’ said Irithreemes, resting her head in all of her hands.
‘Aha! Is that safe?’
‘No. It’s desperate and stupid.’ Irithreemes leant in, grin somehow still widening.
‘Is this safe?’ Mickey asked, gazing down at the trash planet. He could distinguish vague regions on it, tiny black oceans and rivers gleaming like oil.
‘It’s fine,’ said Steve, venting steam, shrivelling slowly.
The City had caught on. They sped up, up. They were both too busy dodging, shooting their own trash to shoot at each other. A giant burger on a billboard flashed into view and was just as quickly obliterated.
‘Pull back up. Steve. Pull back up,’ Robyn hissed. ‘You’re entering a dense cluster–and you’re coming too low.’
Steve glanced at one of the rear cameras. The City was directly above them, darting left, right, frantic.
‘I’ll screw us if I come back up. They’ll outrun us! We’ll never catch up!’
‘You’ll screw us if you crash in that cluster, or burn to nothing in the atmosphere!’
‘Kill who?!’ Beth asked.
‘Nobody!’ Steve yelled. ‘There’ll be no killing. Zero kills. Gawd-dammit I’m not that crap a spleencher.’ He went quiet for a moment. ‘If anybody wants me to pull out, I’ll pull out. Maybe I’ll risk myself but–I won’t risk any of you.’
‘We did know what we were getting into,’ said Beth.
‘I didn’t!’ Mickey admitted.
‘I trust Steve,’ Sophie said, still firmly focussed on shooting the rocks and space junk outside. ‘He’s the best pilot I’ve ever met. Um. Second best. But the first best was the ship, and I think it was precognitive? So that’s not fair.’
‘Steve has never let me down,’ Mickey said, smiling. ‘And if he ever did, I would forgive him in a second. I trust him.’
‘If I let you down you might die,’ Steve said, darting away from a chunk of grocery store. ‘But, uh. I appreciate it.’
‘This is, like, the coolest thing I’ve been in in a while,’ Beth said, grinning. ‘May as well keep it going. And–it’s for fundraising too, hey?’
Robyn was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘You will pull out if I tell you to. OK? And, Steve–the ship…’
‘I know, I know. I want it hurt as much as you, Rob. It’s like, our adopted son, like you’re kinda, its mother, and I’m, well, essentially the–’
‘Please discontinue this metaphor and focus on the racing now, please.’
‘Terrible metaphor, you’re right,’ Steve said.
They dipped down towards the trash planet. Tiny invisible debris, too small, too pointless to dodge, was incinerated in the debris membrane, made it dance and flash blue. They sank, steadily. They sped up, up, up. Debris seemed to materialise from nothing, blasting towards them. Everything was split second. Steve felt like he had millions of tiny points in his brain.
He swung the Impressing along the curve of a particularly huge asteroid, watched its scarred surface race by beneath, twisted it to the side, spun in a sudden roll between a pack of indistinguishable grey-plastic-trash-things. He was losing moisture, fast. Mickey spritzed him every now and then from a small spray bottle.
In all the adrenaline, all the movement, the behemoth metal body of the ship bending at Steve’s neural pulses, dancing at the firing of his synapses, he forgot. He forgot the sweat, forgot the race, forgot Max Jones. He forgot about losing and winning. He was spleenching. He was spleenching deadly fast, fast enough to shatter.
He grinned like a madman. His hearts pumped, the Impressing’s engines roared, circuitry thrummed. He was alive, the ship was alive–he was alive, he was alive!
‘Whatever you do, Enfive, do not follow those idiots,’ Max hissed into the microphone.
Enfive was bristling, slobbering. His jaggedy edges quivered impatiently, desperately. He had electricity building up in him, expanding, and he needed it out.
‘Do not screw us like this,’ Max continued. ‘They’re right where we want them. We still have the lead.’
‘It Is True,’ added Odeon. ‘At The Absurd Speeds They Will Be Reaching, It Will Be Impossible For Them To Possess The Agility Needed To Spleench Properly. While They May Be Undeniably Faster Than Us In Every Possible Way…’
Enfive hadn’t been listening for the past few minutes. Enfive rarely listened to anyone, especially Odeon, whose voice had a property like that of an engine slowly, pathetically coming to a dead halt. But he really hadn’t been listening. He felt like he was going to explode.
He glanced at Odeon, picked up, suddenly, on the word ‘speed’. He glanced at his cameras, at the Impressing picking up on them far below. Every second it was down there, every second it outpaced him, was like screws being driven into his joints.
‘screwed screwed screwed, i’ll show you screwed, i’ll screw you you you. i’ll screw this asteroid belt!’
‘Enfive!’ Max yelled.
‘i’ll screw the galaxy! screw off!’ Enfive howled back, slamming the mute button and kicking back on the steering gel. The City spewed smoke and plasma and began sinking towards the trash planet, towards the Impressing.
‘Heyyy, so, are we meant to be doing this?’ Xeq asked.
Enfive was laughing too hard to even hear her question.
The Impressing rattled concerningly. Steve’s litter danced across the room, out the corridors. They dipped deeper, and the City followed. Friction tore at the debris membrane. Tiny fires sparked, put themselves out immediately. Their thrusters screeched–the vapour came out in thin, sharp needles.
They did not dart anymore–they swung, swept, plowed. A thick asteroid came up to them–Sophie’s corkscrews tore it in half, Steve barely ducked under its remains. It tore the debris membrane open, briefly, with a horrible, shrill noise like stone grinding on metal. It flickered blue as it healed itself slowly.
Steve glared out through the window. Enfive glared back at him. Sophie waved. Xeq wobbled cheerfully back.
The City shuddered horribly. It quaked, shook, its jets went completely out and–suddenly–came right back on. They had lengthened into gleaming white spears. It picked up. It crept, slowly, horribly, ahead.
‘Get out of there! Now!’ Robyn yelled.
‘It’s just an anti-inertia overdrive! If I keep up long enough for it to blow out we can outpace them!’ Steve yelled back.
‘I don’t think you understand the situation you are in. The cluster is coming closer and the gravitational pull is becoming too strong, get out. We’ve–’ She groaned lengthily. ‘We’ve come as far as we can get. I am the last one who would dare admit we accept coming second place to the Vibe City. But our options are limited.’
‘I can win this–I swear–gawd, I–I ain’t even choking.’ Steve was beginning to look like a dried out, deflated balloon. Mickey sprayed him frantically.
‘For what, Steve?’ Robyn hissed. ‘The debris membrane is barely handling the friction at this point.’
The debris membrane had been fizzling more and more as they descended. It unfurled suddenly, flapped like a piece of loose skin, before suddenly closing itself.
‘Stepannus!’
Steve turned around, looked over his crew. It was uncanny for many reasons. They were quiet, for one. For another, they were looking at him for answers.
‘We gotta quit while we can,’ he said, finally. ‘At this rate it’ll be safer to land on the planet than it’ll be to break out of orbit. We, uh. Uh.’ He glanced around for some kind of cover to hide behind, to hide that he was weeping. Big fat tears grew on his skin, crept down to the dashboard. ‘You’re the best spleenchers in existence. Nobody’s–gawd. I wouldn’t want anybody else in this ship. Nobody else deserves to be in here.’ He shut his eyes for a moment and tried, very badly, to compose himself.
‘I’m gonna land us, now.’
There was a low rumbling from the vents. It suddenly formed words: ‘Don’t forget about that prototype on us, cousin. You little soppy wet worm.’
Steve looked up suddenly. Being called a ‘little soppy wet worm’ had shocked the tears right off his face.
‘Sophie, can you land this ship?’
‘Erp!’ she said. ‘I’m gunning!’
‘Yes but–if you get off the guns. And use the controls. Here.’
‘Sure!’ she said. ‘Maybe. Uh. Probably?’
‘That’s good enough for me,’ Steve said. The Impressing slowed, slightly, began to dip towards the trash planet. ‘Take the controls off me. Mick–take me to the hold.’
‘The hold? What’s in the hold?’ Mickey asked.
Sophie explained helpfully: ‘That’s where we store things, like deliveries, or–’
‘There’s nothing in the hold,’ Steve said. He turned around. He was smiling with a vigour he had never smiled with before. It was slightly terrifying. ‘But a prototype speeder. Which I’ll use, while you land.’
‘A prototype speeder?!’ Mickey said.
‘Slick!’ Sophie exclaimed.
‘Without guns?’ Beth added.
‘And no space for anyone else. I’ll fly it alone.’
‘Unslick!’ Sophie exclaimed again. ‘You’re supposed to be smart and worried one!’
Steve was unmoved. His grin yet remained. ‘This is spleenching, there’s no smarts or worries! C’mon, it’s perfect–we land the ship, we win the race, nobody dies–’
‘Who cares about winning the race!’ Mickey shouted. ‘Steve, we can’t just throw you out there without a gunner!’
‘Listen, listen, the no gunner thing is bad, I admit, maybe I’ll fix it up in a future iteration–but you just gotta know, this thing has a grade 5 debris membrane, it’s got a hypertense chitin chassis, it’s got omnidirectional secondary thrust, this thing, it’s like a dart, I won’t hit a gawd damn thing and if I do I’ll barely feel it. I’ll blast out there and I’ll make the City look like a buncha morons. Just let me. I’ll win the balls off this race.’
They were all silent. Steve’s grin faded, slowly. Robyn’s voice carried through the intercom: ‘Do not do this, Steve. I will not let you endanger yourself for the purposes of this pointless race–let alone to fuel our petty and baseless rivalry with the Vibe City.’
‘No–but–I gotta–’
‘I understand the pressure you are under, Steve, to win this race. I understand it more thoroughly than you may realise. I also understand how much of it I have placed upon you, myself. I promise you, Steve, that whatever you get out of this–it will not be worth it. Please, Steve–if not for your own sake, then, at least, for your crew–don’t do this.’
‘No, you don’t get it!’ Steve yelled, shaking his head. ‘Well–you do. You did. It was like that at first but–I–now–I feel more alive than I’ve felt in ages. This is why I’m a pilot, Rob, this is why I cobbled up this thing for you those years back. I’ve been waiting for a day like this since I was a kid and I didn’t even know it! This is the art of the Extedges! This is the Glow-Oceans dream! I’ve never wanted to do something more in my whole life, and if you won’t let me, I’ll crawl to the hold! Or–I’ll do something really crazy the next time I get in a ship!’ There was a maniacal glint in his eyes that showed that whatever he was planning really was crazy.
Everybody was stunned. Steve looked around, looked for somebody–something.
In spite of themself, a small grin grew on Beth’s face.
‘And–the Impressing seems to be finally utilising the before now never seen technique of “quitting the spleench and just landing on a planet”. This sudden turn of events may just be the exact thing the competitors are looking for!’ Zsst said.
Irithreemes was still silent. She was terrible at commentary. She was a pilot first and foremost and she knew this. She only joined at all because of the complimentary frusskin scale chips which she had still not yet received. The last thing she had been expecting was an actual spleench.
‘They’re… doin something…’ she said quietly.
‘They certainly are! And whatever it is, I hope it pays off eventually!’
‘You’re just announcers–what the hell do you schmucks know about spleenching anyways?’ Steve muttered to himself, squirming in his seat and shutting off the radio. He nodded at Beth through his windshield, who gave him a silent thumbs up, pulled a series of hefty levers at their end of the hold, and fled, back into the guts of the Impressing.
The hold creaked and groaned. A crack grew in the floor and widened and widened. The hold opened up. Steve was on a platform that was lowering, slowly, from a winch at its back.
The RV Angel-Eye was a speed vessel with a yugusk-chitin chassis. It was dark orange, smooth and hard like a crustacean’s shell, driving forwards to a point, looking like a thin, mean thorn. It’s chitin plating had been driven in with jethammers. There was a huge, central thruster at its back and a pair of smaller, swivelling thrusters at its sides, on the ends of thick, short wings. Steve sat in a small circular cockpit at its sleek, bulbous centre. It had a series of cameras encircling this centre, like little black eyes.
It purred quietly.
Steve glared facefirst at the debris membrane fizzing blue, at the trash planet below. There was a click, and the holding magnets came off.
‘Not a thing!’ Steve screamed, falling into space and suddenly ramming hard on the vapour thrusters.
They kicked hard, spraying out in a ferocious wide burst and thinning slowly into three tiny, sharp blades of superhot vapour. The Impressing’s huge bulk above slid away, and the Angel-Eye shot out from beneath. It tore upwards, away from orbit. The atmosphere ripped at it. Its debris membrane looked like it was on fire.
‘It doesn’t even seem to have a gun! Is this even allowed?!’ Zsst yelled.
Irithreemes practically had stars in her eyes. ‘No!’
The Angel-Eye was like an angry bullet. The City had gained a lead during the ship switchover–it loomed in the distance, mildly foggy, dodging between a thick rain of rocks and trash. It came closer. The Angel-Eye gained on it.
‘notagain notagain notagain!’ Enfive wailed. ‘where’s our smallship do we have it where’s it where?!’
The Angel-Eye came to the cluster. It darted furiously, wildly–practically invisibly–under the City. It glowed bright blue as its debris membrane rang out.
‘We have liiiiike… an escape pod,’ Xeq said. ‘But I don’t think it’s like, for this?’
Enfive had already disappeared away into the City.
‘Ummmmmm,’ said Odeon, staring gormlessly at Xeq.
‘That thing is for escaping!’ Max Jones screamed, face coated in sweat. The staphcores were in a pile on his chest, scattered on his couch, the floor. He had flung the bag they had come in across the room. ‘Someone stop him! I–Odeon, gggaah, plug Xeq into the controls, then stop Enfive!’
‘I have nooo idea how to fly this,’ Xeq said.
‘Odeon, plug into the controls! Xeq, stop Enfive!’
‘I forgot my hovercarrier,’ Xeq admitted. ‘Hey so, should we–’ there was a sudden CRACK sound from the intercom, and it then went completely silent. ‘Uhhhh. Sooo. Maax? Do we land or?’
Max Jones stood over the shattered remains of his psimic. He looked around his office to see if anyone was around him. Nobody seemed to be there. He cracked open his door, peered around. Nobody was around that he cared about. He shut the door. He breathed heavily for a few moments.
He screamed.
The City wavered awkwardly under Odeon’s control, slowed down, coming gently to a peaceful stop. A small airlock at its bottom opened up and with a FUMP the City’s cylindrical escape pod blasted out of it, rocketing immediately into the distance, following the Angel-Eye.
It was bigger than it, heftier, a brutish and fast lump of metal, half as much a bullet as it was a ship. It had a single anti-inertial thruster–a monstrous one. It spewed angry rays of plasma, shouldered trash aside as the Angel-Eye darted ahead.
The pod came up to the Angel-Eye shortly. Steve saw it creeping up in his vision, like a flying cinderblock, impending. He darted around the floating shell of a fast food place and watched out of the corner of his eye as the pod, gleaming blue, puffing steam as its debris membrane freaked out, went right through it and out the other side.
‘What the hell?’ he couldn’t help but mutter to himself.
A call came through on his intercom and he glanced at it, baffled, then let it through.
‘you’ll never be faster never never nevernevernevernever not on a vapour thrust not on an inertia thrust not even on a fold thrust but especially not on a vapour thrust! never nevernever!’
‘Hello?’ said Steve. ‘Who’s this?’
‘enfive. sorry. i’m in the pod.’
‘Oh. Right. Isn’t that thing for escaping?’
‘yesno. listen geddit i’m gonna win this now i’ll be faster faster than anything you’ve ever seen you should just give up before your dumb thing breaks apart geddit?’
‘You should give up, pal. I’m gonna use you as proof that inertia thrust is a big stupid joke.’
‘why would i give up thats crazy i’m literally already here no no thanks.’
‘Why would I give up then?’
‘well it looks like we’re at an impasse and diplomatic relations have fallen apart then and you know what that means do you do you?’
‘I have no idea what that means at all.’
‘it’s war it’s war it’s war ya eedjit!’ Enfive howled.
The Angel-Eye was undoubtedly faster than the escape pod. It was small and wiry and fragile. It darted madly up and down, made wild, sudden, death defying twists. It moved like a frenetic insect. Steve was barely looking, thinking–there wasn’t much to see. Everything out the windows moved in blurs. He was all electrons, all thunder, lightning. He moved on impulse.
The escape pod, however, had all the brute force of inertia thrust. It was thick metal, huge rivets. It was lined with titanium. It had three debris membranes, each layered beneath one another–an entire secondary engine was dedicated to powering them. At the speeds they were going, it could barely turn–it curved, it slid. It battered its way through, sent clusters of debris flying, swerved dangerously around huge asteroids.
‘This is looking like an even, uh, matchup, I think! It’s also becoming very hard to follow!’ Zsst commented cheerfully. ‘Any thoughts, Irithreemes?’
Irithreemes had her face practically pressed against her screen. Her big hands were grabbing the table. They were leaving huge marks.
The ships circled each other, perfectly matched. Whenever the Angel-Eye took the lead a great hunk of trash or stone would appear and it would have to sweep nimbly around it. Whenever the pod took the lead it would bash into a particularly large lump of debris, or it would roar through a long stretch of empty space where the Angel-Eye could catch up to it.
A great grey rectangle rose in the distance. It had been growing for some time, a piece of far-off set dressing that neither of them had the time to pay attention to. It grew in size rapidly, suddenly, loomed with asteroids at its sides like servants and revealed itself to be another YOZZ megacapital-centre branch. It was huge and soulless and empty and in essence looked like any normal shopping centre.
Enfive thrusted straight for it.
‘Your pod can’t take that, pal!’ Steve hissed through his microphone. ‘Go around it!’
‘sure it can take it worry about yourself loser loser upcoming loser,’ Enfive argued back.
‘No it can’t, moron! Your membranes are already unpeeling!’
This was true–already the first two layers of the pod’s membranes were unfurled, shining blue and flapping loosely.
‘listen thats maybe true potentially maybe theoretically–’
‘It’s just true!’ Steve screamed.
‘i can’t turn this stupid thing and even if i could i wouldn’t i’m the fastest fastest fastest thing in existence and fast things don’t turn! i’ll win in pieces!’
‘You don’t get the win in spleenching if you’re dead!’ Steve was wiggling in stress, more from the conversation than he was from the rapidly shopping centre.
‘that’s unfair!’
The plasma from the escape pod died down briefly, then came back on, stronger than ever. Enfive was going all in.
Steve stared in horror. That idiot was going to kill himself. He watched the shopping centre approach. He had time, still, to dart around, barely.
He swung the side thrusters around and tilted the friction brakes, sent the Angel-Eye downwards, sideways. He crashed right into the pod. Their membranes met, crackled, fizzed, screamed, and they ricocheted against each other. Steve heard yelling through his intercom, glimpsed the pod careening away, towards the bottom of the shopping centre.
‘Gawd!’ he breathed, wiggling frantically. The wall was close, now, too close to avoid, rushing in at him. He caught a glimmer–glass, a window–turned frantically at it.
There was a horrible screeching, shaking, crashing. Everything was frantic and glowed blue. The wide space, the trash planet, the sunlight glimmering on flying garbage was all eaten up. He felt the Angel-Eye screaming at him through his plugs, felt the debris membrane pulsing, exploding.
Steve was all panic, all impulse–he saw a doorframe, thrusted ahead, blasted suddenly into a great spacious shopping district, long dead escalators rising through the air to floors above, storefronts grey and dead and quiet. Indistinct rubbish floated through–an old teddy bear disintegrated in the debris membrane, a set of pens, a flowerpot.
He blasted ahead, wildly, blindly, rattled through another set of doorframes, down a corridor, shattered glass flying, the debris membrane ripping and tearing. There was a bright something or other ahead and he thrusted towards it, ignored the ship screaming, screaming through his plugs, ignoring the debris membrane ripping wide open and flying apart in fizzing blue scraps.
The Angel-Eye plunged towards that window, blasted out horribly in a mess of broken glass and flying rubbish and the tatters of the debris membrane and was suddenly free. Space yawned ahead, wide and huge, and vanished suddenly, replaced by the shopping centre, and appeared again. The Angel-Eye was spinning like a frisbee. Steve felt an uncanny lightness in the left side of the ship and realised–the entire left wing and thruster had been torn off somewhere in the shopping centre.
‘Dammit, dammit, gawd dammit! Not like this!’ he howled, ramming the retro thrust on the remaining thruster.
Blue light flashed suddenly and the Angel-Eye’s spinning slowed down quickly, quick enough for Steve to see that it was the blue light of the City’s escape pod’s debris membrane. It was flying right beside the Angel-Eye, scraping its membrane against it. The nose of the Angel-Eye spun, caught in the membrane, tore it open, and slowed down, ever slightly.
After a few moments the pod was completely membraneless and slowly recharging them. Its side was scarred by the movements of Angel-Eye’s vapour. The Angel-Eye was flying beside it, bereft of both thrusters. Steve had shunted the other one, for the sake of balance.
‘and now we’re even you crazy eedjit we don’t owe eachother crap but the question is the question the question: do you have the guts? there’s not much more in this race but you gotta have the guts if you wanna finish it properly geddit, geddit? do you got em?’
‘I’ve got the guts, pal,’ Steve said, grinning.
‘good good goodgoodgood. haha. hahahahahahaha!’ The intercom was staticy with Enfive’s overly loud laughter.
‘i hope you got a hyperproduction tab too!’ Enfive yelled, sticky, globulous slobber flying as he spoke, grabbing a nuke-pod from a pocket and slamming it into his propellant depository.
He laughed like a madman as the escape pod shook wildly, unnaturally, like it was about to explode entirely, as the plasma from the inertial thruster totally vanished briefly, then suddenly roared out in huge, thick, wavy arms of blue, white fire.
‘Of course I do, schmuck,’ Steve said, grinning, ramming a button that released the hyperproduction tab into the Angel-Eye’s depository. It was a similar show–a frantic, terrifying shaking, like it was holding in an explosion, the vapour disappearing completely for a brief moment, then reappearing, in huge, wide spurts, blasting outwards.
And they were launched ahead once more, space and debris around them vanishing suddenly into singular greyish blurs, and Steve watched his vision lengthen, watched his cockpit stretch, spaghettify, elongate. The pod was ahead but the Angel-Eye was catching up.
The plasma, the vapour trails from their thrusters which had started so huge and wide had thinned as they sped up. The pod lunged ahead on a tiny, compact spear of bright white plasma–the Angel-Eye’s vapour was a hypercompact line. Their debris membranes tore up slowly–they barely dodged trash and asteroids, swerved away from blurs, or simply plunged through them.
Their ships rattled horribly, uncomfortably, dangerously. Horrible metal sounds creaked and groaned.
They weren’t worried. They were laughing. They were laughing like idiot kids who had no idea of what they were doing, no idea how to direct fragile crafts made of metal or chitin through an airless, unfriendly void. And weeping. Their tears shook out of their eyeducts, floated confusedly in the air, obliterated themselves on the floor or a wall. They blasted, onwards, onwards.
‘And they seem to be–they’re–they’re reaching the finish–they’re. Uh. Gone,’ Zsst commented. They watched in amazed silence as the two ships, blasting like absurd missiles, like things on a mission of hasty destruction, flew straight past the finish line and launched into space.
So the race ended.
They were trying to stop, of course, but the retro thrusters on their respective craft weren’t so strong as to counteract their propellants.
They drifted, still absurdly fast, into the distance, laughing.
‘Please say something, Irithreemes,’ Zsst begged.
Irithreemes had sweat all over her face. She grabbed Farsouthleftsegment’s microphone and spoke quietly, temperately. ‘This was one of the worst displays of spleenching I have ever seen. It. Was. Incredible.’ She looked at Zsst and grinned manically.
They smiled, baffled, back.
The City escape pod and the Angel-Eye had drifted so far and so fast that they were almost drawn into the next star system over until the fold-thrust quantoship, the ARS Reimbursement For My Time, deployed from Alliance Base 43 as an emergency measure, caught them in its hold.
It folded suddenly before them out of absolute nothingness, an angular monolith of glasslike shapes and dark, marbly surfaces. The battered ships slipped into it and Steve and Enfive awoke, suddenly, in a great white space.
VERY GOOD VERY GOOD SHOW! AMAZING STUFF!
‘What?’ said Steve.
‘huh?’ said Enfive.
OH YES. YOU SHOULD SQUINT AND THINK OF THE PIGMENT “PURPLE” IF YOU WANT TO PERCEIVE US. SORRY–YOU ARE IN A QUANTOFORMOUS VESSEL AT THIS MOMENT.
Squinting and thinking of pigments didn’t do much good. They were dark forms, amorphous looking, with thin, rigid–heads? Top-parts? And a long series of angular arms arbitrarily floating, encircling. Somehow, Steve knew they were smiling. One of them stepped forwards.
IF I MIGHT BE SO BOLD, CAN I HAVE YOUR SIGNATURES? FOR MY DAUGHTER.
‘Huh?’ said Steve, signing the unfathomable dark mass held before him.
‘what?’ said Enfive, signing it, too.
The crew of the Reimbursement were draining them, and their ship, of excess momentum, and feeding it to their own ship’s pet–another unfathomable dark mass stalking around in some “corner” (if that place had corners at all) of the room.
They were brought into the ship’s cockpit (an identical huge white space) and encouraged to kick back, relax for the moment, and enjoy their wide variety of snacks (more indistinct dark masses all of which were far too salty for Enfive’s tastes, and too fatty for Steve’s tastes.)
As the momentum draining approached completion, and the ship pet swelled to massive sizes, cooed at and petted by one of the crew members, they were allowed back on their own ships.
Steve sat there and, once more in a familiar environment, lounged back into his seat, unclenching his muscles and relaxing into a flat, squelchy state, like a happy slime mould. The Angel-Eye was torn up, was not flyable, had been barely patched up to a state in which it would at least not suddenly explode on him. It smelled like fruity IC gas and oil and fire. He still preferred it to the white voids of the Reimbursement.
His comms buzzed and, still in a languid daze, he answered it.
‘Helloooo?’
‘Steve!’ Robyn yelled.
‘Aaaah!’ Steve yelled back, clenching immediately back to form, standing straight.
‘Sorry. Are you fine? Are you injured? Please don’t be. Pardon. I realise this is an absurd request to make. Now, assuming you are, I have already gathered the necessary forms to make the most out of a compensation claim. We will need to work very carefully in tandem–’
‘I’m fine, Rob.’
‘Oh, thank goodness. Hem. Very good. Wonderful performance out there, by the way. Very, erm. Clenching.’
‘Clenching?’
‘Yes. Clenching.’ She inhaled quietly. ‘Now, enough of the chatter. Despite wonderful results all around on your end, the Impressing has, er.’
‘Has?’
‘Well.’
‘Well?’
‘It has–’
‘What?!’ Steve howled, arching his back.
Robyn’s tongue clicked. ‘I was getting to that. They have crash landed.’
They were fine, of course. One of the camships had tracked the Impressing down by its smoke trail, had found them lounging with each other on the ship’s back. It was all scrunched up, one of its wings had been ripped to shreds, a great gash had been ripped open at its side revealing the Impressing’s delicate innards and also Steve’s secret stache of Hybernonnian saltcrusts which had ended up scattered across the bleak, jagged landscape.
‘Ah. So you kept your stache there. Very clever,’ Robyn commented as Steve gaped in horror as a slightly pixelated Sophie and Beth fought and clawed at eachother in the rubble until Mickey hoisted them up by their collars like a pair of feral cats and began distributing the saltcrust packs fairly amongst each of them. The camship zoomed dramatically in as he, subtly, snuck a pair of them into his own pockets.
They returned to lounging.
It was an unreal sight–the endless plane of trash, flattened, eroded into a raggedy landscape of dark colours and flapping plastic sheets, flat pools of grey sand and sudden mountains made from other crashed ships, older, encrusted and melted, with billboards and other garbage enwrapping them. The Impressing, gutted. And the crew, on its back, with a set of deckchairs that had somehow survived the crash completely undamaged. Beth had sunglasses on and their jacket off and their legs leaning on another deckchair, reading a book the camship couldn’t pick up from this distance. Mickey was leaning over a tiny notebook, scribbling rapidly in it and every now and then looking up, gazing around. Sophie looked up from her deckchair and was waving.
They didn’t look real, not yet. Steve didn’t trust it. He swore, still, that they were dead, were torn to burning shreds, like the last supplies of his secret saltcrust stache.
They were descending, steadily, in the Heavy Reclamations ship, the VOG/GIN, a great orange cubelike thing that smelled like engines and burnt paper that didn’t have nearly enough benches in it.
Steve and Robyn were sharing the one bench they had found. They were hogging it. Assorted VOG/GIN crewmembers came by, gazed longingly at it, at them, but they were merciless. They kept it for themselves.
Robyn’s comms were projecting the footage of that camship. They both watched it intently, silently, like if they took their eyes off it for a second their crew, maybe even the whole ship, would suddenly disappear, or would explode, or be swept away.
‘So. Steve. How are you feeling?’ Robyn asked, completely still, like she was trying to hide the fact she had asked the question.
‘You keep asking me that. I feel fine. Hungry, maybe. I wish I had my saltcrusts.’ He gazed despondently as Beth reached into one of their bags of saltcrusts and ate another one.
‘Ah. Yes. Very good. That is good to hear.’
‘Sure is.’
‘Your health, mental and physical, is, of course, of the utmost importance–’
‘Whaddaya want, Rob?’ Steve said, looking up, right into her lenses. They were glassy and stoic. They reflected the projection. ‘You only get all weird and blathery when you want something from someone and you think it’s embarrassing.’
Robyn’s stoic posture cracked a little. She glanced back at Steve, then went back to looking at the projection, still, once more.
‘Erm. Yes. Very true. I simply find it necessary to apologise for my, erm, conduct earlier. I was under large amounts of stress and I was, I admit, not handling it very well. None of this, of course, excuses said conduct. I do not expect forgiveness, of course, it’s simply that my professional and moral obligations to you direct me to–’
‘It’s OK. I ain’t mad.’
‘I–yes, uhm, well.’ Robyn shifted on the bench, which drew attention from the more optimistic passing VOG/GIN crewmembers. ‘Thank you?’
‘I keep telling you, your head’s gonna explode one’ve these days. Which–’ He looked up and down at her. ‘With how outdated your suit is, maybe that’d be a good thing. I swear, I can hook you up with a great one.’
‘You shouldn’t concern yourself with the datedness of my solidsuit. Frankly, Steve, you clearly have enough on your own plate.’
‘Someone’s gotta worry about you, bud,’ Steve said. ‘And not just Mick, cause Mick already worries about everyone. Talk about heads that’re gonna explode. Naw, Rob, I ain’t mad at you cause you’re–you know. We’re–you know…’
Robyn shifted her weight again and glanced around. ‘Erm?’
‘We’re the same guy. I don’t think you’ve noticed that, Rob. You notice things but you never notice things like that.’
‘“We are the same guy”,’ Robyn quoted him sardonically.
Steve’s body pulsed with annoyance. ‘No–c’mon, we are. You’re even easier to read than I am. We’ve both got the same dumb fake personalities we hunker behind cause we’re both sad inside. You’ve just got a bunch of trophies and diplomas and fancy talking words you hide behind, too. We’re all twisted up the exact same way.’
Robyn was still–really still. She gazed through the projection. She sighed, leant forwards on her knees, uncharacteristically casual. ‘I’m not that easy to read.’
‘You really are, bud. You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met.’
‘What about Sophie?’
‘Alright, alright, second worst.’
Robyn sighed again and adjusted her lenses. ‘I am normally very capable at ascertaining the skills of the people working with me, yet it’s very clear, Steve, that I have underestimated you. For a very long time.’
‘You get that a lot if you’re from the Glow-Oceans,’ Steve said. ‘I think it’s just the residual predator-prey foodchain thing. Like, we always look like prey, to everyone.’
Robyn adjusted her glasses once more and was silently glad that Steve was being dumb, again. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t respected your role in our team and, particularly, your claim to our ship. I admit, I am much more–protective–of it than I like to admit. I take… pride in it. Unearned, perhaps, but I am fond of it. I intend, from now on, to respect this more. I am also. Erm.’ She kept adjusting her lenses for no real reason. ‘Far fonder of you than I would like to admit. I’m glad to have worked with you for so long, and I hope to continue working with you for much longer. I consider you my. Well. Friend.’
She loathed everything she had just said. It was all true, of course, far truer than maybe anything else she had ever said before. It was, at the same time, barely true. It was the tip of an iceberg. There were many things she wanted to say and which she would never, ever, ever say. It just wasn’t her. She didn’t say things, not that kind of stuff. She didn’t have the guts. Steve was right about that–she was a coward.
She was, she realised, very concerned that Steve hated her. She was, she also realised, elated that he apparently didn’t.
He was very kind. She wished she could tell him that. He would probably like to hear it.
‘But Rob–you gotta take better care of yourself. Quit crushing those stress balls. If you don’t, maybe then I’ll really be mad at you.’
‘I’ll hold you to that, too, then,’ Robyn replied.
‘I don’t need taking care of!’
Robyn turned and looked down on him. ‘Steve.’
‘Alright, alright,’ Steve admitted, turning away. He grinned. ‘I appreciate that.’
He looked quietly at the projection for a few minutes. Mickey was doing stretches, and Sophie was clumsily following along with him. They were both fruitlessly attempting to convince Beth to join them. ‘So will you let me rename it to the “Knife Edge”?’
‘No.’
‘Gawd. It was worth a try!’
The ZOG/GIN finally descended to the trash planet. A massive hatch slid open at its bottom, revealing a colossal cargo hold, big enough to entirely encompass the entire Assistance Impressing. It came slowly down, swallowing it up, humming and whirring as it secured the wreck of the Impressing inside itself.
The rest of the Impressing crew finally came aboard.
‘Oh my gawd it’s real you’re all real and safe it’s–’
Steve was silenced, utterly, as Mickey crushed all of them in a huge, tight, bear hug.
‘Heyyy! You’re okay! So, did you win?’ Beth asked, their face squished against Sophie’s shoulder.
‘Nope!’ Steve said. ‘Disqualified. The Mother won by default.’
They were all silent. Mickey’s grasp went slightly limp.
‘I’m so sorry Steve, I–’
‘It was amazing,’ Steve said, squirming with excitement. ‘I crushed it. I outpaced an inertia drive. People want to interview me. I got contacted by the Scutzca: Irithreemes’ agent.’
‘Really?!’ Beth asked.
‘I refused all of em! It was the scariest thing ever!’ Steve said, still excited.
‘Your ship was so cool Steve,’ Sophie babbled. ‘I wanna see it, you gotta let me see inside it. You put a zarfuss shifter in it, didn’t you, didn’t you? I bet you did!’
Steve had no idea what a zarfuss shifter was. ‘It’s ruined in and out. But, uh. I might need your help for the mark two.’
‘Yessss!’ Sophie hissed, squeezing harder into the hug and once again silencing everyone.
‘We far outpaced our own fundraising goals,’ Robyn added, stoically accepting the physical contact from deep within it. ‘This year’s Plesdephont is, in fact, one of the more impressively funded ones, with much credit coming from our own event.’ She looked darkly down and smiled thinly. ‘This will be… a very handy success to keep in mind.’
‘I’m just glad,’ Mickey said, pulling them all in closer. ‘That we beat Max Jones. That’s the most important thing. Or, um, one of them.’
They all nodded in agreement.
‘No, it’s the most important thing,’ Beth agreed.
Meat Girls Dot Org 