up from the streets

Target City is the center of the Space Age, literally the target of everyone leaving home or returning, Sol-bound. It was the first successful settlement outside of our home system, deep in the darkness beyond the spires of the Alexandrian cityscape. A shining beacon of humankind, it was also the first city to turn its back against its Terran founders, the city that began with its birth this new era 76 years ago. Renamed Independence, the planet that was once the pride of Earth’s enterprise became something entirely new; birthing generations of space children and settlers, sending its people to new worlds before risking stagnation. It removed itself entirely from the corruption of Mars, remaining proudly autonomous. Target City, like so few places here, has its own history.

That is not to say, however, that it is not victim to the same faults as the rest of human civilization. It is harsh and technological, economic and uneducated, no Athens to be sure. There are few places of the old ways left, mostly hidden in the European Nation and smaller isles that could not expand to swallow humanity’s gaping maw. And in space, many have found more paradisiacal settlements: the pleasure-domes of Verisan, the chrometopia of Festia, the quiet communes of Callil. Target City still fights for every liter of water, every kilogram of grain. Not because it has to—Independence is prosperous and well-atmosphered—but because it wants to. Because it thrives on the pride it has found, because the city is vibrantly and unabashedly alive in the hard cold universe. Everyone finds what they need there. Runners become Chemmies, addicted to the streets and docks and crowds and liberty. Lawful citizens of the peripheral planets find the culture they want, but wanderers find respite. In the streets of that city that has thrown off its chains, we find understanding for what drove us outward to the stars.

dragon's keep

Each day I read a poem in the book that Caban inexplicably found for me on Merita. Perhaps I have been too long abroad, perhaps my schooling is woefully incomplete, but in all honesty I do not understand all of them. The language is too obscure, too twisted in on itself. But each verse is a gem in a trove long forgotten, and I must be the dragon hoarding what treasure I have stumbled upon.

I found these words, written of course by Shakespeare, that ancient unknown phantom who haunts my memories and taunts me with his dreamfilled quill. I feel, sometimes, as if he knows. He understands. It gives me such supreme hope that words written seven hundred years ago should so accurately describe what jangles in my heart. I am a woman floating alone in space, and so much of what I have touched is gone. Perhaps not all is lost.

Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.


I circle restlessly on my treasure trove, wishing only that I had him back again.

fate

So, I have surrounded myself by men who refuse to die.

There have been losers, too, those who work for profit and violence. Space is filled by men either too smart or too stupid to follow the rules.

And now Caban. He is somewhere inbetween Lys and Jamie…cheerful, distant, serious, reckless. Undeniably lucky. It pains me to think of him dying like Lys, shaking and bloody. Easier to imagine him against a backdrop of smoke and fire, knives clutched firmly in his hands. He would never resign himself to civilian life or old age.
Kon is almost old already, and I see him living out his days a grizzled old man, growling tiredly in the back room of a bar somewhere.
Em will, if she has any sense, grow older if not any bigger. She'll find scrapings in space long after the rest of our bones are growing moss. That is, of course, unless she scorches herself to death like most Chemmies. I see her crawling about stations and ships, no less happy than she is now.
And Ice, she is a tricky one. I can see her old, her hair stark and white, her attitude not lessened, her game not given up. She seems, of course, the type to die fierce in battle, but I cannot imagine her engaged in the physical act of death. She will simply cease to exist. Be and then not be…it would be just like Ice.
But then again, I can rarely imagine myself as an old woman. Only sometimes I see myself with grey hair and a dark red sweater, being handed a cup by a woman older than I am now, a woman with long dark hair (whose daughter?). My old-woman self speaks to a young girl, teaching her. It is a vision that presents itself occasionally, but I can’t trust its truth.
I might easily have a commonplace death here in space, to suit my unacknowledged life. But I only hope that the last thing I see will be worth it, that I will live long enough to make my life..and Lys’ life…mean something.

eternal life

It’s something that bothers me. I looked back at my last log entry, and I can only ask myself…is Jameison dead? Men like him don’t die easily, while those around them don’t last long. And whether is bothers them or not, that is the difference between men like him and Ulysses. There were many, I suppose. Lys was blonde, golden, bright. Jamie was (is?) lanky, almost gaunt, thick black hair and an air of cold confidence. He was brilliant, the closest thing I’ve ever met to a genius. He could have done anything, but had chosen to excel in the underworlds of the universe. For him, that was all there was: the game, the gig, the act. He could get himself in and out of any situation, he could fake it like the best actor or fight it like a Mars-bred boxer. But he never dreamed of his past of future, at least not any different future than Running until he died. No maybes, no fantasies of something better.
Ulysses knew it was a game, though a dangerous one. Sometimes, late at night, we had spoken of other things. A home in the sunlight, dirt beneath our feet, children…I might have left all this, to live that life with him. It would have been a long time coming, but we were willing to wait.
With him gone, I lost my taste for foolishness. There was a dark time, when survival was the only thing that mattered. Jameison had appealed to me, then. Slick and professional, surrounded by experts who didn’t ask questions and got the job done. Our names were false but famous, our work beautifully done, our camaraderie strong but hazardous. We were a good team, according to legend, perfect—but we were all expendable. Even after Rigon, when he trusted himself to my navigation so completely, there was a barrier. He survived by playing others, by being bleak and ruthless. Sometimes in the dark he would whisper his fears, facing up to pain and death, but I never knew if he loved me. I never knew if I loved him. He will outlive us all, but he will always be alone.

I can never understand what happened at Michlun-4. We fought shoulder to shoulder for the last time. O’Malley was killed, Lacey and Fourfox had the ship. My spirits soared on the wind of hopelessness, I was as gleeful and ready to die as Ice always seems to be. For the first and last time, I wanted to fall at Jameison’s side, to become a legend.
But Jamie wouldn’t let me. He picked me up and forced me into the escape pod, I raged at him but couldn’t stop him. I would have died, otherwise. No one could have made it out of there. He was cool and confident in the confines of his own brain. I don’t understand why he cared enough to save me, when we had all agreed to care so little.

No, he didn’t die at Michlun. He couldn’t have. He went out in a blaze of glory, sank away into the depths of space’s eternal night. He is gone, but not dead. O’Malley is, and Lacey was killed a short time later. Glade’s been caught, is rotting somewhere and biding time. Fourfox, like Whisp herself, had no doubt found a new name and is still out there. I enjoy the stories of Jameison’s crew, the mysterious Whisp at the controls. They are deep in the memories of all those who live this life, become legends. So Jameison will never really die, not as long as the stories are still told.

tall tales

He asked me at dinner tonight who I had flown with before now. I couldn’t possibly think where to start, it’s been too many. And then Ice spoke up, quietly, almost tauntingly. “Jameison.” she said. And Caban didn’t believe her. Turns out he doesn’t even believe that Jameison exists, he is too mythical and amazing to possibly be real. He’s heard the legends, we all have. I couldn’t help but smile as Kon recounted the story of Rigon.
“He dodged out so quick. So many conflicting signals, the jumps impossible to track. The navigation was genius. The Feds intent to starve him out, they stuck around for two days before they realized he wasn’t there.”
Caban scoffed, saying, “I heard they got him cornered at Michlun-4, and he fought his way out with three knives. Knives.”
“How do you fight off a squadron of feds with that?” asked Kon, shaking his grizzled head, “They say he made it out, though. Haven’t heard of him since, nothing but scattered reports.”
“If he ever was real, he’s dead now.” concluded Caban. I could barely withhold my knowledge that the Michlun story was a gross exaggeration, Rigon only a slight exaggeration.
“You’re wrong, Captain. He’s real. I knew him.” Said Ice quietly, surprisingly.
“Right. Had his back at Michlun?” he said mockingly, and I knew he wouldn’t believe me if I told him that I had.
“What was he like, then?” asked Kon, always ready for another story.
“He was a good man. Tall, black hair, very…intense. Very smooth.” She replied, and I wondered when she had known him. She paused and after a moment continued. “An ass, though. Arrogant. Like a lot of ship’s captains.”
Kon guffawed, Caban smiled good-naturedly. Ice pressed on, ticking names on her fingers. “It’s truth. Think…there’s Caban…Blackthorn, Ramez, Front.”
My heart seemed to contract as she said his name.
“Take that back.”
“What?” Ice looked at me, all innocence, and I knew I had fallen for her baiting. Caban and Kon stared at us in silent surprise.
“Take that back. You don’t know, Ice. So never say that again.”
I could not stay in that room, could not explain. I caught sight of a slight smile on her face as I turned on my heel and left.

Caban came to me later, checking up on his crew. Said he didn’t want any trouble between us. There won’t be. He asked me, then, if I had flown with Jameison.
“I thought you didn’t believe in him.”
“Well. I’d be willing to say he’s a real man, but the things they say he did…”
“Believe what you will. I flew with a lot of people.”
“Did you fly at Rigon?” he asked, and I didn’t need to answer for him to see the truth on my face. Curse him.
He asked if I thought he had died at Michlun, and I couldn’t lie. I don’t think there will be any more legends. But he can’t be dead. I’d know if he were dead.
“You’d know?” he asked, surprised.
“I’d feel it.”
“Is...Front dead?”
Pain ricocheted through me and I couldn’t answer. He knew he’d gone too far, nodded to acknowledge his tactlessness, and excused himself without another word. Not a man accustomed to apology.
I still let it hurt me so much. I lie here, looking at the things I’ve carried for years in my old knapsack. The moon-map, navigational charts, letters. The pictures. Me and Lys. Jameison, turning away from the camera, not really angry. He isn’t dead. Men like him never really die.

control

We got attacked right after I discovered that I couldn’t program anything into the navigation system.

Em wasn’t exactly holding us captive, she didn’t have any specific demands, she was just making herself a hassle. We couldn’t exactly get rid of her until she undid the mischief she’d managed with our systems. The first night we locked her in a room she went up and out through the crawlspaces, and played with us all night until we managed to coax her down with a plate of hot food. The plan has been, since then, to dump her at the first heaptown we come to, but we keep finding more of her tinkering. Ice seethes, Kon curses, Caban simply grins and says how useful a skill like hers might be.

I thought it might be useful, too, until she locked me out of the navigation system.

We didn’t expect to be attacked. This sort of thing happens, I prefer to avoid it like I avoid most contact with other Runners, and other space-goers in general. It’s messy, and often bloody. The ship that started firing at us was a junkheap, but it shook my bolts not to be able to slide away like usual. A flush of fear came over me, real fear, when I realized I’d gotten lazy. I’ve begun to rely on jumping away, to the point where other solutions don’t occur to me. Kon earned his coin with the gun show he put on, those junkheap pirates didn’t get close enough for us to worry about being boarded. Ice and Kon made sure they had their business done, and I don’t envy the repairs they’ll have to do. Most likely they’re just Runners like us, on a stretch of low jobs and looking to find a prosperous target. Caban kept calm through the whole thing, and afterwards was almost amused to be seen as a rich mark. Eventually he got Em to put the wiring back the way it was so I could plot a course out, but he hasn’t gotten her to promise not to do it again. Not sure that we can stop her, the little scrap-girl can fit in every crawlspace on the ship. Maybe she could rig things up to work better than they do now, but I can’t trust her to do it right.

There has to be a way to show her we’re decent folk who have nothing against her. For the most part, that’s true. For now she’s got me worked up, putting us at risk. I didn’t know I was so protective of this ship until I found I was powerless to prevent it from being destroyed. I won’t risk Caban’s trust by doing anything...but if she touches the navigation system again she’ll find that I’m exactly what she thinks I am.