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I started working for the Corvax-Indo Corporation when I was seventeen. Now, that doesn’t sound too interesting because it wasn’t. I was an “electrician's helper” that’s a fancy set of words for flashlight holder. I burned my fingers on cigarettes more than hot wire. My “mentor” was a piece of work too, always took my break time, always ate my lunch.
Fucker.
I ended up doing my own work on the side, taking apart data pads and wiping the drives. Sometimes it was a blackbox, other times a locked-out computer. Eventually it became bigger things until I was crawling under rovers to refit motor bearings. After a year of that I was eighteen and ready to do anything else.
I ended up as a dock worker for a little while, manifest stuff. It was bullshit, lazy co-workers, long hours, heat. I got stuck in a file room for the longest time, shelves up to the ceiling. I organized shipping logs for hours. Date, company, merchant. After I finished there they let me actually work, had a hand trolley for a bit. They let me drive an arm lift at night. They fired me when I gouged a shuttle with it.
Then security work jumped out, promotional material, ads, propaganda. I don’t know if it was my family, maybe I just wanted to kill. Whatever you want to call it, it worked. I marched my pimpled face up to the recruiting office and signed an open contract. I was set to ship off-world in three months.
Dad was too busy to care, “Maybe he’ll grow some balls.”
Mom cried a little.
Then it was old news. Those three months were like any other, just a bit more lonely. Of course, there were physicals and personality tests. I passed all of those just fine. Only hangup was my swim. I grew up on Yisold, a desert planet. Nobody knew how to swim. The people at the depot didn’t either so they passed me anyway. After that I kept tabs on my ship-out date until it was time. I couldn’t sleep a wink the night before.
“This is it,” I thought, “The day my future starts”.
Dad had work that morning, “Debt won’t pay itself.”
Mom cried a little.
Then I was old news. A dust storm rolled in, so no heartfelt goodbyes. I didn’t even get a good look from above when we flew out because the sand was so thick. I spent three months in stasis after that, transferred to a training facility on a tiny jungle moon. They beat me to a pulp. Runs in pouring rain, low crawls through razor grass. Any bad thing you can think of they made us do. People dropped out fast, some quit, others broke down. Cholera from dirty water, heatstroke, malaria. I didn’t know your liver could fail from running too much. I almost drowned when my helmet scrim got caught in barbed wire. I was afraid of water after that.
But I made it through.
Three months later I got my first station, civil sector on a desert planet, felt like home. This place was small beans, I don’t even remember the name, the worst thing there were scrappers. We didn’t have real bullets most of the time. Plenty of wide open ranges, we’d take turns shooting rocks on the flats. Furthest I ever hit was eight-hundred meters. That was life for a while, day after day, year after year. When I turned twenty-three I received my parents inheritance, their debt. They died when a dust storm flipped their trailer. The company told me it was instant—
I don’t know.
Money got real tight after that.
I jumped from post to post later, hub worlds, dig sites, colonies. I cut my teeth on a place called Orion. Stationed at some ratty refinery site. I was fighting to stay awake in my tower, coffee on my breath, derrick pumps banging in my ears. Something moved at the base of the wall, when I looked through my thermal it was two men, one with a ladder, the other with a box. I shot them both when I noticed the dead guard twenty meters back. Whole night went to hell after that. Broke my leg jumping from the tower. Medical debt went through the fucking roof.
I think my worst time has been with animals though.
People are smart, sometimes, but they’ve got a reason, something you can predict. That’s constant. Animals are hard, alien fauna is worse. Plenty of times I survived because I was lucky. Past that it was because the other guy got eaten. Leopard-things that mimic human speech, wolf-lookalikes that see infrared spectrum. Arm still aches if I twist it right. I was almost swallowed whole by a mudfish, had to dump my pants and belt to get away. Greatest lesson I ever learned, “If it looks safe, it isn’t”.
Guy who said that died, but he was right.
From there things got worse, longer deployments, sketchier posts, worse command. One time a freighter called Biloxi carrying our resupply dropped off the map. I was part of a colonial expedition, pirates loved those. Learned about pit traps then. We were left with nothing but powered harnesses and knives. Had to make fucking spears. We looked like natives when our relief came in, but we made it. The Biloxi was found adrift six months later, crew had all been killed. Hull was stripped for parts. Corvax forgave my medical after that. Bumped my meal plan a little too but I couldn’t make that last.
Numbers always fluctuated, there were no official figures but if your pay went up it meant lots of people either quit or died. Sailors always talked how they had it worse, tin cans full of air floating through space. Maybe they were right but they never seemed to hang around when the shooting started. Got left that way once, by sailors. Some vassal state collapse and we were catching the last boat out. Dense city, like a circuit board. Our ship waved off after taking small-arms. I thought I was a goner after that. I watched a murder-hole for sixteen hours while our command found us a way out. They finally convinced some nobody trader to snatch us up. We had to pool every credit we had.
Things changed after that, Corvax-Indo became a defunct company. Some other big dog, Hydle, had taken up the mantle and shooed them out. My debt transferred but I lost my security clearances. They didn’t want folks like me having guns again I guess. I drifted for a while, odd jobs again but nothing ever stuck. Should’ve paid more attention to my money. I spent my last bit on a personal tablet, first one I ever had. Past stations, home planet, outstanding debt. It was all there, old ball and chain. I got a message not a day after I bought it, a broad email really, about security work postings. Low risk, no clearance required.
I didn’t look twice.
What I didn’t know at the time was that “security” meant a lot of different things. So did “low risk”. I had to take tests, a physical, and then a swim. They wouldn't waive the swim and it was three degrees celcius. My arms froze up the first time, instructor had to stop me from drowning. Second round I pushed too hard and burnt out, didn’t make the distance. My last try was my last try.
But I made it, barely.
The tests were… odd. Hull integrity, crush depth, decompression sickness. They had me shoot a gun once and didn’t even look at the target after. I know I missed. But, after that I was given a ship-out date and told to wait. Like the good old times. I left during the night, Trixie was a nice place from above, lots of lights. Pretty.
My training camp was on Hoke, Earth-sized marble, lots of variation. We lived on the coast. I never swam so much in my life. I lost thirteen pounds the first month, looked like a spider. Hydle did things differently than Corvax, for starters they didn’t let anyone drown. Facilities were clean and smooth, you couldn’t find a sharp edge anywhere. Food was bad, it always had been, but it wouldn’t make you sick. And goddamn that training, muscles I didn’t know I had were sore.
Month two was all about tools. Welding, riveting, improvising. The little bit of electrical I picked up as a teen finally became useful. High pressure was after that, injection, systems, pipes. They crammed so much shit in my head that I wouldn’t float. Then they gave me a diving suit and put me on bottom. The first time climbing into a diving bell is like getting a new cabin. Smooth, nice, seems like it’s worth the money. Then you start to see the cracks, the little ripples under the panelling. The hull creaks and you tense up.
There was only one incident my entire cycle, the first day they showed us how to exit thirty atmospheres. Trainee got something wrong, mixture on his tank was bad, made him woozy, cycled a hatch when he wasn’t supposed to.
One-hundred-forty pounds of human meat got pulled through a three-inch gap in half a second. The diving bell turned inside out, three people died, one of them a trainer. Hydle swept for remains days after that, we couldn’t continue because of the sharks. There were worse things than drowning. When we finished, I was a licensed “sub-sea technician”. That’s a fancy set of words for suicidal.
But it paid well.
I was transferred to my “post” then, ocean world named Khy. Deep, deep blue with a yellow sun. Hydle ran drilling operations, even had undersea cities, crazy shit. I was put on a fault line thirty kilometers from the nearest person and told to work. I was in charge of thirteen-million square feet of deep-sea pipe, pumping fifteen-thousand gallons of crude a minute. There were seismic sensors, and testers that checked the water quality. It was a tourist planet so they didn’t want to ruin it all right away.
My post was a habitation module, fifteen-hundred square feet. It sat on a shallow little shelf, maybe fifty meters at its deepest. Coral reef was all around, fish that’d make you think twice before swimming. They were all fine though, didn’t bother anyone, only ones that gave trouble were these ugly things called Pinkies. Blind, bullheaded, they looked like a skinned cat. You always knew they were coming because they clicked, like bats.
North was the biggest threat though. The thirty kilometers that separated me from my sister station was a rift. Depth didn’t matter, it was too much for anything they gave us. About halfway down was a seismic array grafted into the wall, had a dinky little elevator that ran down it. Hydle didn’t want me down there, me neither. That’s the scary thing about water, go deep enough and buoyancy doesn’t matter anymore. Me and station 2 were at the closest point of the rift, rest of it was one big gash across the seabed. I was on the close side, one-hundred kilometers to my south was the refinery mast and shipping depot.
Station 2 had the short end of the stick. Any comms had to run through my relay, so we got acquainted fast. Some girl named Gwen, she’d been there for a few years already. She was the one to tell me about Larry. I was there a week before something broke, pipe rupture at the edge of the rift. Every second was a million dollars and in every million there was one for me. We had “trucks”, mobile dive bells that Hydle developed, simple, sleek, slow. Built like a tank. I ran across a reef because I forgot my draft depth. Didn’t even scratch the paint. They docked some of my pay when the sensors picked it up though, bastards.
I had a fifty-kilometer range in the bell, one-hundred if I ran the battery dry. For smaller stuff we had Skippers, a little propeller with handles, very fast, very fun. They could run for three hours before the battery died.
When I got to my pipe it’d been shut down for thirty minutes, you do the math. Oil had cleared for the most part, I could see the current pulling it down into the rift. Eighty meters down doesn’t sound like much, but it’s pitch black. Feels like you’re working in jelly, everything’s slow, exhausting. Work lights make it doable, but there’s always something watching just outside the cone. Biggest problem usually was the crabs, they filtered the oil somehow. Had to fight the bastards off plenty of times. Not edible for obvious reasons. Gwen was in my ear that day, checking in since it was my first week. My mixture made me sound like a rubber duck. I was almost finished with my bead when she got real quiet.
“You there, Gwen?”
The water rumbled real bad, my weld ran wide.
“Yeah, I… Oh shoot.”
“Everything alright?”
“Larry’s moving.”
“What? Who’s that?” I had sweat in my ears.
“Turn your lights off, Ethan. Grab something solid.”
I thought she was fucking with me. Then I felt it, the current reversed, oil started spilling back up the rift. Rocks started flying up too, they stung. I cut the lights and got as close as I could to the pipe. Fucking crabs crawling all over me. I had to lock my arms around a strut, it was that strong. I don’t want to imagine the displacement. The pipe groaned like something dying. When Larry passed all that water had to go back. Shit that hadn’t even been loose got pulled down. All the crabs, half my tools, my weld tank. Only reason my truck was still there was because its anchor got caught in some rocks. I didn’t second guess Gwen after that.
She didn’t know what Larry was, besides big. Only things he would show up on were tidal and seismograph. Sonar couldn’t ping him. I never got close to the rift without a lanyard and tie-down after that. I either parked the truck further and took the Skipper or made sure it was good and stuck somewhere. Hydle didn’t tell people about Larry. Just me and Gwen knew. Pipe bursts like that were rare, thankfully. Mostly it was just sensors that needed calibrating or a maintenance run here and there. Stuff was sturdy, built to last. Except the comms.
Hydle wasn’t about to run wire over the rift so my link to Gwen was either radio or laser. Storms would cut us off, we always called in after. But that was life and I started to like it for the first time. We worked when needed and piddled when not. Figured out how to use that tablet finally, video calls, Gwen was shy, always had the camera pointed out a window.
“So what did you do before Khy?”
“Security.”
“For?” A head tilted in the reflection.
“Corvax.”
“Oh wow, so you’re like a dinosaur.”
She was a brat.
Eventually they let us start requesting personal items, so we didn’t go stir-crazy, had to be under ten kilos, nothing wild. We started giving little tours of our stations to each other. Mine looked like hell, burnt circuit boards strewn out, crumbs everywhere, she made me promise to buy a vacuum after that. Hers was a little better, she had carpets.
“Mold.”
“It isn’t mold!”
“That’s mold.”
“Is not!”
I finally saw part of her hand then, fuzzy and white. She had claws. It was the third month when another pipe ruptured, her side this time. I was on Larry Duty.
“And so then they told me shipping had been cancelled.” Her voice was rubber.
“Yeah.”
“What did they tell you?”
“The same.”
“Then who the hell was flying?”
When Larry started it was hard to miss. He could be at one end, fifty clicks out and close that in fifteen minutes. He was lazy though, didn’t move all that often, slept for about a week at a time. He never slept in the same spot though. My monitor lit up. He was a minute out.
“Lare Bear is moving.”
“Roger… Ah, fuck. Dammit.” There was a hiss.
Her helmet feed cut.
“You good?”
I could see her work lights from the truck cam.
“Gwen?”
Her mic keyed and nothing but static came through. It cut out.
There was a cold feeling under my skin, “Gwen. Shut the lights off now.”
The oil started pushing back up.
Nothing.
“Gwen, lights. Now.”
Her mic keyed and all I could hear was the current. Pressure hit the edge like a bomb, silt flew everywhere, lights blinked. I switched to the truck’s camera and it was spinning. Backdraft came after that. The worklights went first, tumbling over the edge, then her weld tank, and everything else not glued to the sea floor. It went dark. I felt Larry bellow through the ocean, like the fucker was laughing at me. I stared at my screen for a long time, just watching, hoping. I didn’t want to think about an alternative.
The current just kept playing over comms, like a ghost. I laid the headset on the desk. I blanked, there was protocol, casualty reports but… I…
I was getting ready to puke when she finally crawled into view.
“Gwen!”
She was feeling her way to a guideline. I only got a glimpse of her mask, the visor was spiderwebbed, goggle-frame dented like a tin can. The radio finally spoke in her voice.
“I’m alright!”
She sounded water-logged, my face was burning.
“Get home, please.”
I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the rift. If she hadn’t found that wire…
I got really into circuits after that. Tried all sorts of things, metal detectors, motion sensors, repurposed my Skipper’s battery for a drone I ordered. It could fly all the way to Gwen and back, sent her a gift. It was crude, but that’s what made it tough. A little two-way relay, the receiver buzzed when she got close. She could find her way at night after that. The drone came back with a data card. Had songs on it.
Sometimes we’d stargaze, try to guess what the other was looking at. She was always really good at guessing. I figure she knew the sky better than me by that point. Week by week I started to piece more of the voice known as Gwen together. She had white furred hands, claws, whiskers, and a pointed nose. I didn’t care if she looked like Larry. Gwen was awesome.
It was my sixth month before I knew it. Only two pipe ruptures and endless maintenance reports. Company was better this time though. Work was good, hard as hell, but good. I finally paid off my parent’s debt, so I could start working on my own. The water got really warm in the summer. We got bonus pay for neat sensor reports. Never thought that dock work would pay off. I organized Gwen’s reports for her too.
The only hamper was the Pinkies. I was repairing the relay on my station and got carried away, music. I didn’t hear until the little bastard was on me, damn near took the fingers off my left hand. I got a hold of him with my knife but he slammed my mask one good time. Couldn’t see, goggles were all fucked up. I could hear the air bleeding from one of my hoses but couldn’t get to it. Thought those were the cards. I started to count, trying not to panic, then my radio crackled to life.
“Moonpool’s on your left, twenty meters.”
She couldn’t tell but I had the biggest smile.
It didn’t hit me until later. I was scared, but it wasn’t from drowning.
Pinkies kept showing up more after that. I put in a request for a gun and to my surprise Hydle delivered it. Don’t get me wrong, it was a piece of shit, but it shot underwater. It gave me something else to fix. The first year ended. “Time off” was what happened when we weren’t working. We only left the planet if we quit, and things were too good for that. We called on the new year and drank. I saw more of her then but it was…
For the most part I knew what she was.
“You lost *hic* count!” her fox-face bobbed at the edge of the screen.
“No, this is n-nine—ten! It’s ten.” I don’t know why Hydle let us have booze.
I didn’t know the color of her eyes still.
Larry slept for a long time after the year. If he moved it was further down the rift, something like six-hundred clicks west. The Skippers ran wide-open at twenty-five, I had done the math. I could make it. But I was scared.
The Pinkies kept getting worse and worse, Hydle issued Gwen a gun too, eventually, I felt better after that. We stopped sleeping in shifts, there wasn’t anything I could do but… I wanted to be awake if something happened to her. Shooting came back easily enough, it had been a while. Seismographs started picking up things, not Larry. Spikes, short and sweet. The rift always sounded quiet on acoustics but one day it started screaming and didn’t stop. South towards the stack sounded worse, like metal sinking. I knew something was wrong when I scuffed up the truck and Hydle didn’t bill me.
I called Gwen right away, “Something’s up.”
“I know, my side of the pipe went quiet three minutes ago.”
“Hydle?”
“Not a word.”
That’s about the time the ships started to come down. Little blips on radar, hundreds, lifeboats. Looked like Christmas lights. Then the big one. It missed us both. A ship named the Yukon fell from orbit, thing was forty-eight kilometers long, fifteen wide. Built like a mountain, some kind of battleship. I thought Khy would split in two. It landed, bridged the rift, and buckled. I saw dry seabed for a moment. Seismo was every-fucking-where.
Scavvers came next, you could tell because they fought each other on the way down. There was so much debris in the air when the waves cleared that I couldn’t even hail Gwen. Distress beacons everywhere, open comms sounded like a jungle. I stayed glued to my periscope, on her bearing, looking for something, anything.
A glint. Then more.
T–R–O–U–B–L–E… I–N–S–I–
I was already gone.
My stomach had felt that way only once, when I got left on that rock years back. Like someone just pulverized your liver. The ocean was already hot with reactor spill-off, there were vapor plumes kilometers wide already. Silt clouds everywhere, like ash. I hauled ass to where the Yukon bridged the gap, it hadn’t fell yet. I tore across, panelling bubbling water under me, had to be ninety degrees or more. It felt like a hot shower with sunburn. People were the first thing I noticed, workers, sailors, all trying to swim to the top. It was eighty meters at the shallow point, they boiled before drowning. Ship lights were flickering like glitter on a runway.
I was halfway when I felt him bellow.
Lazy Larry was awake.
Parts of the ship were falling into the black by that point, I was following a suggestion of direction. I had worked on my Skipper so much by then I was doing nearly forty, my hands had gone numb minutes ago.
Air popped from the hull, I was at the final stretch when the pressure changed. He was going fast, faster than usual, slipped right under the Yukon and nearly dragged me down with displacement. I was only thirty meters below surface, he sank me down to seventy, felt like a pressure chamber. Then he screamed and I thought I was going to explode. I never looked back but it sounded like he tore the Yukon in half, one bite. It slipped into the rift after that.
Debris was still falling into the ocean, plating, modules, other ships. A piece of hull, wide as the truck, crashed down right on top of me. Jagged edge, took out my Skipper, hit my head, I was bleeding. First time I had to swim like that since camp, praying the sharks wouldn’t get me first.
Once I hit the other side I was gasping under my mask. Sweat was all over my visor. I could see her station, one of the moonpool struts had collapsed, scavvers were swarming the truck like flies. Their shit was basic, sloppy, suits made for vacuum, guns made for space. I hosed them down. Last one was close enough I saw his face. I pulled myself up the moonpool after that.
There was already blood, a trail that I followed. I ran into one more, short guy, he was nursing a gouged eye. Struggled into the kitchen, killed him with my knife. Then I scrambled, locked down every entry point on that tin can. Habitation layouts were always the same, I ran for her room. The door was locked but I had an override.
She was… She…
Gash across her abdomen, arm in bad shape, she was sluggish. Her little muzzle was frowning, the dark marks around her eyes looked like tears. Her fur was dark red under the uniform. I snatched her up and ran to the living space, put her on the kitchen table. Gently, so gently. I had seen worse, but only on Orion. I went through both of our IFAKs, half of the medical gauze I ever ordered, and a tourniquette. Her fur was already matting from the blood, but she was stable.
We sat there, for hours. Bodies in the water brought sharks, scavvers didn’t come near sharks. I rubbed her cheek, she was there. Gwen was with me and warm and alive. I had to keep reminding myself that, she was alive. We both looked like hell, the inside was worse, looked like she put up a fight when they came.
“Gwen.”
Her skin was hot under all the fur.
“Gwen, talk to me.”
I just needed to hear her in person.
“Ethan.”
It was—I never needed to hear another voice.
I wanted to hug her so fucking much, but I’d crush her if I did that. I just cradled her head. I never wanted to hear someone breathe so bad before. Feel their pulse under my skin. I felt her hand move to mine and grabbed it, her clawpoints were sharp but I didn’t care. I pressed it to my mouth.
“You’re crying, Ethan.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna make me cry too.”
“I know.”
She choked.
We both cried.
I didn’t know if we were alone, if Hydle gave a shit about what was happening on Khy. There was a lot more going on than we knew, but I couldn’t care. It was three days later when search and rescue found us, we looked like swamp rats. They said a conflict had broke out in orbit, some other company too big for their britches. Yukon was their flagship.
Hydle gave us two options:
Mandatory recovery period then back to work, double hourly pay.
Or, one big cashout, clean debt, clean records, everything, on the condition that Larry stayed a secret.
I didn’t leave her side those next two weeks. When we were loaded on a medical ship I crawled through forty decks to find her again. I’d be sick if I heard her through static or Heliox. We didn’t even have to talk, just be close. She had a neck brace and crutches for months, bruised vertebrae, hairline fracture on her shin. That fucker in the kitchen got off easy. I had to wear a cast for six weeks. Hull debris broke my arm, cracked my skull.
Gwen and I looked like spare parts.
We took the cashout. Got away from Khy, started fresh. She still has rugs, I still keep tinkering, together now. It felt so simple after that, like we were above the tide. It was an ugly ride, but we made it. I’d do it all again if it meant meeting her.
Having no debt gave us wiggle room, not luxury, we weren’t like that. But it let me—well, I got us matching rings. White gold.
For the first time, things felt right. Ever since my scrim got tangled on that moon I’d been holding my breath, waiting to drown. I finally figured out how to breathe again. And that was my future, my life, my everything. We still stargaze, it’s better now with Gwen next to me. Trixie has pretty beaches, shallow oceans, tame wildlife. We like to go out at night and sit, pretend it’s years ago and we’re staring at the same sky on Khy. But I can never look for too long. I keep getting caught in her deep, deep blue.