All the Lonely People

"I have often dreamed of being / the eagles who build their nest / upon the crests of the streetlamps. / But the seagulls who scream and scavenge / find far better purchase there. / There are many more of one than the other, / my proud little bird."

- from "The Paradise Found Only Among The Tallest Buildings", poem by Gerrunsey Hallec

Sylva flopped onto Iri's bed, acting only about half as pathetic as she felt. She rolled over and stared up at Iri upside down. Iri was sitting at her desk, filing her nails.

"Are you done?" she asked.

"No," Sylva said, even more pathetically.

"And yet you're here to bother me. I see."

"Who else am I supposed to bother?"

"Maybe your actual girlfriend. Thought about that one?"

In response, Sylva grabbed the pillow from the head of Iri's bed and shoved it over her own face.

"Keep that there too long and you'll suffocate," Iri said mildly.

"See if I care," Sylva groaned.

Iri peeled the pillow off of Sylva's face and threw it back towards the head of the bed. Sylva lay flopped with her arms splayed out around her. She squinted up at Iri.

"I literally don't even understand the problem you're having," Iri said.

"Yan won't acknowledge that I exist!"

"Have you tried existing in her presence, any time recently? It seems to me that you're avoiding her as much as she's avoiding you."

"That's not the same."

Iri raised an eyebrow.

"It's like she doesn't care about me at all. She's always holed up with Kino, or lurking somewhere by herself being miserable or whatever."

"She has a lot of things to think about."

"I can't believe you're defending her," Sylva muttered.

"What else am I supposed to do? Not to be rude, Sylva, but you're not exactly being a rational actor either. You still haven't explained what you're arguing about."

"We're not arguing."

"You are extremely lucky that I know you're capable of being a thinking human being, and that you're my friend, otherwise I wouldn't be putting up with this, you know." Iri leaned back in her chair and put her legs up onto the bed, kicking Sylva gently in the side.

"I know," Sylva said, wiggling a little. "It's just..." she sighed.

"Either tell me or don't, but don't drag it out. I'm dying of suspense over here." Iri's voice indicated that she was doing nothing of the sort.

"Like, I don't think Yan thinks about me at all. She doesn't want me around."

"If she didn't want you around, you wouldn't be on this ship. I really don't see what the issue is. You were fine before."

"Before Olkye? When she wouldn't let me help?"

"Someone needed to stay with the ship, and you know you wouldn't have been any good. You said yourself you don't do well with meditation."

"I've gotten better."

"Since when?"

"I don't know. I went in Yan's dream."

"You what?"

Sylva shrugged. "When she was sleeping."

"Obviously."

"After she came back from Olkye, and was hiding in that room."

"Oh, and you didn't see anything wrong with that?" Iri's voice was harsher than Sylva had expected, and she jammed her toe into Sylva's ribs. Sylva sat up, wincing.

"What's your deal?" she asked.

"You don't think that Yan might be mad at you because you invaded her privacy at a moment when she was feeling particularly vulnerable? God, Sylva, use your brain."

"I don't think she knows that I was there," Sylva said.

"That somehow makes it worse."

"I don't see the problem." Yan liked having other people in her head. It seemed to Sylva that there should be no issue with her trying to connect with Yan in that way. After all, hadn't she given herself up to the Mother for so long, and so completely? How was Sylva slipping into her dream space any worse than that?

"How would you like it if someone went inside your dreams?"

"I don't know," Sylva said. "I don't think it's likely to happen."

"Yeah, because Yan isn't stupid enough to disrespect your boundaries."

"Well, I don't think it would be possible--"

"I can't believe you right now. You should apologize."

"Why? It's not like she cares about me at all--"

"For the love of God, what makes you keep saying that?"

"She didn't notice me in her dream, and she wasn't thinking about me at all, and then she acted all weird when I tried to talk to her, and she spends all her time with Kino--"

"Putting aside everything else, are you actually jealous of Kino, of all people?"

"Well I don't know what they're talking about," Sylva said. "Since no one TELLS me anything."

"This is because you are acting like a baby. If you want to know what Yan and Kino talk about, you should go talk to Kino about it. And you should apologize to Yan for invading her privacy and for being a fucking idiot."

Sylva crossed her arms and flopped back onto the bed. "I want to get off this stupid ship."

"If you think your love life is pathetic, consider me," Iri said, gesturing dramatically to herself. "Surrounded by lesbians."

"There's Chanam," Sylva said.

"One, he's about ten years too young for me. Two, he's definitely exactly as gay as you are."

"Eh," Sylva said. "I find it hard to sympathise. You could date Kino."

Iri barked out a laugh. "Wouldn't that be a shitshow."

"Maybe I will talk to Kino," Sylva mused.

"I shouldn't have said that you should. She isn't involved in anything to do with you and Yan. Please don't drag her into it."

"I want someone to explain what we're doing, and she's probably the one with the best ideas, she just isn't talking."

"She talks plenty," Iri said.

"Not to me."

"Because you've literally never had a real conversation with her before."

Sylva shrugged, as much as she could while laying on Iri's bed.

"You have to stop thinking of yourself as the victim in all of this," Iri said, tapping Sylva's forehead with her nail file. "You're the one who's acting like a baby."

"See, but everyone else is enabling my behavior by ignoring me."

"I'm not going to enable you. In fact, letting you whine in here is probably not doing you any good in that respect. Out." Iri stood, and grabbed Sylva by the lapels of her jumpsuit, hauling her to her feet. Sylva was always surprised at how strong Iri was, but she supposed one did not become a member of the elite Stonecourt security by being a total pushover. Sylva laughed and stood on her own two feet.

"Thanks for listening to me whine, I guess," she said.

"I'm not kidding when I say you need to apologize to Yan. What you did was wrong, and you're lucky it didn't go worse."

"You didn't even ask me what she was dreaming about," Sylva said.

"Because I don't also want to be party to invading her privacy," Iri said. "Go. Fix your shit. Don't come complaining to me again until you do."

Sylva decided that Kino would be the easier target, especially since she had seen Yan heading to bed a little while ago. Iri was right that she had intentionally been avoiding Yan, setting their sleep schedules to opposite corners of the day, in the hopes that Yan would chase after her, but it didn't seem like that was going to happen. Also, Sylva still felt vaguely aggrieved by the implication, more like accusation, that she had done something wrong with Yan, but she would have time to face that later. So, first stop was to interrogate Kino.

Maybe that was a bad choice of words.

Sylva paced outside Kino's door for a minute, deciding if she was going to knock or not, The choice was made for her when Kino opened the door and looked out at her, with her gloomy looking eyes.

"Did you need something?" Kino asked.

Sylva was startled, and she jumped back from the door.

"How did you know I was here?" Sylva asked.

Kino just stared at her.

"Ugh, yes, can we talk?" Sylva said, when it seemed like there would be no response to her other question.

Kino silently held the door open and Sylva stepped inside. The mess of Kino's room was odd, in the way it always felt strange to step into a mess that was not her own. Sylva was not exactly the neatest person, and the only thing that had stopped the bedroom she shared with Yan from devolving into chaos was that she didn't have very many belongings. That, and Yan often picked up things that she left laying around.

Kino somehow had managed to make the most out of nothing, as her clothing was scattered everywhere, and there seemed to be bits of... metal shavings... clinging to every available surface. The whole room smelled like something had been burning, or maybe electrocuted-- there was a lingering sort of acrid smell in the air. Kino sat down at her desk (Sylva noted that she sat directly on top of a wrinkled and damp looking towel), leaving Sylva awkwardly standing. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, trying to appear nonchalant. She failed.

"Er, how's your hand?" Sylva asked, trying to start the conversation. Sylva had checked on Kino's hand fairly regularly back when it was still healing, but now that all the skin was scarred over, there wasn't much she could do about it, so she had let her "check ups" (for whatever they were worth in the first place) lapse.

Kino held it up. The scar tissue was lumpy and paler than the surrounding flesh, but it looked neither infected nor fragile, which was good, Sylva supposed. Thinking about it too hard put a dry feeling in her mouth, so Sylva looked away fairly quickly.

"Uh, that's good," she said. "Looks like it's as healed as it's going to get."

Kino shrugged, half turning away from Sylva. She fiddled with something on her desk. "Does it hurt or anything?" Sylva asked.

"Sometimes," Kino said.

"Do you want any painkillers for it?"

"No."

"Okay..." Sylva trailed off. "Well, if you change your mind about that, you know who to ask."

"It doesn't bother me," Kino said. "Can I wear a prosthesis?"

"I don't think we have any, and I don't know how to make..." Sylva trailed off again as Kino turned back towards her, holding up a strange metal object that gleamed in the light, its segmented pieces clanking against each other as it dangled from Kino's right hand.

Sylva regarded it with some skepticism. "You know, they make them out of plastic for a reason. Lighter."

Kino shrugged, and laid the metal contraption down on her knee. Carefully, she slipped it on to her left hand, and the object took on a more recognizable shape. There were three segmented fingers, a pinky, a ring, and a middle finger (though the middle finger only had the top two bone segments, as Kino's hand retained a stub there), and there were shiny wires that travelled through the front and back of each segment, attaching to a kind of bracelet that sat around Kino's wrist. The fingers were smooth and tapered, with just the hint of a depression where a fingernail would be, and a needle scratch of nested circles on the tips to suggest fingerprints. It rested limply on Kino's lap for a second.

"Does it move?" Sylva asked.

Kino shrugged. "With the power." She lifted up her hand and curled and uncurled the fingers nimbly, moving them one at a time. The pieces were only held together by the wires in the front and back, and had no way of supporting themselves without Kino's power, so Sylva could see through the cracks in between each segment.

Sylva was somewhat jealous of Kino's fine control, since she had no such skill, and held out her hand, palm up. Kino placed her left hand in Sylva's, and Sylva examined the whole thing closely. It was cold, which was her main takeaway.

"Nice," Sylva said, grudgingly admiring the handiwork.

Kino pulled her hand back and rested it on her lap. Her right hand plucked at the wires like guitar strings, though they were mostly silent, aside from the sliding sound of metal on metal.

"Was that all you wanted to talk about?" Kino asked, looking up at Sylva.

"Uh, no, not really," Sylva said. She nervously ran a hand over one of her braids. Now that she was in the room with Kino, the desire to actually hassle her had gone down significantly. Much of Sylva's anger at the woman had faded during the time that they had been living together aboard the First Star. This wasn't because of anything either of them had done or not done-- it was mainly due to Sylva's desire to stay away from Kino for the most part transmuting into a mutual ignoring, which became a flat nothingness as most things were wont to do after such a time.

"Do you need something?"

"I want to know what you and Yan spend so much time talking about," Sylva finally demanded, trying to both put force behind her words and not come out as petulant as she probably was. Kino didn't react to Sylva's tone.

"We talk about plans. Yan helped me with this a little. I help her with what she's working on. She practices the power, sometimes."

That last part put a shiver of slight disgust and jealousy up Sylva's spine. She remembered the argument that they had all had at breakfast that one time. She hadn't realized that Yan had actually been practicing using the power on Kino. She had thought they had decided not to, and that had been the end of it. She didn't know why she thought that, especially considering, when Sylva had been thrown out of Yan's dream, she was thrown out and seized with Yan's power on her body. Yan had gotten good enough at it to even do it without conscious control.

Sylva tried to focus on the other parts of Kino's statements. "What's the plan? What is she working on?"

Kino stared at her blankly.

"You can tell me," Sylva said. "It's not like it's a secret."

"I thought you were paying attention," Kino sid.

"Nobody tells me anything," Sylva whined. Kino was unaffected by her tone.

"We're currently finding a planet to set up our ansible on," Kino said. "After that, we are going to try to distribute some literature among the Empire."

"What in God's name do you mean by that?"

"Seditious texts."

Sylva laughed nervously. "God. My mentor's going to kill me."

Kino put a tiny smile on her face, one that just quirked up the corners of her lips. Sylva was surprised by this rare show of amusement. "If she catches you, she will kill you, but first she must catch you."

"Sure," Sylva said. "Did Yan tell you about my apprenticeship?"

"Yes. A little."

"I probably didn't tell Yan that much. She did meet my mentor one time. It was funny." Sylva, if she admitted it to herself, missed her mentor a little bit. She was a wild woman, reminded her of Kino a little. Though they were completely dissimilar in terms of personality, the way that Brache and Kino both seemed completely immune to the outside world was oddly comforting. Sylva reminisced for a second, then frowned when she remembered that her mentor still had her speeder. "If she sold my cycle I'm going to be mad."

"I don't think you have any right to complain about that," Kino said, even though Sylva's complaint had been a complete non sequitur.

"Yeah, probably not." Sylva sighed. "So, wait, what's Yan writing? And can I see it?"

"She was going to show it to you when she finished."

"Oh." Sylva was taken aback by this information. "When will that be?"

"I don't know. She's working on it."

"How long does it take to come up with a heresy?"

Kino shrugged again.

"Should I ask her about it?"

Kino's face had returned to its normal blankness. "You could."

"Does Chanam know about this?"

"Yes."

"I can't believe you told him and not me."

"It's his job to know. You didn't seem curious before now."

"That's only because-- argh. Nevermind."

Kino stared at her.

"Forget I said anything," Sylva said. "How long until we get to the planet we're putting the ansible on?"

"Couple days," Kino said.

"That seems like a long time."

Kino didn't respond, and instead tugged at the wires on her hand, raising up the false ring finger and letting it drop back onto her lap.

"Is it not a long time?"

"The planet needs to be habitable enough that we can put an ansible on it, but not so habitable that the Empire wants anything to do with it," Kino said. "That doesn't leave a lot of options. Especially not ones that are close by."

"So where are we going?"

"Malstaire," Kino said.

"What?"

"You haven't heard of it?"

Sylva shook her head. If she had heard of it, she certainly didn't remember.

"The Guild had a secret mining operation. Station. There."

"And why is that a good choice for us to put our ansible?"

"It's abandoned."

"Why?"

"Too dangerous," Kino said. "Binary star system that's getting a little too close for comfort."

"So we're going to risk going there?" Sylva asked. "This seems dumb."

"Talk to Yan about it. It was the best idea we had at the time," Kino said.

"Do we have a backup plan?"

"No."

"Great."

"Okay," Kino said, possibly misinterpreting Sylva's use of the word great.

"So that's our plan? Ansible on dangerous star system, distribute heresy in the Empire." Sylva, at least, had no need to question the efficacy of heresy. Her apprenticeship, for however long it had actually lasted, had been dedicated to preventing even accidental heresies and miscommunications from spreading, simply because of the amount of damage they could do.

"Yes."

"Cool. Thanks for letting me know, Kino."

"You could have asked any time," Kino said. "I don't hate you."

"Whatever."

Sylva made her exit.

Yan was awake, and sitting at the desk in the captain's suite when Sylva returned to their room. Sylva almost turned around and left, chickening out, but she decided she had done worse things than talk to Yan in the past, and now couldn't be any harder than that.

Yan didn't look up at her as she came in. She had a pencil in between her teeth, a notebook at her side, and she was typing something every few seconds into her computer. Sylva perched on the end of the bed and looked over at Yan.

"Hey," she said.

"'Sup," Yan said.

"Nothing. Just wondering what you're up to."

"Working," Yan said.

"I can see that," Sylva said. "I just talked to Kino, by the way."

"Oh?"

"She did tell me about your project."

"Oh."

"Was it supposed to be a surprise?"

Yan twitched a little, in a weird half shrug, then turned halfway around, shutting her computer. She held the well chewed pencil in her hand. "Not really, no."

Sylva smiled at her, though she wasn't sure if it looked genuine or pathetic. Being around Yan sometimes, all the time, made her feel a little pathetic. The two regarded each other for a second.

"Are you doing okay?" Sylva finally asked.

Yan smiled, a thin, tired expression. "Fine. You?"

"I'm--" Sylva wasn't quite sure what to say. Lonely? Fine? "Yeah. I'm okay." There was a long pause. Who's going to install the ansible?" Sylva asked, shifting the conversation.

"Iri," Yan said. "And someone else."

"Who?"

"Not that many options. Kino can't because she's not suit trained. Chanam could. I could."

"I could."

"If you want."

"I didn't know you needed a suit on Malstaire."

"No atmosphere," Yan said. "Well. Thin one, anyway. It was a mining place."

"How difficult is setting up the ansible?"

"Not bad. It's prepackaged to work. I looked at it when we got it."

"You sound tired."

"Been a lot of long days."

Sylva was kinda waiting for Yan to apologize, but at this point in the conversation, she didn't think any such apology was forthcoming. Yan might not even remember those few frantic moments after she had woken up after the Gatekeeper, and how she had pushed Sylva away.

"We ended up on different schedules, somehow," Sylva said.

"Yeah." Yan's voice was murky, but offered no clue to how she was actually feeling. "It happens."

Sylva tugged on one of her braids. She didn't want to apologize, but this conversation was almost unbearably bad, and she didn't want to continue the way life was. "We should get back on the same schedule."

"Okay," Yan said.

"I've missed you."

"I missed you, too." Yan looked down at her legs. "Were you--" She sighed. "Nevermind."

"What?"

"Were you avoiding me? Are you avoiding me?"

"I'm here now," Sylva said.

"Doesn't really answer the question," Yan said. The words were heavy in the air between them.

"I guess. I was pretty mad at you," Sylva said. "I didn't want it to go on for so long, and then it just sorta did. Maybe I was being stupid."

"You were right to be mad at me," Yan said. "I'm sorry. I should have apologized before."

Sylva was actually taken aback that an apology did come, and the smug joy that welled up inside of her felt wholly inappropriate, but she couldn't stop feeling it regardless. "OH. Okay," Sylva said, unable to really process that she had gotten what she wanted.

"I should have let you come with me, to the Gatekeeper, I mean. And I should have talked to you about it sooner. My head's been a mess."

"It's okay," Sylva said. "I understand." She didn't, not really, but she was just glad enough that Yan was talking to her again that she was willing to say anything. She was a little suspicious, though. "Did Iri tell you that?"

"I don't need Iri to do my thinking for me," Yan said. "I have too much of it of my own."

Sylva laughed a little. "Okay."

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know," Sylva said. "I guess I just wanted to know if I had to thank her."

She probably did have to thank her, anyway, for listening to her whine, but that could wait.

"Iri doesn't have to be our mediator, either."

"Iri does a lot that she doesn't technically have to," Sylva said. "She's better than I am."

Yan shook her head. "No."

Sylva looked at her. "I don't understand the mental calculus that you do sometimes."

"You were never that good at math."

"I did okay."

Yan smiled. "I know."

Sylva paused. "Are we, I don't know, are we good?"

"Are we?"

"How am I supposed to know?" The conversation was weird and awkward, and both of them were sitting so still. There wasn't the easy touching that there had been between them for so long. Maybe that would come back some time. Maybe Sylva really should apologize for spying on Yan's dream. Maybe that would wreck everything.

"I guess we'll both have to try to mak it okay. If you want to," Yan said, very slowly.

"Yeah. I do."

"Good."

They stared at eachother, still stiff, still waiting like there was some other shoe left to drop. Nothing actually felt resolved, at least in Sylva's mind, but this was still better than the nothingness that they had before.

"So," Sylva said. "What do I have to do on Malstaire when we get there?"

"Remember last time we were in a shuttle like this?" Sylva asked, gripping the seatbelt as the space to ground shuttle pushed and rattled it's way down through the thin atmosphere of the planet. It wasn't called Malstaire-- that was the name of the binary star system-- but Sylva didn't actually know what the name of the planet proper was, so she kept calling it Malstaire in her head. It probably was just called Planet 1 or something stupid like that.

"Going back to Emerri?"

"Ugh, no. Let me rephrase. Remember last time you and I were in a shuttle that you were piloting, and we were headed down to a planet?"

"Ha. Yes." Iri tugged on the yoke and the shuttle gave a sickening lurch, its automated systems trying to compensate for Iri's somewhat erratic controls. "How's my flying? I've been practicing in the sim."

"Kill me," Sylva said. "I can't believe Yan actually lets you fly."

"I'm trying not to kill you. Here's where the fun really starts."

The window outside the shuttle was lit with spectacular flames, as the friction from the atmosphere ignited around their shuttle. Sylva closed her eyes and just waited it all out. It took a long time for the violent shuddering of the shuttle to cease, and their glide to become a more normal powered descent.

"I'm going to put us down right next to the abandoned processing facilities," Iri said.

"God, why?"

"Because they have a landing area there."

"How could it possibly be profitable to mine asteroids, then haul the ore down here for processing?"

"They used to have an elevator," Iri said. "But the Empire cut it."

"That must have been a sight."

"Cut might not be the right word. I don't really know. I wasn't exactly politically aware at the time the whole thing was happening."

"When did you get politically aware?"

"After I started working for Halen," Iri said.

The massive processing plant came into view, a decrepit hulk. The atmosphere on this planet was thin enough that wind and time didn't do much to the dome that enclosed the whole thing. With a little effort, it could almost certainly be brought back into being habitable. Sylva filed that thought away into her brain as Iri settled the shuttle down on the landing zone with a sickening thud.

"You are going to crack the landing gear one day," Sylva said. "Then we'll be screwed."

"If I wreck the shuttle, Yan would just have to fly down and rescue us. And wouldn't that be so sad."

Sylva laughed a little. She looked out the front window of the shuttle at the landing pad. The whole thing was massive, probably a good kilometer in length, and there were abandoned vehicles parked along the edges of it, presumably left there when the operation had been abandoned. The whole scene was lit with a dusty yellow light. They were fairly far away from the binary stars (which were so close together that even from orbit they appeared as one bright dot on the horizon), and so the planet was cold. Not frozen gasses cold, but 'even if there was atmosphere, you'd be dead without a suit' cold.

"This place gives me the creeps," Sylva said.

"Then let's get the ansible set up, and we can get out of here," Iri said. "It's not like the suns are going to go nova while we're here, though." She unstrapped herself from her seat and stretched, banging her arms into the ceiling of the shuttle. Sylva also unbuckled, rubbing the places in her legs where the straps had been cutting off circulation.

"Help me suit up?" Sylva asked.

In the small shuttle, it was a little tricky for both of them to claw their way inside suits. They were bulky and heavy, and Sylva had never liked the way her own head felt and sounded once she snapped the helmet shut. But they suited up, went through the airlock, and pulled the ansible out of the tiny exterior cargo hold that it was inhabiting. Even with this planet's gravity (Sylva estimated it was a bit more than half of what gravity was on Emerri), the ansible was still quite heavy, and the box that it was in took both of them to maneuver.

"Are we setting this up here?" Sylva asked, hearing the echoey hiss of her own voice over their radio connection.

"Let's go a little ways away. Give ourselves room to take off. Don't want to keep it on the landing pad, just in case someone ever decides to land here and smashes it."

Sylva grunted in agreement and started shuffling down the landing pad, towards the rows of abandoned vehicles. Iri was leading the way, and doing most of the heavy lifting, so Sylva let herself be led along, and she spent her time inspecting the vehicles as they passed. Most of them were heavy trucks, probably intended to haul unrefined ore to this processing plant from wherever the space elevator had once stood. A few of them were smaller utility vehicles, and some were big cranes meant for doing work on the processing plant itself. It was all quite fascinating to Sylva. Clearly, time had not ravaged them too much. They walked for a long time, probably ten minutes, stopping every so often to rest their arms. The landing pad was annoyingly long.

They came to the end of the row of vehicles, and the last few, to Sylva's surprise, were a bunch of ground to space shuttles. "Look at these," she said to Iri, stopping and putting her side of the ansible box down. "These look like they're in good shape."

Iri left the ansible box on the ground, and walked around and inspected the shuttles. "Wonder why they were abandoned," she said. "Seems to me like shuttles are a pretty valuable commodity."

"Yeah. Maybe they don't work?"

"Maybe."

"Think it's worth trying to bring them back with us?"

"Well, we'd have to go back up, and get Yan down here, several times..." Iri said. "Let me see what kind of shape they're in."

She continued walking around the shuttles, and Sylva did her best to inspect them from the outside, though her completely untrained eye didn't give her much information. On the other side of one of the shuttles, Iri huffed a little as she laid down on the ground and scooted herself under the shuttle's landing gear to inspect its undercarriage. Sylva stood on her tiptoes to peer inside one of the windows.

"That's... weird..." Iri said slowly.

Sylva crouched down so that she could see Iri on the ground. They couldn't actually see each others faces, due to the helmets they were both wearing.

"What's weird?" Sylva asked.

"Shuttles have their date of manufacture stamped all over them. This one is..."

"It's what?"

The nervousness in Iri's voice was palpable. "It's from a long time after this place was theoretically abandoned. Date's just two years ago." The gears of Sylva's brain churned.

"There are people? Here?" she whispered, even though that made no sense to do-- she was talking to Iri over radio.

"I think we're going to need to find a different planet to put our ansible on. Let's get the fuck out of here." She pulled herself out from under the shuttle, and Sylva stood as well.

"Did you bring any weapons?" Sylva asked, rejoining Iri towards the back of the shuttle.

"Does it look like it?" Iri's voice indicated that she was definitely cursing herself for that particular lack of foresight, as there was certainly no gun strapped to her hip or back.

Sylva was none too happy either, because Iri without a weapon left Sylva as the main provider of literal power, just in case. They moved back towards where they had dropped the ansible box. Their shuttle was a decent distance away, so they couldn't see it completely clearly, but nothing looked amiss.

Iri went to grab the handles of the box. "Stop," Sylva said. "I got it. We can move faster this way." She focused for a long moment, and grabbed the box with the power, hoisting it about half a meter off the ground. She half expected Iri to make a quip about not using the power on it before, but Iri was deadly silent. The two of them walked forward, both keeping eyes out on the horizon and all across the landing field as they walked back to their shuttle.

Despite wearing a heavy and bulky space suit as she walked across the landing area, Sylva still felt almost naked and exposed. The sight lines were too long, and her field of vision was restricted by the helmet. She hated this.

They got closer to their shuttle, and a suited figure stepped out from behind it. Sylva swore, and dropped the ansible box. It crashed to the ground, loud enough that the thin atmosphere carried it through her helmet.

Sylva knew rudimentary sign (she had to in order to get suit trained), so she recognized when the figure signed, "Stop."

"Iri..." Sylva said. "What should I do?"

They had stopped walking forward, but the figure had interposed themself between them and the shuttle.

"Watch that gun," Iri said. Sylva saw now that the figure did have a gun on their hip, and their hand was slowly creeping towards it, the longer that Iri and Sylva waited. Sylva saw Iri sign something, out of the corner of her eye, but it wasn't clear enough to tell what she was actually saying. The person signed back, "No."

Iri and the suited person had a conversation then, one that Sylva couldn't quite follow, especially because she couldn't see Iri's half of it. It took place in tiny bursts, and she could tell that the other person's sign was clumsy and limited, even though her own was just as much or more. Still, despite not being able to understand the specifics of the conversation, the situation took shape in Sylva's head.

These people were hiding on this planet. Sylva and Iri had discovered them. This person, who knows who they were, or if they were in contact with their superiors. But, in order to avoid this planet being stripped of people once again, they had a vested interest in keeping this secret. They probably didn't believe Iri, if Iri was telling them that they weren't going to tell anyone about this place. There wasn't any other ship in orbit, but there might be anti-ship defenses on the planet. They were in a very bad situation, and that was the whole of it.

"What should I do?" Sylva asked Iri over the radio.

"Shut up for a second. I'm trying to get them to go away." Iri redoubled her sign efforts. The person pointed at the ansible box.

"Should I lie?" Iri asked.

"I don't know!" Sylva said, the panic peaking in her voice.

The longer Iri took to answer, the more the person's hand crept towards the gun. Iri signed something. The man waved them to move away from the box. Iri grabbed Sylva's arm and pulled her sideways a good few steps. The person came forward and, while keeping his suit's face trained on Iri and Sylva, opened the latches on the top of the ansible box and checked inside.

"Did you lie?" Sylva asked.

"Yeah," Iri said.

"Fuck."

The person slowly finished their investigation and stood up. Quick as anything, before Sylva could really react, they were pulling their gun from their holster and aiming it. Without thinking, without consciously even deciding that was what she was going to do, Sylva felt the power rushing to the surface of her skin. She grabbed at the person's suit, and dragged DOWN. They fell to their knees, then their face smashed into the tarmac. It felt like slow motion as Sylva saw a few shards of glass come off the person's suit helmet and clatter to the ground.

"The ansible!" Iri yelled, running towards the shuttle as fast as her suit would allow her.

Sylva used the power and hauled the ansible box along behind her as Iri did a quick-open of the shuttle, forgoing the slow airlock. The good air rushed out, but since they were both still suited it didn't really matter. Sylva didn't glance behind her at the figure on the ground as she shoved the ansible into the shuttle and clambered in herself. She slammed the door shut behind her, and as soon as the lock clicked into place, the shuttle jolted into motion as Iri taxied down the landing strip, the engine throbbing and giving them enough speed to leap into the air. Sylva stumbled around the interior of the shuttle as Iri pushed the acceleration as hard as it would go, and she eventually managed to buckle herself in.

Sylva hit the radio button on the console, quickly connecting her suit's controls to the ship wider broadcast system. "Yan! Be prepared to protect the ship from ground assault. We're on our way back now. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Yan's voice came back, concerned and crackling over the radio. "What happened?"

"This place isn't as empty as you thought," Iri said.

"Are they going to launch shuttles after us?" Sylva asked.

"Keep an eye on the tracker. Dealing with anything incoming is your problem."