Jane hadn’t started bleeding, either, but Owl didn’t think she would. They’d figured out from her med scans a long time ago that Jane had a single chromosome, which was apparently one short from the usual. So, probably no bleeding, which was fine, because that sounded like the absolute worst thing ever if you didn’t have meds to shut that down, and she obviously did not. Oh, and she couldn’t make kids. Bleeding was a maybe, but kids was a definite no. Owl had been kind of cagey when she’d told Jane that, but it was hard to care about not doing something you didn’t know you could do in the first place. Jane had learned that she couldn’t make kids in the same conversation where she’d learned that making kids was a thing. She hadn’t been made the way most Humans were, which had weirded her out at first, but was no big deal, really. There’d been a stretch when she was a kid where she’d been real curious about how and why the Enhanced had made her the way they did. She and Owl had puzzled it out together then – Owl using what she knew about Enhanced Humanity societies, Jane telling her what little she could remember about medical stuff at the factory, both of them looking at samples of Jane’s spit on the little scanner. Jane didn’t have any huge tweaks, chromosomes and no-hair aside. She had a super-buff immune system, though, which was not a usual thing, and it also made Owl stop caring so much about getting the decontamination flash working. All in all, the Enhanced had probably cooked her up out of some grab-bag gene junk and pulled her out of a gooey vat, along with the other disposable girls. The Enhanced. What a bunch of fuckers.
Owl had given Jane access to sims meant for adults, and that was how Jane had learned about swearing. Owl had said it was important to know how swearing worked, and it was okay under the right circumstances, but that Jane shouldn’t swear all the time. Jane definitely swore all the time. She didn’t know why, but swearing felt fucking great. Owl only had eleven adult sims in storage, but Jane didn’t mind playing them again and again. Her favourite was Scorch Squad VI: Eternal Inferno. The best character was Combusto, who used to work for the Oil Prince but was a good guy now, and he also used to be a pyromancer in a previous life – which was true for everybody on the Scorch Squad, but let’s be real, Combusto was the one who took the oath most seriously before he was reincarnated – so he had visions of the past sometimes and his eyes caught fire when he got mad, which was all the time, and his ultimate attack was called Plasma Fist, which made bad guys explode. He also had the very best swears. Jensen, get your fucking helmet on before they blow your skull out your ass! Yeah, that was the stuff. She could play that sim all day.
Or, at least, she would play that sim all day if she didn’t have stupid bullshit she had to do instead. She’d noticed, in the sims, nobody else had to find scrap and eat dogs. Nobody else made clothes out of seat covers. Nobody else hauled around water in old fuel drums. She couldn’t wait to get the stupid shuttle working so they could get to the GC. There’d be people there, and toilets you could flush any time you wanted to, and food that wasn’t covered in buggy fur. The people were the thing she was looking forward to most, obviously. Owl always made her talk in Klip. They hardly ever spoke Sko-Ensk any more, to the point that Jane couldn’t always remember words. Sometimes, Owl put on different voices so Jane would get used to talking to other people. But Jane always knew it was really Owl. She wished she could talk to someone else.
The wall screen switched on as Jane picked at the stupid red bumps all over her face (Owl said those were normal, too). ‘Jane, you should check the light panel in the kitchen before you go out today,’ Owl said. ‘I think it’s got a damaged coil.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘How do you know? It just started flickering.’
‘I – ugh.’ Jane rolled her eyes and grabbed her pants from where she’d thrown them the day before. ‘All right, I’ll look.’ She was real tired of having to fix shit. She just wanted to get out of there.
Owl followed her down the hall and it was so annoying. Jane looked up at the kitchen ceiling. Yep. The light was flickering. Woohoo. She got herself a cup of water and threw some dog on the stove. While it sizzled, she checked her to-do lists.
The to-do lists were written on the wall with chalk rocks (Owl’s word for the white stones scattered all through the scrapyard dirt). Owl could’ve kept records of what Jane needed to fix (and probably did), but Jane liked being able to look at what still needed doing. There was so much that needed doing. A big list on the wall kept her from going crazy over it.
TO-DO
fix water filtration system (IMPORTANT)
rebuild aft propulsion strip
replace fuel lines
figure out what’s wrong with navigation
artigrav system – does it work? how to test?
repair cargo bay hull (rusty)
repair power conduits (hallway)
repair bedroom air filter (totally broken)
repair back left stove burner (not important)
repair fucking everything always always always
get off this stupid planet
make new pants
SHOPPING LIST
fabric (tough)
bolts bolts bolts all the bolts
new circuit couplers
motherboards (any condition)
gunk traps
tape/glue/something???
thick plex
cable coatings
T junctions (fuel)
wire that doesn’t suck
some kind of siding for the hull
WORK GLOOOOOOOVES
dogs (always)
mushrooms (always)
snap beetles (be fast!)
CHECKS
water filtration – going to break soon FIX IT
lights – good
heater – good
stasie – good?
Owl – good
hatch – good
decont. flash – broke
airlock scanner – going to break soon
med scanner – good
scrib – buggy
Jane rubbed her eyes. There would always be something on the list. It was never going to end.
She forked the meat onto a plate, and ate it even though she knew it was going to burn her tongue. In the sims, they always had such amazing-looking food. She didn’t know what any of it was or what it tasted like, but holy shit, she couldn’t wait to get some of that. She swallowed a burning mouthful of dog, which tasted like it always did.
‘Don’t forget to take food with you today,’ Owl said.
‘I know,’ Jane said, shoving more dog into her mouth.
‘Well, you don’t always know. You forgot yesterday.’
Jane had forgotten to bring food yesterday, and it sucked. She hadn’t realised until she got hungry, but she was an hour out from home by then and had her hands full of some really tricky circuits she’d ripped out of an old stasie, and she had to finish that before coming back, and by then, she was so hungry she could’ve eaten a dog without washing it first. But even though all that was true, Owl’s reminder bugged her. ‘I didn’t forget today,’ Jane said. She grabbed some jerky from the box on the counter, wrapped it in a cloth, and stuck it in her satchel. She gave the nearest camera a look. ‘There.’
‘That’s not enough for the whole day. You’ll get hungry.’
‘Owl, please, I know what I’m doing. If I take more than that, I won’t have any tomorrow.’
‘It would be a really good idea to make some more jerky soon.’
‘I know. I haven’t seen any dogs in a while.’ She pulled on her footwraps and filled her canteen. ‘See? Water, food, all good. Can you open the airlock?’
The inner hatch slid open. ‘Jane?’ Owl said.
‘What?’
‘The light panel?’
Stars. ‘I know, I’ll find something.’
‘You didn’t even open it up.’
‘Owl, it’s a light panel. It’s not a fucking pinhole drive.’
‘I really wish you wouldn’t talk
like that.’
‘I said I’ll find something. Light panels are not that hard.’ She walked through the airlock to the outer hatch and picked up the handle for her cargo wagon. Owl’s face was real sad. Somehow, that made her all the more annoying. Jane sighed again. ‘I will. Seriously, I’ve done this before.’
She had. The scrapyard was as familiar to Jane as her own face. Probably more than that. She spent way more time looking at scrap than at herself. She’d thought once, years ago, about marking the piles she’d already combed through, but there was no need. She knew where she was. She knew where she’d been.
The piles in an easily walkable radius had stopped being useful a long time ago. Oh, there was a fuckton of scrap left, sure, but it was either too broken even for her, or things she couldn’t use, or buried so deep there was no point in bothering. Scavenging was a surface-level kind of job. You’d spend forever digging otherwise, and most of it was junk anyway. Still, though, she could never get over how much decent, fixable tech the Enhanced just chucked out. Did they not have fix-it shops, like they did in the sims? Was grease and gunk that gross to them that they had to dump it all half a planet away? She’d never seen an Enhanced – she hadn’t seen anyone since the factory – but she was pretty sure she’d hurt them bad if she did. Plasma Fist to the ribcage, just like Combusto.
She talked to herself as she walked, for company. Walking didn’t take much brain, and hers got away from her if she wasn’t working on something. Today’s selection was the first scene from Night Clan Rebellion, which was pretty good. It wasn’t as good as Scorch Squad, but she talked that one out all the time.
‘Chapter one: we open on a snowy forest, stained red with blood! There’s a big fucking monster wrecking a castle, and Knight Queen Arabelle is on a cool horse.’ She did a voice kind of like Knight Queen Arabelle. ‘Come, warrior! I need your assistance!’ She went back to her own voice again. ‘And so I go running in, and the monster takes out the tower with its tail – crash! – and so the Knight Queen gives me a cool horse, and she says, “We must hurry! Before the Evergard is lost!”’
Jane kept going. She got all the way through chapter two – the bit where you find out that the monsters actually have a good reason for wrecking shit – when the back wheel on her wagon started to wobble. ‘Ah, shit,’ she said, kneeling down to take a look. The axle had come loose. She dug through her satchel, got a tool, and sat down in the dirt to make repairs. ‘Come on, get back in there. You know where you’re supposed to be.’
She heard the dogs before she saw them – a scruffy pack of five, all watching her close. Jane wasn’t worried. She stood up real chill, and got her weapon ready. She sized them up, one by one. Taking a dog this early in the day wasn’t the best. Dragging around the extra weight sucked, and midday heat and a freshly dead dog wasn’t a great combo. But it wouldn’t spoil or anything, and she needed jerky. ‘Good morning, shitheads,’ she said, giving the weapon switch a quick flick. A little tongue of electricity slithered out. ‘So, which one of you guys am I gonna eat?’
One of the dogs hunched down and stepped toward her. A crusty old female, blind in one eye. She snarled.
Jane snarled back. ‘Yeah, come on,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
The dog kept growling, but didn’t make a move. Jane had seen this one around before, slinking off in the distance. She’d never gotten close. Maybe this pack had come Jane’s way by accident, or maybe they were real hungry (lizard-birds and dust mice weren’t much for big carnivores to go on). If that was why they approached her now, well, too bad. They were leaving hungry. Jane wasn’t.
She picked up a rock, never taking her eyes off the female’s teeth. She switched the weapon into her left hand and, with a quick flick of her wrist, whipped the rock into the dog’s nose.
Killing it wasn’t even hard. The dog lunged, the zapper zapped, and the rest of the pack freaked out.
‘Yeah!’ Jane yelled, jumping over the heap of smoking fur. ‘Yeah, come on! Who’s next?’ She thumped her chest like Combusto. ‘You wanna go?’
The other dogs were pissed, but they backed off. They knew. They got it.
‘That’s right, I’m real scary!’ Jane said, turning her back on them. ‘Be sure to tell all your stupid friends, if I don’t eat you first.’ She grabbed the dead one by the legs and heaved it onto the wagon. It landed with a thud. Jane glanced over her shoulder, but of course the dogs were gone. Of course they were. She’d done this like a thousand times. She knew what was up.
‘We are the blessed warriors of the Night Clan!’ she said in her best justified-in-wrecking-shit monster voice. She gave the wagon axle a wiggle. All good. She dragged the now-heavy wagon behind her. ‘For a thousand years, we have waited for our hour of vengeance—’
Nothing else bugged her as she made her way. She saw a couple cargo ships fly by high up over ahead, full of new scrap to drop off. That was nothing new. They only made drops at the edge of the yard, which was days and days of walking from home, she guessed. She never saw them on the ground. And the wider the yard got, the farther the drop site was. Besides, she was pretty sure there weren’t any people on the ships, and they obviously weren’t scanning the ground or anything. The same was true of the collector drones, which scooped up mouthfuls of scrap to take back to the factories. They didn’t care about her at all. They probably thought she was a dog, if they could even think. She’d once wondered if the collectors would get to where the shuttle was before she left the planet, but Owl had calculated it, and given how often the drones made an appearance and how far away they were and how much scrap they appeared to take, it’d be another six years or so before they even got close. Six years. Jane couldn’t deal with that thought.
She walked and walked, until she got as far as she’d been the day before. She stopped to think. There were two ways around the pile in front of her – one that looked like it would involve a lot of climbing, and one that looked kinda rocky but relatively flat. She considered the stinking carcass on the back of the wagon and went for the easier choice.
Turned out, the easier choice was a better walk, but the destination was pretty crazy. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she lived on a planet, with ecosystems and geology and all that other stuff Owl told her about. It made more sense thinking that the dirt and animals had kind of happened around the scrap, like they were little details added in later on. But then sometimes, she saw something like the place she’d come to, and it was obvious that nature was always there first.
There had been a cliff or something there once – a hill, maybe. Jane didn’t have much real-life experience with land left untouched (sims didn’t count), and she wasn’t always sure if she knew the right words for the things she saw. Anyway, there had been a lot of dirt and rock all stacked up at some point, but there’d been some water or wind or something, and now it was weird. There was a big hole in the ground – a big big hole, with lots of other little ones around – where the dirt had sunk in on itself. And while there was still a giant structure of dirt and rock off to the side of it, it had slumped over a scrap pile, almost like they had melted together. Jane could see scrap sticking out of the wall of dirt, like it was trying to pull itself out. It was a huge mess, and not great for scavenging at all. She would’ve turned right around if it hadn’t been for one thing: she could see half of a ship sticking out of it.
Not a big ship, of course – she’d never found anything much bigger than home – but intact vehicles of any kind were not an everyday thing. Whenever she found one, she cleaned it out right away, especially if there was decent fabric on the seats or bunks or whatever. Fabric did not get better with age, and if she found something that wasn’t all rain-rotted or chewed up from nesting things, that was worth grabbing super fast.
She chewed her lip as she looked at the wall of dirt. It would be a pain in the ass to climb, and it looked crumbly. She wiggled her toes against where her footwraps were wearing thin. If there was fabric in there, it was worth
the climb. She could do it. She could do anything.
The smaller holes orbiting the big one weren’t as deep, but they were deep enough – maybe about half again as tall as she was. She skirted around them, and when they got too tricky to avoid, she left the wagon on a flat patch and continued toward the wall. The slope was steep, almost straight up in some spots. She put her foot against it. It was crumbly, for sure. She reached up and grabbed a hunk of metal firmly buried. It held. She held. Yeah, she could do this. She’d be fine.
She continued up and up until she was at the same height as the ship. She worked herself sideways, turning her feet weird angles, letting them sink into the crumbly dirt so it would hold her weight. ‘Boom! Boom! We’ll wreck your walls!’ she sang. ‘Bang! Bang! We’ll bust your balls!’ It was the song the Scorch Squad sang when they drank alcohol after they won a fight. She didn’t know what drinking alcohol was like, but the sims made it look real fun. ‘Slam! Slam! Get drunk and fight—’ Some of the dirt gave out under her foot, and her leg slid farther than was comfy. She looked at the distance between her and the stuck ship. Almost there, but she could hear pebbles tumbling down below her, and there weren’t a lot of good footholds between here and there. Maybe this was a bad idea. She thought about it. She sniffed. ‘You’ll die tomorrow, so live toniiiiight,’ she sang. She put her foot on the next big rock.
The next big rock broke into dusty pieces the second she let her weight down.
Jane fell. The dirt caught her. She slid, arms and legs flipping over in a tangle, hard things scraping her skin and ramming her body. Her weapon pack and satchel, still wrapped around her, added extra blows to the flurry. She clawed, trying to grab something, but she couldn’t make sense and couldn’t see straight. She tumbled and tumbled, out of control.
A Closed and Common Orbit Page 19