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“You know they make you study astronomy?” she said on the cold metal floor one night, empty bottles stacked between them. “Yeah, to fucking fly ships they make you study a bunch of shit about astronomy and distant stars and planets. Like you’re not gonna notice the fucking gravity of the giant rock right next to you, but you really gotta know that in the upper left hand side there’s Casseopeia or some shit.”
“That was an old constellation,” South said, eyes closed and purple hair dye remains staining her sweaty cheeks. “They only make sense if you see them from Earth anyway.”
“Never been,” the pilot shrugged. She reached for one of the bottles and shook it, listening for sounds of liquid. “Heard it wasn’t worth they hype.”
“It’s not,” South said firmly, reaching out to share her beer. “It’s a ghost planet by now. Plagued by the goddamn history of everything that ever seemed to matter.”
“You were born there,” 479er said and drank from the offered bottle.
“Bred, born, raised, fucking ran away from the first chance I got. I’m not really from South Dakota, though.”
“Yeah? Where are you from?”
South laughed under her breath, the sound growing in distaste and volume, before answering. “Raleigh. North Carolina.”
“Fuck. You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”
“Born and motherfucking raised, and successfully escaped at the ripe ol’ age of twenty three.” She opened her hand asking for her beer back, and the pilot handed it off gingerly. “Where are you from?”
“Io,” 479er said with a proud grin. “Talk about a fucking moon trying its hardest to put you in the ground at every turn.”
“That why you became a pilot? Get away from all those asshole volcanoes?”
“Sometimes they kinda look like assholes, from above,” the pilot mused and South coughed up some of her drink in laughter. “But, no. I’ve always been a pilot. Just had to get someone to give me a ship.”
“That’s fucking deep,” South muttered. “I used to want to be a politician.”
“What happened, you decided you wanted to keep your soul intact?”
“You think any of us here are intact?” South said to the cockpit, finishing off her drink. 479er let the silence rest heavy on them both. “You had to study astronomy?” the freelancer finally asked, cutting through the darkness.
“Yeah, out of fucking textbooks and with shitty old telescopes. It’s so when I’m flying places and all my nav systems and power go out, I can radio my location based on what I see out of the window, and pray they get to me before the ship runs out of heat and air.”
“That’s really fucking morbid.”
The pilot shrugged. “We’re all trained to die, one way or another.”
“I’ll drink to that,” South declared and opened the last two beers next to her, handing one off.
Recovery One isn’t used to sleeping, so when Caboose is out and Church pretends to be…whatever he calls it as a ghost, he’s staring up at the sky.
He opens up a channel and transmits, “Recovery Command?”
The voice at the end is familiar, tired, and just as full of insomnia. “You’re clear, Recovery One. Was there any further complication with Agent South Dakota?”
“No, that’s not what… No.” Wash thinks about the detonator and how small it is, and how heavy he always wants it to feel. “You know about stars, right?”
The woman on the other end holds quiet, transmitting even and calculated breaths. “Wash, what is this?”
“Human conversation?” he says with a distant reflection of that rookie wet-behind-the-ears optimism.
Recovery Command sighs from behind her desk, rubbing reddened eyes raw. “We haven’t done this since-”
“Since the Meta shot me. Yeah. I remember. I guess I’m feeling sentimental.” He waits, looking at the blinking sky. “Recovery Command? You still-”
“Yeah, I’m still.” She leans back in her chair, her monitor showing relaxed vitals and a clean bill of physical health. “Yeah, I had to study astronomy. Names and some constellations, for archaic navigating purposes.” Her screen lights up with a transmission from Recovery One’s helmet. She’s looking up at a sky, like she’s lying down in the grass.
“Do you recognize any?”
“Casseopeia, I think,” she transmits. “In the upper left, upside down. It kinda looks like a weirdly slanted W.”
“Yeah, I see it,” Recovery One smiles. “Anything else?”
“Gemini.” Recovery Command swallows, and Recovery One transmits silence.
“This was a mistake.”
“No shit.”
“I should get to sleep.”
“Roger that, Recovery One. Recovery Command out.”