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Like I said: 'Kueh POV. A couple weeks after the last one.

There are very few things to do at six-forty-five in the morning and contemplating your own mortality is most of them. I was trying very hard not to do this, because it’s never best to contemplate death when you’re on the roof of a twelve-storey building. I concentrated on the fact of my freezing fingers, instead.

They were colder than the rest of me because I was holding some obscure metal piece in place for our new mechanic. I was trying, also, to ignore this, because if I were to give him any sort of encouragement he’d be trying to talk to me again. Not that words weren’t coming out of his mouth right now, but at least he wasn’t expecting a response.

“So I just slam this thing in here and get the coils locked in place, and it won’t take toooooo much longer if you just – ah fuck, I was counting on that wire – yeah so hold this and don’t move and give me another ten minutes…” He handed me something and ducked back under the fuselage. I took the wire, though my fingers didn’t want to move. In ten minutes the sun would be fully up, so perhaps they’d be able to thaw me. Perhaps.

Boss had insisted I take the job of watching him, because ‘you need the break’ and ‘he’s gonna be dangerous’. So I was again left with the job of supervising the new Spacer idiot. Granted, Une had turned out all right, but still, it was a bit much.

I think this one had taken all the words Une wasn’t using; he talked more than enough for two. Just as well, really, since I was in no mood to be conversational. He’d been down here for long enough that I was no longer ready to kill him on sight, but I still didn’t feel the need to be friendly.

For some reason he kept going out of his way to be friendly with me. I didn’t know why; I do have that effect on people sometimes, but usually people who haven’t met Boss. Until you talk with him, you don’t really understand that sucking up to his people doesn’t work.

The sun wasn’t quite all the way over the horizon when the Spacer took the wires out of my hands and wove them through everything else in some complicated way. He slid out from under the body and stood up straight, grinning at me. “Totally air-worthy! Told you I was good.”

I nodded a bit and ignored him, trying to get the feeling back into my fingers. He shrugged – most likely thought I didn’t notice – and turned back to his handiwork.

“Come on, admit it. I’m fucking awesome.” He leaned back on the guard-rail with a self-satisfied smirk.

I did have to admit it was a well-done piece of work. Very few people could reconstruct a fighter plane from the framework and scrap pieces of metal. Fewer could fit it with jury-rigged versions of the flight controls. And all with Earthsider materials, which at this point were little more advanced than hand torches and rivets.

When I said this, he responded, “Well yeah, it’s well done, ‘cause I’m a fucking genius. Look at this! This wing” – he stepped back over to the plane and knocked on said wing – “Is half the wrong side of a twelve-year-old ship. And do you have any idea how hard it is to get that damn ceramic to act like it’s supposed to? Pain in the ass, I tell you…” and he was off.

I’ve never been interested in engineering, so this was lost on me, and he could probably tell that, but he was too enamored of the sound of his own voice to care. When he looked ready to start another lecture on the cockpit, I put a stop to it.

“We should tell Boss. He’ll need to be informed before we test it.” And quite honestly I wanted to get down from there; still cold, and I’m not good with heights, not really.

A moment of surprise and then he shrugged and stuck his still-greasy hands in his pockets. “All right, cool, let’s get to it then. Though.” That grin again, with a spark in his eyes that I was not at all sure I liked. “I got one way to show him that it works.”

He jumped up on the wing, which of course was my cue to point a gun at him again. I have a very quick draw – it comes from my sword work. “Get down.”

He put his hands up but didn’t move, just looked resigned. “I should’ve known. You going to shoot me again?”

“I’m prepared to.” Because there was no way a new, untried Spacer was going to use a new, untested ship – that he’d built, mostly alone – without another pilot around. Not if I had a say in the matter, and I did. I had bullets.

“It kind of hurt the first time, y’know,” he told me. He was probably going to try to jump for it. Not the best idea; he might think I wouldn’t shoot the ship, but I certainly would. Its hull integrity was not as important as keeping him grounded.

“That is the point. Get down.” I don’t like talking to people when I have a gun on them. You can never tell when they’ll have more patience than you.

“You don’t think flying this thing over the encampment would be a good way to show off?” he asked. Could he be serious? As serious as he’d so far shown himself to be.

“If you want to cause a panic, then yes, it’s a lovely idea. Get. Off. The plane.”

When he made a sudden movement I nearly fired – I was a little hair-trigger that day, for what I think are perfectly understandable reasons – but he was only jumping off the wing again.

“No fun, no fun at all,” he said, shaking his head. “I can see I’m going to have to be the one to put some excitement back into this place.”

“We have excitement,” I said. “Mostly supplied by your colleagues.” I put my gun back in my side holster, but kept it easy to draw. I wasn’t ready to be anything like relaxed right then.

“Getting shot at is a thrilling and valuable pasttime, but in the realms of ‘fun’ it’s right up there with root canals, tetanus shots and getting your face torn off by wild badgers,” he said, as if the words coming out of his mouth were perfectly reasonable. I didn’t laugh, because I don’t. Neither did I smile. Much.

The logical disconnect there is just inherently humorous. Moving on. “We don’t have time to be distracted,” I told him. “You were military; you should understand that.” Une had, but then the difference between this man and Une was so great as to make it hard to believe they were members of the same species, let alone the same command structure.

He waved his hands around vaguely. “Yeah, yeah, there’s that, but military’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. You know, so many guys in rotation, there’s not a lot to do most days, except when there’s a run…” he glanced at me, and flinched. “Sorry.”

I didn’t respond. Let him stew in his guilt for a while. He deserved it.

“Let’s get moving,” I said, already walking towards the staircase. “Sivier will fly this thing on its test run. Please remember that if anything unexpected happens, you’ll die.” And with luck, he wasn’t suicidal.

He looked annoyed but not actually in fear for his life, which said good things about Sivier’s prospects. “Because I’m going to let that happen. If I wanted to get out of here I could – your security sucks ass.”

I was in charge of security. “It’s as good as it can be.” My tone was laced with all the irritation and defensiveness I had; I had next to nothing to work with when it came to keeping the city safe. Boss, Une, Sivier, a few former solders, a few other members of the original Earthside Rebel – only the solders had real training, and Boss and I didn’t trust them enough to let them take charge of much.

He snorted. “Oh whatever. I used to wire up my bedroom better than those fucking infrareds you’ve got. Couple of tripwires, some mines, and get those snipers to better places, you’re set.”

I would have agreed with him, actually, except that there were a few notable facts he was missing. “Each time we put the snipers higher, someone snipes them. They have to be hidden from air as well as ground. And we simply don’t have the resources for better sensors.”

We were halfway down the stairs by now. He still had his combat boots; they echoed. Harder to hear properly, and I was starting to get nervous, because I’d let an unknown quantity walk down the stairs behind me. Not the brightest idea I’ve ever had.

“I didn’t say higher, I said better. And there’s still the mines, I know where you can get a fuckton of explosives if you want ‘em,” he tossed off. I stilled.

“You know where to find explosives?” Yes, I did want them. And soon.

He kept walking and just about crashed into me, dodging at the last moment to thud down the stairs. “Ye-ah, I think there’s a resupply base what, a couplea-fifty miles off the point? I mean it’s not gonna be easy, but it’s sure as hell better’n what you’ve got now.”

I followed, slightly more at ease now that he’d fixed my mistake. “’Off the point’. A sea base?” I frowned. We had no real way to get to anyplace in the ocean.

“Yep. You got what, five, six jets? Send two. Do it at twilight, paint ‘em up like Spacer’s sea patrols, I’ll fly one and give ‘em my callsign – it oughta work once, anyway, maybe twice – we land, we steal, we cripple, we move out. You can fit a couplea passengers in those things too, so we can have backup and a way to get anyone who looks like they might be worth convincing.”

We hit ground and he stopped in the caseway, waiting for me to think it through before we went back outside. It wasn’t a good plan. It was a workable plan, with high payoff – but high risk. Were we willing to take it for the possibility of weapons?

Probably. We were desperate, at that point. But… “I’ll consider it. You won’t be flying and you won’t be armed,” I say. “And don’t think that this will get you in my good books. Not yet.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust me either, man. Give it time.”

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June 2009

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