As soon as that rigid woman disappears, I let out a long breath, all the muscles in my shoulders and stomach relaxing, and rest my forehead against the control panel. Either it's exhaustion or relief turning me into jelly, but either way, I could sure go for hibernating in that bunk of mine for another couple more hours. I don't get a chance, though. A knock comes on the cockpit door, and then Duster's calling at me through it.

"I got the landing gear sorted now!"

I don't open the door right away. This is a moment for me and Core. Jumping to my feet, I spin in the miniscule section of floor between the pilot's seat and the door, humming the tune we first danced to.

We're going to get you really healing, Core baby! At last!

And then I can really dance you again – at our wedding!

I giggle as I haven't done in years, but nobody's watching, nobody's listening. The laughter just spills out, natural as a flower bursting open in response to sunshine.

Duster knocks on the door again. "You all right in there, dame? Sounds like that comm was so dismal you went right to the booze. Didn't know you had any on board. What year is it, and how much you got left?"

I wink at Core in the security camera over the control panel, then turn to the door. Shaking my shoulders back, I ease my manic grin into a more socially-acceptable smile.

Duster is leaning against the corridor wall outside, brow furrowed with concentration as he dabs at the one spot of grease on his shirt with his kerchief. When the door slides shut behind me, though, he straightens and puts his hands on his hips.

"Landing gear done, and in record time, considering how blasted up you let it get. Where's the booze? A bloke needs his reward for good labour."

"I'm not sauced, I'm happy." I shake my head and tell him what Command Officer Grahmal told me. "So how much do you have left to do before the Verve can enter the atmosphere again?"

"Like I told you, I'll probably take about four days. There are still those breaches in the outer hull that need attention, and though I got the mechanics of the landing gear all patched up, some of the connections will need to be rewired. Your He'll have to help me with that, or you could do it while I move on to repairing the hull."

"I'll do it." I start for my locker, located in the wall above my bunk behind Duster in the corridor, and start pulling pins from my hair. "I'll just be a few minutes."

"Aw, you putting on your grubs already?" Duster gives one last flick at the grease spot on his sleeve, and tucks the kerchief into his back pocket. "Shame."

Tension clutches my spine, and I turn around and glare at him before I can tell myself he probably didn't really mean anything by what he said.

He takes a step back at my sudden movement, and bursts out a curse that could win a literary award, it's so long and descriptive. "What I do now? I say something wrong again? Shoot, dame, I ain't trying to be low. I told you I was sorry about earlier, too, didn't I? All's right now? I didn't make a row between you and your He, did I?" Duster's brown eyes are almost puppy-like, but when I don't answer right away he turns away from me, hands clasped behind his head, and gives the wall an extensive listing of expletives. "I didn't mean nothing – I just ain't seen a dame in months, and I guess I got ahead of myself."

"I'd say."

"I've never had a dame chew me out like this. You get mad at your He when he talks sweet to you?"

I pull out the last pin and shake out the curl of my fringe. "No."

Duster pauses, then turns around and looks at me, head tilted a little to one side. "Why not?"

"Because he never talked to me like that right off the bat." I open my locker, put away my hairpins, and pull out one of my last clean kerchiefs. "We were comrades and friends before we ever became anything else, and Core always treated me like an equal. Better yet, he still does."

Duster leans against the wall again and folds one arm across his chest, resting his chin against the thumb of his other hand. "Sounds more like you two are in a business agreement than a romance."

I wipe my lipstick off on the kerchief, leaving a warm pink-red smear on the fabric and my face in its fresh, unassuming natural state – I once feared showing my face like this to anyone, but ever since Core visited me when I had the 'flu and brought me dozens of flowers and kissed me even though I was contagious, not so much. "I'm not against romance, but I am against stupid flirting."

"How'd your He get you, then?"

"By being funny, kind, and giving me pep talks when I needed them. Like I said, he was my friend before he became my fiancée."

Duster purses his lips and slings himself down to sit against the corridor wall. "Hmm."

Folding my coveralls over my arm, I lean against my locker door to close it and smile down at Duster. "Wouldn't you like that – a woman who wasn't just your dame, but was your friend? Not just someone who'd love up on you, but kick you in the head when you needed it, and have your back, same as any other comrade?"

Duster frowns. "Don't know. Never knew any dames like that. Guess I just haven't met any yet."

I raise an eyebrow. "Oh, you've probably met them – you were just to busy talking at them, I imagine, to get a chance to know them."

He flinches and digs at a spot of black grease under his thumbnail. "Shoot, dame, you're no light hitter, are you?"

I laugh, throwing back my head. "Nope. I've got three brothers. Knowing when and where to land punches got me through when I was a kid."

He digs at his thumbnail some more, but the action gradually slows and then he glances up at me. "We all right, then? If I'm gonna be hanging around fixing up the Verve for the next few days, I don't want nothing hanging between the two of us."

I sigh and look away to fiddle with the buttons on the coveralls I'm holding. "Yes, we're all right. I'd just appreciate it if you kept your thoughts about my looks to yourself. I know you may have meant them nicely," I continue when he opens his mouth, "but I don't take comments like that well. Even with as many women in it as there are, the Fire-keeper training base isn't exactly full of gentlemen, and a girl has to learn to stand up for herself."

Duster gets to his own feet and puts his hands in his pockets. He clears his throat. "I think you do a pretty dang good job. Well, eh, I'll let you put on your clothes, and get started on repairing the hull. Where you got your solder at?"

My moment of glam is over and I'm back in my coveralls within a few minutes and stuck halfway into the repair shaft, my hands and Core's brains rewiring the landing gear. It's stuffy in the shaft, even though the engines have been off for at least a solid twelve hours, and because we need to conserve energy, the repair lights are off and I have to illuminate my work with a torch held between my teeth. But it's all right. Normally, Core cranks up the recorderon when we're doing repairs together, but, again, low soal on board. So Core sings to me, all our favorite songs from the dances back during training, between his instructions on which circuits to inspect next and when to use the quick-cooling solder pen.

He's got a lovely voice. He could have been a real crooner if he hadn't gone to academy and become an Enforcer. Heck, though, I could have been the ritzy doll of the East Boardwalk, and here I am sweating in the repair shaft of a crashed rocket-ship in the middle of the Far-Flung Territory. I still remember how ill-fitted all those silk and furs felt – borrowed plumage, really. I never even saw the face of any of the people who worked for the money that went into that finery. My coveralls, the panels I'm currently rewiring, though... they're mine, paid for in a lot of late nights, bruises, and the swearing off of regular showers and date nights.

I put down the soldering pen and take the torch out of my mouth to closer inspect the last bit of wiring I've connected. "Well, I think that'll do it. Guess we'll find out next time we reentry."

Which might be soon. Core replies with a rapidity that makes me jerk, and I only just avoid banging my head on the repair shaft ceiling.

What is it?

Soal.

What? I shut the panel, grab my tools, and start wriggling backwards out of the repair shaft.

I've had the capacity to extend the soal radar with so many of my other systems down, and I've just got a ping on a potential fall within our radius. Just a small one, two or three at the most once through the burnout stage in atmospheric entry, but it's something.

Something? It could tide us over until the big fall Command Officer Grahmal told me about! You have a projected landing site, yet?

Calculating now and... done. Fifteen miles southwest of here.

I crawl out into the corridor, then turn on my comm as I put my tools away in the hold.

"Duster?"

"Eh? What's it? Just about done with one of these scratches. Solder so smooth and shiny you can preen your pretty face in it."

"I'm sure you're doing enough preening in it for the both of us. Now listen – Core just picked up a potential soal-fall that looks like it'll land fifteen or so miles southwest of here. How much fuel does your mono have?"

"Oh no, doll, you are not taking my mono out for a spin through this –"

"Duster, if we don't hold out until that next big soal fall, I'm going to be without a job, Core will be... worse, and I will take you right back to the Western Command Center and personally hold you down for Silar!"

Duster is quiet on his end of the comm for a moment. Then I hear a huff. "Fine. You can take my mono. Not one scratch though, you hear me? Not one tiny dent. I just detailed the lil' beauty."

As I put my visor back on and, for good measure, wrestle into my vapour-proof suit, Core switches the comm link onto long-distance.

It takes more power, long-distance, but if we keep radio silence until absolutely necessary on either end, it won't be too bad.

What about the visual link?

That's been down ever since you hit your head. I've been trying to reboot it from my end, and will keep trying while you're gone, but we might need to get you to a Fire-keeper base and get it rebooted on your end.

Please do check in on me through the comm link, then. Please, just a word or two every ten minutes or so. It'll be just me and all those glowy-shrimps out there, and who knows what else.

You've got two more prods yet, and you're welcome to my munitions locker.

They're not really affected by prods, and I'm a terrible shot. This'll go real swell.

I purse my lips as I slide my visor up and turn it on – I'd let it sleep ever since I'd gone to bed last night to let it recover from the crash that damaged its functions just the same as the Verve. Resting perked it up as much as it did me. Various-coloured filters flicker and form constellation-like connections between data as my most-often used programs (scanners, soal tracking, prod energy levels, body and health stats) test themselves and are cleared for use.

I think that if you move fast and use the torches to disorient them, you'll startle those creatures away from you long enough to find where the fall lands and gather what soal you can.

Sticking two extra torches in my belt and one more in my boot, I square my shoulders and head for the airlock.

Driving fast and being disorienting. This really will go swell, actually.

I swear Core rolls his eyes so hard I can feel it in the comm link.

Duster helps me clamp a small, soal-fetching strongbox behind the mono's leather seat, all the time telling me how to turn just right and to be sure not to choke the throttle too much, but I mostly ignore him. I haven't piloted a mono in probably about a year, but as soon as I feel the rumble of the engine between my knees and grip the steering handles, it all comes back. Locking my boots into the stirrups, I crouch low behind the tiny windscreen and streak off into the darkness with a snarling rev. The small, white, ember-like glow of Duster's work lamps reflecting off the Verve's hull disappears as soon as I curve around the first massive skypole trunk, and suddenly black simply is – above me, behind me, on either side, both distant and crowding in my face, clutching close around me. I nearly choke.

Switching the mono's frontbeam to its highest setting helps, but the trees are so close together, despite their size, that it's almost even more disorienting than the darkness... like I'm punching through the flat, painted forest of a musical background only to find another right behind it and another behind that one, and another and another. Things just look flatter and odder once the faultline cracks grow more numerous, white vapour billowing up out of them. Thankfully, what giant shrimps I do come across scuttle out of the way before my humming, shining mono reaches them, though I do glimpse sucker-like glowing things clinging to some of the tree trunks like clams. Once I even thought I saw a bird. But it was too white and transparent-looking, brittle and bone-like, to be that.

On the whole, there doesn't seem to be much life down under the skypoles, so I focus my attention on not crashing into their massive, twisted roots that sometimes even curve above me in gnarled arches, and on my visor's soal-tracker. The mono engine snarls, echoing, into the darkness.

It's begun to feel like a bad dream, caught driving circles in an endless dream forest, before Core opens the comm link at last.

You're doing fine. The soal's hit the atmosphere, and though, as I predicted, most of it's burning up, I think at least a half-strongbox full will make it to ground.

How long till impact?

Three minutes. I'm sending you the tracking info now. You'll be on your own now from here on out to conserve power. Contact me only if it's dire. Stay safe. I love you.

My throat tightens as the comm link goes quiet.

"I love you, too."

The tracking information pops up as a panel on my visor screen, typography mapped out in green and altitude in blue beside it. The small golden dot of the soal fall trickles slowly from left to right, honing in on a white x on the typographic map. My own location, a red dot, flickers toward the same point, but soon I don't need the map. Three minutes fly by and I ease back on the throttle as a distant roaring tears the quiet. Suddenly, a fierce, hot light appears among the trees ahead of me, transforming them into sharp black silhouettes for a split second. The light swells, fragmenting, and then the impact shock rolls across the ground beneath me. Volcanic boulders crumble against each other, vapour plumes past me in a rolling wave, and a few glowing creatures race past, no more substantial than the blurry squiggles that sometimes swim in my vision.

I raise the mono to hover a little higher, waiting as the shock moves on and to see if a fire's been started by the soal fall. Nothing down here is really flammable – the skypoles seem almost as solid as the boulders they grow in – so I only hesitate a minute or so before heading towards the dying glow off to my right.

It's not often that you come across soal so soon after it lands, and upon reaching the edge of the impact I pull up and kill the engine. The site is illuminated by the still-burning fall, transforming the trees around into a narrow cage with wide, red-yellow bars. As there's no wind down here, smoke slides upward like drawn threads, and silence fills the void darkness once did as I dismount the mono and creep towards the impact site.

Like all soal falls, this one is formed of two major parts that the first Fire-keepers dubbed the 'nest' and the 'egg'. The nest is the crater, usually about eighty to one hundred feet across, and thick with ash and pulverized rock. The egg is what Fire-keeper's are really after. That's where the soal is, and small though this fall is, this egg looks to be what we call a double-yolk – most of the curved shell-like structure that the soal grows off of is still intact. You can get almost twice as much soal off a double-yolk than you can off eggs that are more demolished by impact. This one, like all, is burnt black and pockmarked all over, but remarkably sound. More of it survived atmospheric entry than Core hoped... and most Fire-keepers expect.

The ground within the nest is still smoking, but my vapour-suit will protect me, so I lower myself into the crater and tiptoe towards the egg. I've never seen one so intact, before. It almost really does look like the shell of a cracked-in-half egg. Except, of course, for the blue-grey smear in the ashes around it, hissing and fizzling as it dries and turns the ashes into a spongy mass, and the fact I could lie in it comfortably. And, of course, the sharp-sided, geometric protrusions sticking out of it.

I'm so relieved I almost fall to my knees right there in the reeking, acidic, smoking egg.

Core! Core, we've got soal! A whole double-yolk, just for us!

Tempted though I am to start prying off the soal crystals then and there, I spin around towards the mono to get the strongbox, and freeze.

Something broke the silence. I know. I know I heard something – a tiny brush of movement, the slide of something solid against the rough boulders. Turning back towards the egg, I pull a torch and a prod from my belt, and flicker my visor screen to heat signature. Bad choice. The egg and nest plunge into a mass of neon orange, stinging my eyes, and before I can stop myself I cry out, take a step backwards, and overbalance. I stumble backwards, and with a beautiful flail I smash my torch against the egg's side. Oxidized now by several minutes' exposure to our atmosphere, the egg trembles at the blow and then crumbles into a pile of porous debris, smothering much of the sections still burning and bringing darkness plunging down again. But before my vision goes dark, I glimpse the other side of the nest that had previously been obscured by the egg.

Tracks, leading away from the egg.

Away.

Without moving, without blinking, I open the comm link.

Core? We've reached dire.

I'm at the impact site, and... I'm not alone.