combs her fingers through Myrha’s hair.
“Thank you,” she finally says very quietly, gently.
“You’re really heavy,” Myrha says, “You should probably lose some weight.”
“It’s my enormous brain,” Lynne says, still gentle.
Myrha laughs and chokes on her own runny snot because she loves that Lynne can say shit like that with a straight face.
“Well, I could really use some help from your enormous brain right now,” she says.
She manages to sound only a little desperate.
Lynne stands up and brings Myrha with her and Myrha can’t bring herself to let go, so she clings to Lynne’s arm as the android surveys the shuttle.
“This is where the homing device led,” Lynne says, a frown on her face.
Myrha nods in confirmation.
“Bartin was right,” Myrha says.
“Then this is…?”
“Turobeck’s shuttle.”
She’s glad Lynne looks as shocked as she had.
“Pretty awesome, huh?” Myrha wipes her running nose.
Lynne touches the pieces of…whatever, on the wall.
“This is paper,” Lynne says.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Something humans produced and stored records on.”
“Uh, okay, sure. Think we covered that in class.”
“It would have fallen out of disuse before Turobeck’s time, and yet…this is his handwriting. This is his poetry.”
“You mean his unpublished poetry?”
“It seems so.”
So Bartin had been right about that as well. Myrha feels a small twinge then, that he had never discovered the shuttle, had never been able to activate the homing device because he wasn’t an android, but the twinge is short lived. They’re in a shuttle. They’re going to escape.
“So how about you and I get out of here?” Myrha asks.
Lynne’s answering expression is bright with challenge fucking accepted, and she seats herself in the captain’s chair. Myrha takes the co-pilot chair and doesn’t know shit about how to fly anything, but it feels awesome to sit, and to sit by Lynne.
Lynne’s starting up the flight panels and she’s unlatching compartments and checking gauges and soon displays are popping up and lights are flashing. Her fingers are quick and sure and deft and nothing is more than attractive (and reassuring) than a girl in her element. Myrha has to swallow an unexpected lump in her throat, and she just takes one of Lynne’s less busy hands in hers. Lynne lets her.
“So you know how to fly this thing?” she asks.
“Of course,” Lynne answers without pause, “I am a flight attendant on a starshuttle, it is my duty to take over when the captain is out of service.”
“You mean you were trained to fly in case of emergency?”
“I was programmed to. I have also studied multiple flight systems as a way to further my knowledge.”
“I’m really fucking thankful that I’m stuck here with you. I mean, if I have to be stuck in the middle of a zombie invasion with someone.”
Lynne stops her inspection and spares her a smile, a smile that softens her entire face.
“I am glad to be with you as well,” Lynne says, squeezing her hand.
Lynne turns back to her numbers and diagrams and Myrha can do little more than stare at her with what she suspects is a soppy love-struck expression. By Jupiter’s moons I can count the ways I love you. And maybe, just maybe, she had been like Dellylee, living in ignorance. She had been inexperienced and uneducated in the ways of love and so ready to trample over it, to dismiss it, to even fear it. I’d still have more ways than there are moons in the Heavens to describe the ways I love you.
A smile breaks out on her face and she doesn’t even try to contain it. She’s more than earned this smile, this happiness.
“This shuttle is serviceable,” Lynne says, her voice tight with suspicion, “none of the systems are damaged, the shuttle has only regular wear and tear, and the fuels cells are half-full. This does not resemble a shuttle that had crash-landed.”
“So Turobeck didn’t,” Myrha shrugs.
“Yes, but something obviously happened to him after he safely landed. It’s clear he left the shuttle and never returned.”
Myrha’s mind skitters over various details: the homing device Bartin found, the charger, and Turobeck’s unknown demise.
Bartin said he had found a discarded pile of metal; perhaps that’s where he had found the homing device. What is made of metal, uses a homing device, and needs a charger? It’s an odd thought, that the great Earth poet Turobeck might have been an android. But it seems like he had simply, for whatever reason, run out of power and met his end as a discarded pile of metal on Lieval’s surface.
Not the grand ending she imagined for Turobeck, but maybe he had arranged it that way. His own starry resting place.
“I believe,” Lynne says rather delicately, “that we are able to safely liftoff.”
Myrha instinctively latches onto her seat; she’s only been on one space-flight and it nearly made her sick. Exploding in an outdated, abandoned shuttle is a very real possibility.
“Right,” she says haltingly, “let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“I have set a course for the nearest shuttle port,” Lynne says.
“You know what? I don’t really care where we go, as long as we don’t end up dead.”
Lynne gives her another grin. She’s never seen her smile so much; it’s so full of mischief that Myrha wonders if Lynne is somehow enjoying herself. Maybe she just likes a challenge. It’s kind of a sexy look for her.
“Then let’s go,” Lynne says.
The shuttle hums and trembles and it reminds Myrha of a beast that’s just awakened. The view screen blinks to life and Myrha immediately recoils. Faces streaked with blood and dirt and marred by mindlessness stare at them. The zombies crawl over the shuttle and clack their bloody teeth at them. Myrha gags and Lynne studies them rather dispassionately.
“Hold on tight,” she says.
Myrha’s grip on Lynne’s hand increases tenfold. She’s glad androids are made of sturdy stuff; she’s pretty sure her grip is now strong enough to crush finger bones.
Their shuttle lurches and they’re finally lifting off the ground and the entire little shuttle is shaking and she’s absolutely sure they’re going to collapse to the ground in a heap of broken metal and flame. Instead, they rise into the air and sodden fingers still try to cling to the shuttle; the trees are becoming smaller and smaller and the rock structure that had looked so huge becomes a miniature. She sees the Starline shuttle, a dark little blob, and supposes they’ll never know who sabotaged it (though her money is on Bartin).
Myrha marvels at how close everything seems, how close the upside down tree looks to the cave, how close the cave looks to the hostel, and she can’t believe she ran all that way.
The thrusters fire, and clouds are beneath them, and still there’s a face pressed against the view screen, eyeballs popping out of its skull and its sort of melting and exploding all over the place, and then there’s red heat and—
blessed black emptiness.
The tiny island is dwarfed by the large ocean, and then they come around the curve of the planet and the island disappears and all she can see is a big bunch of blue, until they escape orbit and Lieval is nothing but a ball.
Myrha breathes a sigh and sags in her chair.
She’s never felt so good.
Lynne glances at her out of the corner of her eye.
“So, where are we going?” Myrha asks, carefree and a bit giddy.
“Nearest shuttle port so we can refuel.”
“And then where to after that?” she asks.
Lynne’s mouth is pressed in a line and her gaze is concentrated on the controls.
“I am assuming you want to go home,” she says carefully, “and that I would…return to Orion Starlines.”
Myrha pretends to roll that aro
und in her head, tongue poking against her cheek. Lynne’s posture is noticeably stiffer.
“I must go to the stars again, for the call of a twinkling sun is a wild call and a clear call that cannot be outrun,” Myrha says eventually.
Lynne looks at her so fast, Myrha is amazed she didn’t pop a screw. Then she snickers at the thought. Lynne’s hand hovers uselessly over one of the panels and she studies Myrha’s face closely. Myrha just waits for her catch on.
“And all I ask is a landing site with new horizons dawning, and comet dust and planet rings, and the new moon yawning,” Lynne eventually quotes back.
Androids don’t cry, but Lynne’s eyes are certainly shiny with something. Myrha suspects hers are the same way.
“So, yeah, we refuel and then…onward,” Myrha waves her hand vaguely.
They’re in Turobeck’s shuttle. They might as well continue his grand adventure. It feels suspiciously like destiny.
“You never did tell me,” Lynne’s voice cuts off her ridiculous (pathetic!) daydreams.
“Tell you what?”
“What poem you won the contest with.”
Myrha has to laugh; it all feels so long ago. She doesn’t even know if she can remember it; she licks her lips in amusement.
“What?” Lynne says.
Demands, really. When she’s curious about something, there really is no stopping her.
“I just sort of realized…how appropriate it is.”
Lynne raises an eyebrow.
“Maybe I’ll tell you later,” Myrha grins teasingly.
It’s a poem, she realizes now, that she wrote in her Dellylee phase…before she had experienced more of life. More of love. She’s not exactly ashamed of it, but she’s kind of embarrassed. She remembers the night she submitted her poem, but the memory feels a bit old and