Page 2 of Downfall

One and only perk of the job: you get to have some water. It was why Tez joined up ten years back. It was why most of them applied.

Being a final guard at these mining stations was usually a relatively uneventful existence. Pirates rarely cared to attack, since the most expensive equipment had long been removed and it wasn’t like there was a bunch of water to siphon. Tez had never encountered such a persistent group. And the Gnat was the worst.

An alarm blared overhead, and Tez groaned. “Again?”

“Fuck. I’m so sick of them, Tez,” Reana moaned. “Tristan’s on shift right now, but I’m gonna go help. Maybe between the two of us, we can take down another one of these assholes.”

“Good luck.” Tez ate another mouthful of porridge, scraping her bowl dry.

* * *

Tez was scrolling through mindless documentaries about Old Earth leadership structures in her bunk that afternoon when she heard the hollering. The incompetence and lack of foresight of primitive governments were shocking in retrospect. Learning about them letting vicious aliens onto their only planet in exchange for alien tech with which to kill each other more efficiently was like watching a Raptor crash in slow motion. Insane.

“We got the assholes!”

Tez looked up. Reana and Tristan stood in the doorway with a handful of kerogel packets. Both were already looking wobbly and buddy-buddy in that way they always did when they got drunk and ended up fooling around on the floor of the shared sleeping space. The other three guard pilots followed, wedged in the doorframe behind them.

“Like, plural?” Tez asked.

Was the Gnat one of the “assholes”? Why the sudden anxious tightening in her chest? Because she had to be the one to get the Gnat. It was her target. Not personal, of course, just a challenge she’d committed to.

“Yeah, two of ‘em.” Reana tossed Tez a packet. She reacted mindlessly, catching it in one hand.

“Was—”

“Nah, your one wasn’t there. Probably too damaged after you gave the fucker a little belly scratch today. But that’s the only one left. Next time that thing shows up, we’re all goin’ out there.” Tristan’s eyes lingered on her for a moment as he sucked on his open kerogel packet. “We’re goin’ to the rec to celebrate. Coming?”

Tez raised an eyebrow. “All of you? Who’s gonna be on call?”

This was definitely against regulations.

“Chill, there’s only one left, and it’s damaged. Thanks to you. No way is it showing up again now.” Reana was already pulling Tristan by the hand out the door. He looked a little peeved for a second as she confiscated his arm to drag him along into the hall, but soon resigned himself to being manhandled.

The other pilots turned to follow, and a head of slicked-back black hair popped up over them. Peron, the brig guard, had plenty of free time these days, what with barely anyone on the station and nobody ever in the brig. He spent most days tagging along with the off-duty guards. They all found him annoying at first—the pilots usually stuck to their own—but he’d managed to grow on them. Maybe through sheer persistence alone.

“C’mon, Tez, I heard you shot one of the fuckers today. Gotta celebrate that, right?” Peron always sounded like someone was pinching his nostrils as he spoke. He’d only been at Hydra Company for a couple of years, but already had his nose broken a few times by rowdy inmates.

He had a point… Tez was always a little envious of how the others relaxed and had some actual fun toward the end of their stints. She was always the responsible one while they all went out and partied, intent on maintaining professionalism and making her way up company ranks. But those hopes were fading with each passing year as Tez had been passed up for one promotion after another.

She realized, maybe too late, that guards—especially skeleton crew guards, who were nigh invisible—were considered dispensable. Turnover was low. Who would pass up an opportunity to get some water from whatever dregs remained on the planets they siphoned? It provided the means to pay very little and keep people in their positions. Did she want to be the boring one again?

Tez cracked open her kerogel and pushed a dollop into her mouth before swinging her legs over the edge of the bunk and hopping down.

In the rec room, the party got wild pretty quickly. One thing there was plenty of on the station was kerogel—the company knew the skeleton crew needed lots of it to wind down and tolerate being out there alone for over a year. When decommission ended, leftover stores would be taken back to their reserves. The crew was determined not to let that happen.

By nighttime, the rec room was littered with empty packets. Reana and Tristan were in some corner, making “noises.” The remaining five of them sat around the foam cushions, debating very important matters.

“No, it was like… hopping and shit. A bag on its stomach,” Peron tried to explain with exaggerated hand movements, nearly smacking Niels next to him in the face. The latter was too drunk to mind.

“Nah, man, that’s not the koala. You’re thinkin’ of the rabbit.”

“Rabbits didn’t have no goddamn stomach bags, you idiot.”

Tez smacked her forehead, her memory jogged. “It’s the kangaroo! That was the hopping one! The koala had the stomach bag, but it didn’t hop. It jumped on people’s heads to hunt.”

She’d only had two kerogel packets, and that was hours ago, so her intoxication had worn off by now, but she still felt looser around her coworkers than usual, a warm flush coloring her vision. The past few hours in here with them, watching them get drunk and partaking to a lesser extent, helped create a sort of bubble of camaraderie—one she never bothered with before, choosing to focus on her duties. Her mostly sober state meant Tez could remember the names of Old Earth animals much better than any of the others.

But she began to doubt her own abilities because in the next moment, Tez was pretty sure she was hearing things. Things like the intruder alarm.

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