It was odd to be enjoying such things while the sky was on fire.

Pei was not a stranger to an atmosphere aflame, as underlined by her initial reflex to run, move, shoot, react, protect. But Gora was not a war zone. Her guns were in a locker and her real ship was elsewhere, and the Rosk border appeared in the Goran sky as nothing more than one star among millions. The current problem at hand – the sky on fire problem – was taking place in low orbit, and there was nothing a person down here could do to help the people dealing with the mess up there. Nothing but sit in your shuttle and wait, as instructed.

Waiting was another activity Pei was accustomed to, but it almost always went hand-in-hand with preparing. The list of things she had to keep in mind when waiting for something was endless and forever increasing. She had to consider ambushes, crossfire, thievery, arguments, equipment inspections, entry trajectories, exit plans, fuel levels, bulkhead integrity, proper formwork, customs inspectors with no sense of humour, middlemen with no ethical framework, translations and digital stamps and whether or not the shields would hold this time. She had crew she could delegate to handle such things – and a damn good crew, too – but as captain, the buck stopped with her, and there was no issue that didn’t require her input, be it your pilot lost an eye or we’re out of mek, again.

So in the approximate hour since the emergency message had come through and everyone had retreated to their respective shuttles like good little creche-kids, the primary thing Pei felt about a situation in which there was nothing for her to do but follow someone else’s instructions and wait for them to do their job was … relief.

She felt guilty about that. This whole to-do was an ordeal for the people responsible, no question, and the ripple effects were no doubt fucking over the schedules of an entire planet full of people with places to be. She was losing a day of shore leave because of this, and that definitely soured her mood, but she was sure things were far worse for others with strict schedules and urgent business. No one had died, as far as she knew. No one in her immediate locale was hurt. Still, though, harm was harm, and she found herself wrestling between two truths until she realised neither was a zero-sum:

This wasn’t the worst that could happen.

It was a bad thing all the same.

But all of this consideration was a moot point. She had no control, and no responsibility to do anything but sit and wait. That sort of permission was something she was almost never granted.

Right or not, relief conquered guilt.

She let her shoulders go and her head dip. From where she sat, the idea of anything being wrong seemed preposterous. It was quiet. She was safe. The garden she’d been walking in earlier was visible through her window, and the angle of the hills beyond the dome was such that she couldn’t see the sky at all. She drew her eye back to the garden, which really was lovely, in a humble way. It reminded Pei in spirit of the garden at the creche where she’d grown up, the one her father Le had tended every day. She fondly remembered the triangular beds planted specially with things for kids to poke and nibble at. Nothing bad could ever happen in that place, and she’d felt the same, for a moment, in Ouloo’s garden. She knew such sentiments weren’t true, that bad things could and did happen anywhere, but it was a nice illusion to buy into, temporarily. She allowed herself to continue indulging in that fantasy, even though she knew the view above told a different story.

As her mind quieted, thoughts began to drift freely, and Pei began to idly pick at their threads, feeling her cheeks shift colour this way and that as she did so. It was important for her, in her line of work, to scrutinise the things going on within herself, and she did this sort of maintenance in any spare moment she had. The immediate state of affairs was one she’d unravelled easily, and had no need to examine further. But there was a bigger snarl beyond, one she’d been wrestling with for tendays. She’d made small progress with it, and the more she picked, the more she found its messy components trying to entwine with one another, like roots planted too close together. She wished she had Le’s garden shears, that she might chop it apart and be done with it.

She exhaled, running a palm over the crown of her head. She was so tired of the tangles, so tired of immediately running into them anytime her mind wandered as it liked. This was not the time for it, she told herself. There truly was a problem outside, disconnected from it though she was. She’d been told to take shelter and stay calm. The former was easy; the latter was a treat. She saw no need to muddy the time she’d been given with things that would not leave her be.

Pei pushed with steady firmness back against the eelim, prompting it to recline all the way down. She eased into the supportive nest, folding her hands across her chest, allowing herself the comfort of being cradled. Through the skylight overhead, the remains of a weather tracker tumbled into distant view, flaming like tinder as they hit the thin air. She shut her eyes before the pieces ceased burning. Within minutes, she was asleep.

Received message

Encryption: 0

From: GC Transit Authority – Gora System (path: 487-45411-479-4)

To: Ooli Oht Ouloo (path: 5787-598-66)

Subject: URGENT UPDATE

This is an urgent message from the Emergency Response Team aboard the GC Transit Authority Regional Management Orbiter (Gora System). As both standard ansible and Linking channels are currently unavailable, we will be communicating via the emergency beacon network for the time being. We ask that you leave your scribs locked to this channel until proper communications are restored.