“Oh fuck,” Kito breathed as she looked across the mangled remains of the ship’s catwalk, the metal grates clinging to the barely intact ceiling like the shredded remnants of a spiderweb that had tried to catch something far too large.

          “Having second thoughts? I thought junking was easy,” Sparrow teased, his voice ringing through her helmet’s speakers as Kito stepped closer to the edge. Her one working headlight only touched the tops of the maimed and mangled wreckage below, a decimated mouth awaiting her inevitable fall with bared teeth. The gaping pit began to sway closer, the catwalk churning in warped waves as the darkness below pulled at the mercenary, coaxing her forward with nauseating vertigo. Kito wrapped an arm around the nearest support, an all too thin beam holding the grated floor to what remained of the ceiling.

          “Oh fuck,” Kito repeated, sliding to the ground. Sitting was safe. Sitting was alright.

          “Hey, you okay?”

          “Just peachy.”

          “What’s up? I’m sending Pip in now.”

          “I just- oh man this is so much worse than I thought.” Kito leaned her head against the beam. Her helmet was too hot, too stuffy, too small. She needed fresh air, she needed to get out, she needed something cold.

          A line of light cut through the dusty darkness, and with it the soft chirps of Pip as he floated through the air, venturing out into the open void that had threatened to drag Kito’s feet from beneath her.

          “That’s not too bad. I can walk you through it no problem,” Sparrow said. The spherical drone turned back towards the beginning of the catwalk, its camera lens eyes looking down at the mercenary—her slouched posture, her hung head, how she refused to look out over the edge of the catwalk. “You sure you’re okay? You don’t look so good.”

          “I’ll be okay. I just, with everything that’s gone wrong so far, I suppose confidence is just a little low, that’s all. Concussion isn’t making anything easier either.” Kito’s laugh was devoid of any humor and did little to soften the tension that coiled around her shoulders.

          “Hey, we’re both still alive, right? I thought hospital trips were common in your line of work.”

          “Common in mine, not in yours. And I’m not the one who got shot in the stomach here.”

          “But you’re the one who got me out of it. Thanks to you I’m here and not dead in the desert,” Sparrow reassured her. “And now it’s my turn to make sure you don’t fall to your death, a simple favor for favor. You’ve got this.”

          Silence flooded Kito’s helmet and still she couldn't will her feet to stand: the world was hardly staying still with her sitting down. Pip looked down at her with its two camera lens eyes as Sparrow continued to fill space. “But we can also find some other way to pay Lesman back.”

          That was a lie. If there was any way to pay him back, this was it: picking apart the remains of the crashed cruiser in search of anything of value and use, like vultures tearing into a metallic carcass. Kito could hear in Sparrow’s voice that he knew it too.

          “No. No it’s fine. Just…” Kito’s voice shook as she hauled herself back to her feet—her mutinous, unsteady feet—knuckles white beneath armored gloves. “Just give me a sec.” Kito opened the vents in her helmet and took a deep breath of soupy, sandy air that barely passed as breathable.

          “Okay. What do I do?”

          Pip circled around to Kito’s shoulder, so close that she could hear the slight hum as its eyes zoomed in and out, staring off into the darkness.

          “The support to your left, the one you were leaning on. If you climb that, you should have the height to reach the handles in the ceiling,” Sparrow explained.

          Kito looked at the beam. It was barely holding her up as it was. But with another deep breath, she wrapped her hands around the twisted metal and hauled herself from the rickety footbridge, locking the support between her feet. She did her best to ignore how it creaked in her hands as she slid them up higher, torn pieces of metal catching slightly on her gloves. Bring up the knees, extend legs, move hands. Bring up the knees, extend legs, move hands. Everything was done with the speed of an Orkonian rockfish on land, but before two minutes were up, Kito’s hands brushed the ceiling.

          “Grab the handles. There’s no more than twelve between you and the other end of the catwalk,” Sparrow relayed, Pip’s red body floating out in the darkness between her and the next theoretical safe spot. Kito locked her feet, grabbed the first rung, and swung herself out into the darkness.

          The handle was slippery against her palm as if fingers of gloom and vertigo were tugging at her ankles, threatening to yank her into the empty air below. Yet the mercenary pulled herself forward, grabbing the next piece of metal, helmet light trained on the yellow bars studding the ceiling, decayed ribs poking through flesh. She grabbed the next and swung.

          The screech of bending metal split the air. Screws and bolts wrenched from the ceiling and the handle ripped from its hold. Kito flailed out with her left hand. There was another handle there. There was. There had to be. She had seen it. Yet darkness swarmed at her feet and nothingness at her fingertips. Then metal. Her left hand caught metal and Kito swung her right hand around just as her fingertips gave out and slipped. The bar made full contact with her right palm and so she clung, shaking and tense as the echo of failing metal scraped through the dead ship. Barely audible over her own heartbeat and Sparrow’s jumble of panicked words, Kito heard the handle hit the wreckage below and skitter off into the debris.

          “Oh thank fuck. Kito.” Sparrow sounded almost as breathless as she felt. “You okay?”

          “Yeah. Yeah. Peachy.” From toes to scalp, Kito’s skin prickled as she reached for the next handle, pulling slightly to ensure its stability before she let go of the handle that had kept her from joining the fallen one far below. Handle after handle, she made her way over the darkness, Sparrow counting down the number left as Pip’s eyes stayed trained on her, as if simply watching could help. But it was the only thing he could do from so far away.

          “Four more.”

          “Three more, almost there.” The handle groaned but held.

          “Two more.”

          “Last one, you’ve got it!” Kito’s helmet light brushed over the shredded grates of the catwalk. It looked as if it could barely hold the extra weight of the light, like a single breath would cause it to crumple like the thinnest layer of river ice, but it was a welcomed change from the endless dark. With half its bolts and screws removed, the support nearest to the handles was by far the least stable, but the only one Kito could reach. So she locked her feet on either side of it and clambered from the handle. Slowly, she slid down the beam until her feet touched the catwalk, lightly and silently.

          An all too familiar screech filled her ears as the walkway jolted, the world dropping beneath Kito’s feet. While the beam stayed attached to the ceiling, the catwalk itself had separated from its brace, leaving it to dangle from the other supports at an unnatural angle like a snapped bone. Kito ran, the scream of metal echoing all around her, the whole ship shrieking and laughing and jeering, the ground quaking with every footstep. Solid ground. Her foot hit the solid ground of an intact hallway. Only then did she stop, doubling over her racing heart and aching lungs and panic-tense limbs as the echoes faded away.

          Once her heart rate slowed to a more normal rate, Kito stood and looked out at the mangled catwalk that clutched at the ceiling, a snare that had sprung and missed its prey. And beyond the range of Kito’s helmet light, shrouded in darkness, the ship’s metallic corpse waited far below her, ready to mix metal and blood should she fall and join its grave.

 

About the Author: Robyn O'Neal

          This piece started off as the result of a speedwrite with a group of friends and is a small fragment of a much larger sci-fi work that I have been working on for the past four years. The work as a whole tells a tale about the adventures of the mercenary Kito, balanced out with her life as a civilian and recent college graduate Iris Unhara. This specific piece marks the beginning of her friendship with a junker named Sparrow after a crash left them with an assortment of injuries and a failed mission. Here, they begin a desperate attempt to salvage anything of value as well as their mission as a whole.

 

To learn more about this novel check out Robyn O'Neal on Instagram @robeannnnn