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There was a hydroponics unit in Cinders’ spaceship now. Apparently her ship, the Meyer – the ship Rose picked out for them almost a decade ago before everything went to hell in a handbasket – had modular parts, so with experienced mechanics and enough money it could grow. Granted, neither of those were things Cinders had in abundance under normal circumstances so the idea had been totally ludicrous.
But then General White had offered to finance the upgrade for Cinders’ fortieth birthday, and considering Cinders hadn’t expected to make it to thirty in the first place, how could she refuse such a generous gift? Never mind the fact that she’d turned down plenty of Mercy’s help before (she owed too much to her already, the debt couldn’t be allowed to grow), this was a generous gift for a momentous occasion.
There were no parties to celebrate her fourth decade, no festivities easily crashed by a murderous king, nor people to celebrate with save a quick clap on the shoulder from Mercy and a little tea party with Doc Lorenzo. Only the pounding of hammers, the spinning of drills, and the stinging scent of machine oil celebrated while Cinders and her boxes of personal possessions watched Mercy’s finest mechanics put new pieces on her decade-old-ship and made it grow.
Now there were plants. Not many, just a backyard garden planter box’s worth of green things that would become fresh food soon enough. She had one seat in the middle while water and dirt surrounded her, little fish genetically engineered to survive in a hydroponics unit swimming around and around.
When Cinders fed them, fish feed flakes sticking to her fingers and getting under her nails, they all swam to the surface and darted about. Colors reflected throughout the tiny room, rippling through clean water and artificial sunlight so the whole place sparkled. She could sit here and watch for hours.
In fact, she was doing so now. All her chores were done for the moment and the autopilot was working as always, so Cinders brought her current crochet project, a seven-pointed star blanket in shades of blue and gold, in with her and was presently working her way through the next overly long round. Not that she minded. Space was vast and there was little to do, even with her home expanded enough that it no longer felt like a prison cell.
She was watching her favorite fish - a large ruby red thing that liked to swim in and out of the roots to spook the other fish - when a faint beep beep beep sounded in her ears. At first she dismissed it. How many times had her brain tricked her into thinking a minor alert was going off when it was just a trick of the mind? Far too many if you asked her.
No. She’d give it a little longer, check for the tells that it was real before dealing with the issue. Otherwise she’d spend too much energy walking across the ship and for nothing. Okay, what was the pattern for the points again…? Right, five stitches in one.
Beep beep beep .
There it was again, tinny and regular. Cinders put down her crochet and listened, angling her canine ears. The pitch was steady, a consistent thing that hinted towards reality. There were no whispers to disrupt its regularity, no sounds from elsewhere to corrupt the alert.
…it was probably real, wasn’t it?
Damn. With a sigh of irritation, Cinders folded up her project and stuffed it in the bag it was rapidly outgrowing. She groaned as she grabbed her cane and hoisted herself to her feet. Days like this, her tail felt too damn heavy for her backside. Wasn’t it supposed to help her balance?
No matter. She could make it down the halls of her ship just fine. Out of the hydroponics, past the new and more detailed internal maintenance reading, through her brand new crafts room/storage, and into the initial spaces of her ship she’d lived out of for nine years. The beeping grew steadily louder, reaffirming its reality.
Cinders collapsed on the console chair and began running through the alerts. Nothing major, thank the god of travel. She was a bit far away for help and her skills at mechanics were not as good as she’d hoped after a decade. Anyways, the alert looked like just something with the radio antenna and the comms array below it. Theoretically she could just leave it, but she liked keeping tabs on Radio Grimm for both the irony and for the news. Well, and comms in case of emergency were kind of important.
Unfortunately, this would require a space walk. She’d have to wrangle her body into the suffocating space suit (brand-new, an extra gift Mercy had sprung on her), deal with zero-gravity and how it always made her sick when she repressurized (thanks, years in solitary in space-jail), and deal with too-clumsy hands in those awful gloves.
Oh well, nothing to it. With a long string of Perraultan cussing too vulgar to translate here (you leave that poor squirrel alone; it had nothing to do with this), Cinders dragged herself to the changing closet.
It was accessible, thank fuck – she could sit and struggle with enough room to watch herself in the mirror. First she shucked her comfy dress off, leaving her in her underthings. Then she began the tedious process of getting the underlayer on. It itched her skin not unlike prison uniforms, though this one was a cheery pink. God, she looked pathetic in this thing. Sure, the pink looked nice against her autumnal complexion, but it really highlighted her too-skinny frame she’d never built back up.
Once all her limbs were secure, (arms, legs, tail, the works), she started doing up her long curls. She usually wore them free, but in zero-g she wanted them tight beneath her silk bonnet. A hair in the mouth when she couldn’t pull it out was awful. Cinders kept her gaze on the mirror while she put them in a loose plait, which turned into a tight bun. This, she tucked beneath her silvery bonnet. Before she pulled it over her ears, however, she popped in her earbuds. That way the central system could communicate audibly with her (useful in space!).
Next step was to triple check the space suit for damage. She hadn’t pulled it out of its charging box yet, so it wasn’t hard to read the control panel. Yup, yup, all green for glory. Lovely. A shame she had no one to help her put on the suit itself, but at this point she’d figured out the twenty-thousand-step process to getting the damn thing on her body. Cinders had no desire to die today, thank you very much.
Sometimes she wondered about the ancient space suits she’d seen in museums as a child. What she put on was already so bulky and uncomfortable, but these older ones had been worse. Trained astronauts only or whatever. At least hers was a nice shade of pale yellow and completely unmistakable for either side of the war’s colors.
It took a truly ridiculous amount of time getting the bulk of the space suit on. Cinders spent the whole time cussing up a storm – you leave those poor woodland animals alone! What did they ever do to you? But it was done. All that was left was boots, easy enough thanks to the autolocking system, gloves which she slipped regretfully over her still dull wedding ring, a triple check of the oxygen tank (all good), and finally… her helmet. Suffocating and fishbowl-esque, it had taken a lot of repeated exposure to keep it from giving her a panic attack every damn time. She still wanted to claw it off, but she could tolerate it long enough for a repair.
Looking in the mirror now, she looked like a picture-perfect astronaut. Fantastic. Cinders leaned heavily on the wall as she trudged to where she kept the toolbox, which she clipped to her waist, then stepped into the airlock and fastened the umbilical to its place. Then with a long, long breath, she activated the depressurization system.
It creaked and grumbled as gravity slowly started fading out. Cinders had to stop herself from holding her breath as though she were falling underwater. Her oxygen tank was full and also worked. She would be fine.
From inside her tin can rattling through the nothing, Cinders found it easy to forget just how fucking massive space was. There was a black void out there (better than a white void, but only just), faintly punctuated with stars that were unfathomable miles away. If she had her guide book, she’d be able to point out the ones she’d visited. How many light years has she travelled?
Any tried and true star sailor laughs at the phrase “space is vast.” No shit. That’s actually an understatement. Space is everything. A mass grave could sit here floating in a dumb yellow space suit and you could fit a trillion of her a trillion times over. A trillion, billion ruined planets distilled down to a single woman and there’d be room to spare.
Because what was Cinders really in the cosmic scheme of things but a mass grave to a ruined planet? She was a dead woman eight billion strong. See, there was dead Perrault now. No longer were there the greens and purples of plants, the blue of oceans and stones. All there was now was ash.
And see, here were the souls appearing around her, each a twinkling star of their own. She reached out with a gloved hand as children from opposite sides of the planet started a game of tag, giggling as they freewheeled without gravity. This one was Amua, her father was a pig farmer but she was raised by her uncles most of the year. That was Naia, a diplomat’s daughter who rarely saw her parents.
Over there, Cinders faintly caught a glimpse of one of her advisors, Lancer West’du’wind, discussing navigation with an old star sailor who only went by Bear. She waved; they both blanched and bowed to their rightful queen. It was not her fault Perrault fell, after all.
So many people, all trapped inside her. So many ghosts that hung on her every move. Only out here could they be released to dance and mill about. Only out here could they speak, growing louder and louder and louder until she couldn’t hear herself think, let alone the instructions her computer was beaming to her ears. Her chest squeezed, tightening until she almost couldn’t breath. She forced herself to take in long, slow breaths, screwing her eyes shut as if blocking out the light could mute the sound.
Cinders pulled her knees to her chest and let herself float, awash in her people as they took to the empty nothing around her. She should just go back inside. She could live without comms until next planetfall. How long was that? Weeks, probably? She didn’t dare do a repair on an asteroid; too many risks.
“Your majesty, ya?” A thickly-accented, gruff voice cut through the hubbub, and a spectral hand rested on the shoulder of Cinders’ space suit.
She looked up to see the soul of an older olive-tan man, built like an ox with the bovine ears and tail to match. What was his name, Jusef? If she had to guess, he was from one of the smaller countries that didn’t speak Darmancourtish that much. Maybe Sêllin? He smiled at her, warmth and kindness sparkling in his dark eyes.
“Yes, Jusef, how can I help you?” she managed between overwhelmed breaths.
Jusef adjusted his coveralls proudly. “You needing a mechanic?”
Huh. This display of souls in ash and void might have some use after all. “I do. I have to fix my radio and comms array, but there’s so much going on that I’m a little overwhelmed…”
“Not to worry, your majesty. I guide you.”
He placed his hand on her back and gently pushed her towards the broken comms array. Thankfully it wasn’t too far from the airlock door; all she had to do was heave herself a few yards down with the numerous handholds embedded on the outside of her ship.
The antenna definitely looked crooked. Must’ve hit a tiny asteroid or something. Cinders was reasonably sure she could find the problem area and put it back on her own, but she sat back and waited for Jusef to look over it himself. The dead liked to be helpful.
She watched him study her janky comms array with the calm poise of an experienced professional. How many ships had he fixed in his lifetime? How many times had he screwed up and how many more had he been nothing but good at his job? Jusef hemmed and hawed and poked the antenna and the array below it.
“Simple fix, majesty,” he announced, turning back to her with a satisfied nod. “Array and antenna got knocked too much. Just push them back in until they click, ya?”
“Of course. Thank you, Jusef.”
Granted, his simple instructions were not so simple in practice. These were unwieldy pieces of technology and with her relative strength it was difficult to get them in place, much less shove them far enough until they clicked. She grunted and groaned and cussed, much to his delight.
“Yes. Get angry, majesty! Say it with whole chest!” He clapped her on the shoulder, though she could barely feel it. “Even kids when the fire hit say fuck!”
Cinders turned to look at him through her visor, eyes wide. The children… thinking of them always made her sick to her stomach with rage. All those innocent lives, snuffed out like candles on the galaxy’s worst birthday cake. None of them would get to know the joys of growing up. Even now, as ghosts playing tag across the void, all they would know was static nothingness.
She swallowed back her waiting outburst and put on the air of a kind, listening queen. Besides, a story always made hard labor better. “I wouldn’t blame them in the slightest. What happened to you when the fires hit?”
A sad, far away look entered those kind brown eyes, and his ears drooped. “Working in the shop, neighbor kids playing outside. Sky turned red so brought kiddies inside. Tried to protect them but…” he shrugged helplessly. “Nothing we could do.”
Ah, there was the right groove. Cinders shoved the array in first, then the antenna. Faintly, she could feel the vibrations as something started whirring. Good.
She turned back to Jusef and offered him a hand. “You did the best you could. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Not yours either, majesty,” he said, taking hers in turn. “Especially as kid yourself.”
“I know.” Guilt still ate her inside out. “Thank you, Jusef.”
He just nodded stiffly. “Good. Now go inside. Tell stories.”
You didn’t have to tell Cinders twice. She heaved herself back into the airlock one exhausting pull at a time. The ghosts didn’t abate (if she turned back she could still see them), but they grew quieter as she repressurized. Good. Let them live for just one more moment.
Alas, now on her lonesome once more she found herself curled around the vomit station near the airlock. She’d barely had time to get her helmet off before her empty stomach protested and her head span. Perhaps it was a good thing she’d been putting off lunch a little while longer.
Rather than bother to put everything back right away, Cinders just slowly peeled everything off piece by piece while on her knees. Better to do it sloppily and regain the freedom of motion and slightly fresher air she needed to feel better than to suffer in perfection.
There’d be much to do after she crawled into bed and rested up. Jusef’s story must be recorded, of course. Then there’d be the putting away of the suit and perhaps the wearing of clothes. Maybe. Or she could keep going about in her underthings; who gave a shit? Then perhaps she’d sit with the radio– Tommy Thumb was supposed to be telling a story about her soon, a belated birthday thing for a martyr he thought was dead. Perhaps she’d call in as an anonymous source and bicker in the voice of another soul.
Or perhaps she’d sleep right through it. You never know these days.