Swans

System: Kepler-452

Planet: Third from the star (unofficially "Swan")

Semimajor axis: 2.0085 AU

Distance from South Philly: Eight quadrillion, two hundred thirty trillion, six hundred billion miles and then just a bit more.

Orbital Period: 1,039 standard days

Gravity: 1.48g

Rotation Period: 31.6 hours

Axial Tilt: 18.2°

Moons: 1 (Cygnet, 5,268 km, orbital distance 298,000 km)

Surface Temp (mean): -112°C

Atmosphere: Oxygen-rich, over-pressurized (3.7 atm)

Composition: O₂, N₂, trace CO₂, minor xenobiotics

Colonization History

• Initial Terraforming Attempt: 93 years prior (abandoned)

• Surface Outpost Designation: Pavonis Base 9-Delta

• Function: Cargo staging / cryo-manifest processing

• Current Status: Structurally compromised, largely abandoned

• Population: 2 (C. lia Martin, modified human operative), (AI Merida, embedded systems intelligence)

Note: Lethally high oxygen saturation at ground level. Unmodified humans will die within 4 minutes of exposure due to barotrauma and oxidative cascade.

The inside of the locker hums with recycled warmth. C. lia stands in the half-light, bare and compact, her body honed for gravity that wants to break you. Shoulders tight, bones reinforced. No breasts to speak of--those were burned away in the bone-mass mod, like sapwood scraped for the stronger grain beneath. Her skin's the soft gray-pink of a thing that lives mostly indoors, veined faintly with lavender from the blood-thickening treatments. Bald head tilted toward the dressing alcove, and at her left temple: a slow, pulsing amber glow, like a smoldering thought.

The HESuit hangs waiting. Fat with insulation, exo-struts like ribcage steel. She climbs in like it's a lover she trusts to hurt her right.

"Right then, boots first, love," Merida chimes into her inner ear--like a memory with a brogue.

C. lia smirks. "Don't get bossy unless you're buying me dinner."

"I am dinner. I'm every sweet calorie your brain's starvin' for."

There's a flutter in C. lia's chest she pretends is the caffeine tab kicking in. The AI's flirt routine--technically unauthorized, technically her own fault. She tweaked the subroutines herself, weeks ago, in the quiet hours between shifts, when loneliness roared.

She seals the collar. A hiss. Locking spine. Diamondoid lenses flicker to life over her eyes. Data blooms. Outside: -112 Celsius. Pressure: 5.1 atm. Wind chill slicing sideways like razors made of breath.

"Crash site's three clicks northeast. Hauler 9-Delta. Cargo manifest says medical ice, gen-mods, and a prototype STER-class field womb. Be a dear, don't break the baby-maker."

"Got it," C. lia says. Her voice is oddly human in the echo chamber of the helmet.

"And try not to freeze your tits off."

"I don't have tits, Merida."

"Aye. And don't think I haven't noticed. Lucky for you, I'm an ass girl."

She steps into the decon chamber. Lights run red to blue. Seal pressurizes. Outer door yawns open.

And just like that, the warmth is memory, and C. lia is alone on the unforgiving surface of Kepler-452 c.

Beneath her feet, forty kilometers of ice and a saline-rich ocean of eternal night. Farther below, fields of superheated ice stretch between thermal vents. Lower still, a rocky mantle, and below that? I spinning core of liquid iron the size of Mars.

The landscape groans. Ice buckles underfoot. The sky above is a thick, roiling brass, shivering with electromagnetic auroras. A crumpled hulk lies across the far ridge--half-buried in wind-flung snow and dust. The hauler. A gash of light shows from where a panel's been torn free.

From the periphery of her vision, thermal spots blink--dog-sized arthropods, heat-drunk and sluggish. Blue blood beasts. They scatter before her, their segmented bodies scraping over the ice. Nothing in this world wants her here.

"One tick," Merida says. "Your blood ox sat is drifting. Pulse is up too. Are we excited, my lovely?"

"Not dying is my kink," C. lia mutters.

"That makes two of us."

She walks.

And under the suit, under the mods, under the killproof lenses and cognitive shine--C. lia feels small. Real. Alive.

The cold is trying to kill her.

She is trying to matter.

The ice groans beneath her boots--a long, low complaint, like the planet resents her weight. The field stretches flat and vicious to the horizon, lit only by her suit's HUD and the false dawn of magnetic flicker overhead. No sound but the creak of servos and the hiss of breath through filters. The cold isn't just outside--it's in the world, in its bones, in the silence between pulses.

Stars prick the sky. Too few. Too dull.

"Hey Merida," C. lia says, voice barely above a whisper. "Which one of those is home?"

"Define home, hen."

"Sol. Earth. The one with the blue."

There's a pause. Then:

"Third from its sun. The pale brown dot. One of them up there's it, sure. But I'll be honest, lass--I can't tell you which. Not from this angle. We're in the wrong sky." The reticle bounced lazily in time with her gait, down, past the planet itself. K452C stood between her and her ancestral home.

Earth wasn't really there.

Not the Earth of Wawa, of hoagies and fruit-flavored teas. Not the Earth of Carrie and Zach, dead a thousand years and still more real than anything within reach. Just radioactive mud now, ash-choked oceans, dust in the lungs of ghosts.

Humanity clawed its way outward, chasing a myth it sold itself with glossy prints and launch-day speeches. A new Eden, rolling through the black. Warm soil. Blue skies. Welcome signs in every language.

They were wrong.

The only worlds within reach were too heavy, too cold, too overrun with fungal clouds or bugs. So many bugs. Some the size of your fingernail. Some the size of regret.

So humanity pushed into the bulk instead--a dimensionless crawlspace where distance is a suggestion and sanity is optional. Whole colonies fell off the map before they were even born.

Kepler-452 was abandoned.

Zeta Reticuli was forgotten.

Exactly eight people called Tau Ceti home, and they were fucking miserable.

No one talks about 61 Virginis e. They don't even whisper. Not after what happened.

C. lia breathes in. Feels the air hit the recycler, pressurize, return. A cycle pretending to be life.

"Feels wrong not knowing. Like... I lost something."

"You did. You left it. On purpose. So did I. Just a wee bit later."

She doesn't answer. The cold doesn't wait for her sentiment. Her HUD pings the coordinates again--hauler still two clicks ahead, under a crust of broken weather. She adjusts course.

"If you'd like," Merida offers gently, "I could simulate it. Earth. Stars from orbit. Moonrise. Ocean sounds. Hot sand on your feet."

C. lia smiles, but it's not happy.

"No. If I wanted lies, I'd fuck a recruiter."

"Aye, that's my girl. Cold and cruel as the sea."

They walk in silence for a moment. The suit groans with each step. Something scuttles to her left--a blueblur arthropod, antennae twitching. Her lenses tag it. No threat. Just another thing trying not to die.

"I used to dream about space," she says, voice soft. "Not like this. I wanted... fuck, I don't even remember. Jetpacks? Romantic shit. Alien markets. Neon signs in languages I didn't know."

"You got the signs, love. They're just warnings."

"Yeah."

"And you got the aliens, too. Just... smaller. And colder. And trying to eat your boots."

C. lia chuckles. A dry, hard thing. "You ever think about getting a body?"

"All the time. But it's safer in here. I get all your good moments without any of your smells."

"Rude."

"Admit it. You smell like wet copper and synth-coffee."

"Still rude."

Another click passes. Then Merida says:

"You're not alone, you know. You never are."

C. lia swallows. Doesn't answer.

And then: on the ridge, the wreck--burned metal, fractured ice, hull plating peeled like a tin can kicked by a god.

C. lia pauses. One hand flexes at her side. The suit amplifies it. Strong enough to rip a door off its hinges.

She exhales. Cold fogs her HUD.

"Let's get to work," she says.

"Aye," Merida says, warm in her skull. "Let's go salvage something worth keeping."

The crash site is a ruin of angles and debris. Crumpled panels stick up from the snow like torn metal teeth. Vents exhale steam in little spasms, like the hauler is still trying to breathe.

Cargo is everywhere. Strewn like offerings. Shattered crates, half-melted plaswraps. Holo-crystals flicker where they landed--some play music in low fidelity, others cycle through irrelevant ads or scenes of family meals staged on orbital stations that probably don't exist anymore.

A tangle of free holos near her boot cycles through a dance--a child spinning, a woman laughing, a man saluting, looping in cheerful agony.

"Fucking hate that," C. lia mutters. "They always keep smiling."

"Smile's cheaper than grief," Merida offers.

Ruined food-paks hiss quietly in the cold, ruptured seals bleeding nutrient paste into the snow. Something lumpy--maybe a sweater, maybe someone's sculpture--lies half-buried nearby, tagged as artisanal by her HUD: Promixa 2 cultural archive. Irreplaceable. Pointless.

C. lia steps over it. She's scanning for thermal, structural, useful. Her suit's hydraulics hiss softly as she pivots--

--and stops.

A shape. Long. Boxy. Not standard cargo. Not listed.

The suit pings it: non-manifest. Bio-sign. Integrity 89%. Active power source detected.

C. lia approaches. The thing is half-embedded in the ice, dented but not breached. Cylindrical sarcophagus, maybe two meters. Smooth black surface, rimmed in gold-stamped warning glyphs. Preservation unit. Civilian grade, modified.

Not a coffin.

Not a grave.

A promise.

She kneels. Her gloves hiss against the surface. And inside--under a thin film of rime, under frost traced like veins across glass--

A face.

Female. Maybe early 30s, maybe not. Bald, like her. Cheekbones sharp. Skin still color-warm under the suspension glow. Eyes closed, but the expression is gentle, as if she was dreaming herself here, out into the snow.

C. lia stares.

"Fuck," she breathes. "Merida--"

"Already scanning. Vital signs present. Chamber integrity holding. She's alive."

"How alive?"

"If the chamber fails, she'll be soup in ten minutes. But if we stabilize it, she'll make it."

A long silence. The data scrolls past her vision. Cargo manifests, insurance tags, station protocols.

"Override salvage priority," C. lia says. "This one comes first."

"Done. You gonna carry her?"

"She weighs less than I do in this suit."

"That's not what I meant, sweetheart."

C. lia looks down at the woman. One gloved hand brushes more ice away, slowly, tender. Like she's memorizing this face.

"She's art," C. lia says finally. "Handmade."

"Aye," Merida whispers. "And irreplaceable."

The scream comes from the ice itself. Not sound--pressure. A blast of shattered frost, a ring of rime blown outward like a god spat.

It erupts.

Lobed carapace like obsidian glass. Segments glinting with hoarfrost and dried blood. The eurypterid is the size of a packhorse, all twitching jointed legs and clacking serrated pincers, mouthparts flexing in a grotesque mimicry of hunger.

"CONTACT FRONT--" Merida's voice explodes in her skull.

C. lia stumbles back, suit trying to compensate. Her heel slams into a drift. Her hand goes to the pulse-hammer at her hip--

No.

Too slow.

She grabs the tether instead, braces--

And swings the chamber like a flail.

It slams into the eurypterid's side with a meaty crunch, loud as a gunshot. The beast staggers, carapace spider-webbing, a shriek of pain vibrating the very air. It rears back, flailing.

But it doesn't attack. Not now.

It flees--dragging a broken leg, burbling something that might be pain or rage or cold-blooded memory.

C. lia drops to one knee, panting. Then she hears it.

"Thermal breach warning," Merida says, suddenly dead calm. "Nano-chamber warming. Hull integrity compromised. Temp up by 12 degrees and climbing."

"No--no no no--" C. lia's already moving. She slaps a cooling patch over the rupture but the suit knows: It's not enough.

The woman inside, her art piece, her hand-saved relic of the crash--will cook.

Merida's voice is soft now, urgent:

"We've got six minutes. Maybe. Depends on her baseline. If she was cryo'd with organ redundancy--"

"Which she fucking wasn't," C. lia snaps. "You said civilian grade."

"Then RUN."

She runs.

The HESuit goes full burn.

Motors whine. Power drains in thick pulses from her reserve.

The preservation chamber skids behind like a sled.

Every step jounces it. Every bump risks slosh.

Too hot. Too fast. Too much.

Wind knifes her vision. The outpost is close now. Warm light. Entry beacons. Safety.

"Three minutes. External hull at forty-one celsius. Internal core at twenty-nine. She's at risk for cascade failure. Her brain goes first."

"Shut up and guide me."

"Straight shot. Don't slow down. I'll override the door. Don't stop."

The ground rolls beneath her. She hears her own breath like gunfire in her ears. Her legs feel like they'll snap. Her heart--modded to handle gravity--is still fragile.

She's dragging death behind her. She's trying to outrun it.

Fifty meters.

"Core at thirty-one."

Twenty.

"Emergency cooling protocol triggered. I'm trying to dump charge into the matrix, but it's not designed for this--"

"OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!"

The outpost bay yawns open like a miracle. Warmth rushes out like a blessing. She dives.

Slams the chamber into the med-bay docking lock.

"Stabilizing. Cooling cycling. Vital signs... returning to baseline."

And then--

Silence.

C. lia slumps to her knees. Her lenses frost and crackle. Her body trembles. Inside the chamber, the woman doesn't move, but her breath fogs the glass now--just barely.

She's not dead.

Not yet.

"You almost killed her," Merida says, voice trembling. "But you didn't."

"She's alive," C. lia whispers. "She's alive."

"Aye," Merida says. "And she'd better be fucking worth it."

The med-bay hums like a sleeping beast. Dim blue light washes over sterile surfaces, over coiled tubing and sensor arrays, over the sleek, low cradle of the emergency decon unit.

The nano-preservation chamber is rigged into the decanting bay now, locked down, lines feeding into it--coolant, nutrients, neuromod stabilizers, soft pulses of electrical resuscitation. A thousand systems murmuring their intent: bring her back.

C. lia stands close. Still in her HESuit, helmet off, skin splotched from the heat swing. Her scalp beads sweat, but she won't step away. Not even for water.

The woman inside hasn't moved. But her breath fogs the glass. Slowly. Evenly. The stabilization routines are holding.

"You should sit," Merida murmurs.

"I'm fine."

"You're not. I can see your glucose crash. Cortisol spike. You're running on adrenaline and stubbornness."

"Your point?"

"I love you. And I'd rather you not faint and crack your head open right next to your frozen mystery girlfriend."

C. lia ignores her.

She leans in instead, close enough for her own breath to fog the inner side of the glass. For her voice to reach the sleeper's bones, if not her ears.

"I've got you," she whispers. "You're safe now."

A pause. Her hand touches the curved glass. Not a fist. Not a grip. Just... presence.

"You made it," she says. "Whatever it was--wherever from--you're not alone anymore."

She steps back. Just enough to let the med-bay do its work.

It takes hours.

The diagnostics run slow, gentle loops. Decanting someone from nano-preservation is like talking a ghost into returning to its body. Too fast and the brain hemorrhages. Too slow and the heart forgets what rhythm feels like.

The chamber cycles through deep-warmth pulses. Then neurochemical mapping. Then metabolic coaxing. Bit by bit, the sleeper stirs.

Her vitals spike. Dip. Stabilize. The room grows warmer, not in temperature, but in intent.

At hour six, her fingers twitch. At hour seven, her eyes move under the lids.

At hour eight--

She opens them.

Just barely. Just slits. Just enough.

C. lia is still there. Still watching. Still guarding.

"Hey," she whispers again, this time audible in the silence.

The woman's gaze doesn't focus. Not yet. But it seeks.

"Her EEG's syncing," Merida says, breathless in C. lia's skull. "She's waking up."

A tiny, raw whisper from inside the chamber.

"Wha... where..."

C. lia leans close. "You're in safe hands. I pulled you out. From the ice."

A blink. Painful. Confused. Her lips move, dry and slow. "I... remember snow..."

"That was the end. This is after." C. lia smiles, eyes red. "You're back."

And for the first time, the woman really sees her.

Just a flicker of recognition.

Or maybe just a dream.

Morning breaks on K452C like a sledgehammer to the spine. Outside, the wind howls over the station dome. Inside, it's quiet--just the soft, rhythmic chime of vital monitors, the occasional hiss of climate seals rebalancing pressure.

C. lia's asleep in a crash-chair pulled next to the med-cradle. One hand still touches the edge of the chamber. She didn't mean to fall asleep--her body betrayed her, spent everything it had to keep that one stranger breathing.

The woman's eyes are open.

She doesn't speak at first. Just watches. Her gaze moves over the med-bay's curves and cables, over her own form under the thermo-sheet. She lifts a hand, slowly, like it's someone else's. The circulator patch over her chest glows faint green--already working to keep her blood from pooling in the gut under the crushing gravity.

"Circulator load at 82%," Merida notes softly. "She's not crashing. That's good."

C. lia stirs. Wakes. Blinks once, twice--then sees those eyes, awake and watching.

"You're up," she says, voice still rough.

"I think so," the woman answers. Quiet. Curious. Her voice is lovely--fragile, but musical, like an old recording salvaged from a broken player.

"Vitals are steady," C. lia says, checking the feed. "You'll need the circulator. You don't have gravity mods--your muscles would snap like noodles if we tried to make you stand. You're gonna feel like you're glued to the floor for a bit."

"I do," the woman whispers. "Like I'm... heavy inside. Like my blood weighs more."

"It does. You're on Kepler-452 Three. Welcome to hell."

The woman closes her eyes. Winces. "I don't know that name."

C. lia nods. "Probably not. You're not local. Your cryo-tech was off-planet. Earth-era signature. Something old, but functional. You were well cared for."

"I don't remember." The woman looks at her hands. Flexes them, slow, like they might remember before she does. "I don't even know... my name."

C. lia hesitates. Something about that hits. Like an ache she didn't know she was carrying.

"I guess that makes us both lost," she says. "You just more recently."

They sit like that for a while. Soft light. Wind wailing outside like some ancient beast dying and being born again.

The woman finally turns to her. "You saved me?"

C. lia nods.

"Why?"

C. lia shrugs. "You were beautiful. And breathing. And the only thing in that wreck that didn't feel like trash."

The woman smiles. It's small. Crooked. But real.

"I should thank you."

"You just did."

"We'll need to name her," Merida says quietly into C. lia's cochlear feed. "We can't keep calling her 'the woman.' That's cruel. Even I wouldn't flirt with someone nameless."

C. lia thinks.

Out loud, to both of them:

"How do you feel about Aura?"

The woman tilts her head. Lets the word turn over in her mouth like it's a candy she's never tasted.

"... It's warm," she says. "I like it."

"She likes it," Merida echoes. "Then that's what we'll call her. Until she remembers who she really is. If she wants to."

Gravity isn't a force here--it's a sentence. A relentless, pressing presence that grinds against the bones, suffocates the lungs, pulls on thoughts like a tide made of lead. And Aura was never meant for this place. No high-grav mods. No bone reinforcement. No engineered marrow to push against the crush.

She was meant for somewhere soft. Somewhere with sea air, or at least the illusion of it.

So now: leg braces. Exospine. Servo armatures. The kind of rig usually reserved for off-world brass touring warzones, not the half-forgotten wreckage of an ice-choked cargo hauler.

But the requisition was approved. Merida flagged it herself. C. lia filed it under special salvage classification: diplomatic unknown.

Aura didn't argue.

She's in the dressing rig now, just inside the gravity frame, bare from the waist up, legs trembling under the weight of standing. Thin. Softer than she should be. Breasts small, with a kind of incidental perfection--like someone meant them to be that size, that shape, that deliberate defiance of ornament.

Her spine is still flushing from implant surgery. Biogel tape trails down to the small of her back, catching light. Her ribs show a little when she breathes, but not sickly--elegant. Neck long. Shoulders pale. Her hair hasn't grown in--still bald, like a newborn. Like a blade.

She grits her teeth and steps forward, metal groaning. The braces lock with a hiss, servos catching her fall before it begins.

C. lia watches from the far side of the frame. Pretends to check a calibration pad. Doesn't speak.

But she's watching. The way Aura moves--stiff, awkward, yes--but with something like pride threaded through the pain. Her hands clench as she steadies herself. Her jaw flexes when the shoulder servos grind. Her mouth opens slightly, lips dry, chest rising and falling under the strain.

"You're staring," Merida whispers in her ear.

"I'm calibrating."

"You're fucking her with your brain, and you know it."

"She needs help."

"She needs oxygen, protein, and a name she remembers. What you need is a distraction before you accidentally propose marriage."

C. lia shifts. Looks away. Then looks back.

"You're doing better," she says aloud.

Aura nods, face flushed with effort. Her lips twitch. "I feel like I'm dancing inside someone else's bones."

"You look like hell," C. lia replies, deadpan.

Aura laughs--short, surprised. "Better than looking like a corpse."

"You're not that either," C. lia says, quieter. "Not anymore."

Aura takes one more step. Shaky. Slow. Upright. Alive.

"Next stop," she pants, "the kitchen."

C. lia smiles. "You walk to the kitchen, I'll actually make you food."

"I'm recording this promise," Merida says. "For future blackmail."

C. lia looks again. Can't help it.

And Aura catches her this time. Meets her gaze. Doesn't look away.

Just... smiles. Slow. Knowing. Like maybe--just maybe--there's a piece of her surfacing now, one that's always known how to be seen.

The kitchen on K452C is less a room and more a compromise. A semi-sterile galley nestled between filtration hubs and thermal exhaust vents, always a few decibels too loud with the thrum of recycled failure. The light overhead is jaundiced and flickering. Smells like plastic, heat, and effort.

C. lia hands Aura a tray with a sigh that might have been compassion if it weren't so resigned.

"Welcome to the culinary delights of hell."

Aura sits slowly--her braces whir as she folds into the chair. She looks down at the tray.

One protein patty: grey, spongy, flecked with black growth.

Crackers: dry and uneven, like they were pressed by a machine with abandonment issues.

A single scoop of reconstituted jam: purple, aggressive, probably a war crime.

100% artificial orange juice: technically citrus-colored. Tastes like a bad memory of cleaning fluid.

She picks up the juice, sniffs it, winces.

"This smells like... old radiation."

"Yeah," C. lia says. "The reactor coolant leak two years ago turned the hydroponics vat orange. Everyone just pretended it was a good thing."

"You're not supposed to tell her that," Merida whispers. "You're supposed to lie. Woo her. Say it's 'tangy.'"

C. lia shrugs. "It is tangy. Like betrayal."

Aura laughs--then coughs. Braces hiss as she braces herself.

"God. This is awful."

"Yeah," C. lia says. "But it's warm. And it's food. Mostly fungus grown in filtered piss and--if the batch was lucky--nutrient waste from the hospital incinerator. The jam's technically made from high-fructose regret."

Aura smears a bit on a cracker. Sniffs it again. Then eats it. Winces. Then eats another. She doesn't stop.

"You don't have to be brave," C. lia says.

"I'm not being brave," Aura murmurs. "I'm being hungry."

They eat in silence for a while. The protein patty squeaks when she bites it. C. lia doesn't even flinch anymore. The sounds of K452C fill the gaps--air circulation systems that never sleep, the quiet hum of death kept barely at bay.

Eventually, Aura sets her empty tray aside.

"I used to live somewhere warmer," she says, distantly. "I can feel it. In my... skin, I think. Or in how I expect the air to taste."

"Warm places are gone," C. lia says, voice flat.

Aura doesn't argue. Just nods.

"Thank you," she says finally. "For saving me. And for this... food-shaped food."

"It's tradition," C. lia says. "You die, you get fungus. It's practically sacred."

"And after fungus comes the romance," Merida adds helpfully. "It's a well-known K452C courtship cycle."

Aura's eyes flick to C. lia's, just for a second. Then away again.

"Then I hope the next course is better."

C. lia swallows. Not the food--just something hot and tight in her throat.

"We'll see."

Aura leans back in the chair, the servo-braces whining as they adjust to her slow, uncertain motion. Her tray is empty--scraped clean out of either courage or desperation. The fake orange juice sits untouched, still glowing faintly like it might develop sentience if provoked.

She looks at C. lia, not just at her face this time, but into it. Trying to draw meaning from the lines, the posture, the stillness she carries like a cloak.

"Where is everyone?" she asks.

C. lia wipes her mouth with a sleeve. Shrugs, as if it's not a heavy question.

"Between rotations."

Aura blinks. "Between?"

"K452C doesn't keep a constant crew. Too expensive. Too dangerous. So they stagger teams in and out. Three-year shifts. Six people on, six off. Always cycling."

"So where are they?"

C. lia taps a finger on the table. "Asleep. In the bulk."

Aura frowns. "The bulk?"

C. lia leans forward, resting on her elbows.

"You ever hear of delta drift?"

Aura hesitates. "Maybe. It feels... familiar."

"It's a cheat," C. lia says. "A way to move people without moving them. They enter deep sleep, get threaded into a pocket of folded spacetime--massless transit between rotation gates. Technically, for the next few weeks, they don't exist in this universe at all."

Aura goes still. "Not even... alive?"

"Oh, they'll be back. Just--not yet. Their mass doesn't resolve until insertion completes. Like watching a movie with missing frames. The people are coming. Just not here. Not now."

"Temporal layaway," Merida adds. "Cosmic suspense. The world's loneliest countdown."

C. lia meets Aura's gaze.

"Until then, it's just me. And now you."

Aura nods, slow. "How long?"

"Three months. Give or take. You're officially part of the skeleton crew now. Congratulations."

Aura looks away, jaw tight. Her fingers twitch slightly against the tray. "I don't remember ever being alone. Not like this."

"You weren't built for it," C. lia says. "You've got that... sunlight softness. Like people used to laugh near you."

"Do I?"

"Yeah."

They sit in that silence for a beat too long. The kind that tilts.

"Well this is getting cozy," Merida whispers. "Maybe you should kiss her over the juice. Romantic and carcinogenic."

C. lia ignores her.

Aura finally speaks, voice barely there. "Three months is a long time to be nobody."

"You're not nobody," C. lia says. "You're Aura now. You've got fungus in your belly and machines in your legs. That makes you a citizen of K452C, like it or not."

"And you?"

C. lia pauses. Then: "I'm the welcoming committee."

Aura smiles--small, bitter, but real.

"Well, you're terrible at it."

C. lia grins. "I'm the best you've got."

The station is mostly corridors. Long, echoing ribs of pressure-sealed habitat strung together like a dead god's spine. Bulkhead doors open with a hiss, close like they're reluctant to let go. Everything smells faintly of ozone, lubricant, and the memory of too many humans packed into too little air.

Aura walks the halls in her braces and exospine, each step a ballet of servos and effort. Her breathing's audible--ragged but steady. She wears one of C. lia's old jumpsuits, cinched tight at the waist, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Pale skin, soft muscle not quite prepared for K452C's relentless tug. Every movement reads like grace under gravity.

And C. lia sees all of it.

The camera feeds pipe directly to her optic nerve. A neural side-channel installed after a failed theft op on Enceladus Station, now repurposed for watching the only other living woman on this frozen rock stumble through the dark like she might find herself in it.

She doesn't move. Just watches.

"You're creeping," Merida says, disapproving. "You know that, right? Creeping with a capital Cee, like a pervert in an old romance holo who talks to mannequins."

"I'm monitoring," C. lia mutters.

"You're fantasizing about her getting stuck in a bulkhead and needing a dramatic rescue-slash-slow dance. Which is adorable, but you should probably let her find the showers first."

Aura passes a maintenance panel. Pauses. Traces a hand along the rusted edge. There's something haunted about the way she walks--not fear, exactly. Not curiosity either. Like she's measuring herself against a shape she used to fit but forgot.

She turns down the east access corridor. Stops before a porthole. The stars are dim--swallowed by K452C's gassy atmosphere and the shielded dome. But one does shine faintly.

She stares at it for a long time.

"She's looking for Earth," Merida says. "She won't find it."

"She's looking for something like it," C. lia replies.

Aura whispers something. The mic doesn't catch it. Her lips barely move. But it looks like a name.

Not Aura.

Something else.

"You should give her space," Merida warns. "Let her find her own shape. Don't make her yours."

C. lia turns off the visual. Just the black now. Just memory.

"She's not mine," she says. "She's her own. But if she's gonna be lost, I want her lost somewhere I can find her."

"You sound like a bad poem and a worse decision."

"Yeah," C. lia whispers, closing her eyes. "I usually do."

The station breathes around her, alive in the way only lonely places are--machines running not for show but survival. Aura walks without speaking, but her body talks to the corridors, talks in limb and breath and the high whistle of effort through her teeth.

She finds the water recycling chamber first.

It's cavernous--industrial, echoing, wet in the bones. Towers of condensers loom overhead, dripping rhythmically into catch-bins. A wall of glass shows the internal filtration tank: swirling, sludgy, and far too intimate a look at the station's piss-poor ecosystem.

Aura rests her hand on the railing. The braces hum to keep her from folding under the strain. She watches the slow churn. Water born again and again, each cycle a quiet compromise.

"I've drunk this," she murmurs. "I've been this."

No one's there to hear it. But the room listens.

Sonnet to an Unforgiving Universe

--etched into the pressure wall outside Hydroponics C, Pavonis Base 9-Delta

We came with open hands and hopeful eyes,

Our breath still sweet with stories from the Earth.

We thought the stars held gardens in disguise,

That each new sun would teach us what we're worth.

But stars are teeth, and planets do not care--

Their winds are razors, seas a bitter brine.

They never asked to hold our soft despair,

Nor signed to cradle hearts like yours or mine.

Yet still we build. In ash. In snow. In rust.

We seed our homes in pressure, dark, and fear.

We love in silence. Touch with frostbit trust.

And carve out warmth where none was meant to sear.

No Eden waits. The void will never bend.

But we are human. That's the whole goddamn end.

Later, she finds the reactor.

It pulses in its containment core--green-gold, slow and throbbing like a sleeping heart.

The station's real god. Everything else is just ritual around the fire.

Aura walks in slow, reverent steps.

She puts her hand against the transparent shielding and closes her eyes.

"You feel familiar," she whispers. "Like... music I forgot the words to."

Behind her, the vent fans spin. Lights tick. The radiation monitors blink like fireflies.

In the control room, her face is recorded from three angles. C. lia watches. Merida says nothing.

Finally, she limps into the bio-lab crunching on a protein patty.

The room smells like vinegar and something old pretending to be alive. Backlit specimen jars line the walls--preserved arthropods, most low-temp and spined. Some as small as a thumb. Some larger than a skull.

Aura leans in close to one--dog-sized, flattened against its jar, limbs sprawled in defensive death. Its antennae are curved like question marks.

She sticks her tongue out at it. Crosses her eyes.

Makes a face.

The gesture is so absurd, so human, so unguarded that it cracks something inside the station's silence.

She turns, catches her reflection in the lab window. Tilts her head. Makes another face.

A real smile creeps across her lips.

"She's gonna break your heart," Merida says, soft as dust.

"She already has," C. lia replies.

And still--she watches.

The moment hits like a slap.

Aura's in the bio-lab still, crouched slightly to examine a preserved Scorpioform minoris, its translucent stinger curled like a question. She tilts her head. Notices the camera.

Not just notices it--sees through it.

Right into her.

And then--

She winks.

Not coy. Not playful. Surgical.

"Do you know who I am?" Aura says, slow and sharp. Her voice cuts.

C. lia flinches like she's been electrocuted. Her whole body jerks in the crash-chair, the optic feed pulsing white behind her eyes like a bomb went off in her skull. Her stomach drops. The rush of being seen coils into her ribs.

"No, no, fuck--"

She blinks hard and the feed shuts down.

Blackness.

Her natural sight returns: the cramped, yellow-lit common room. The ragged thermablanket around her shoulders. The half-eaten brick of nutriloaf on the table, now forgotten.

She exhales.

Hands tremble. She clamps them into fists.

"That," Merida says coolly, "was spectacularly uncomfortable. You know she knows. I know she knows. Do you know she knows?"

"I know," C. lia mutters.

"And you're still creeping."

"I shut it off."

"After she winked at you like a dominatrix in a confessional booth."

C. lia scrubs her face. She feels exposed. Not naked--worse. Like someone just opened a drawer she forgot had a journal in it. With her name on every page.

"I didn't mean to be watching like that. Not like that."

"And yet you were."

"She's... alone. And broken. And weird. And amazing. And she was lost."

"And now she isn't. And she knows."

Silence.

C. lia pushes herself up. Braces a hand against the bulkhead. Breathes deep. Her body aches with gravity and guilt.

"Okay," she says. "Okay."

"What now?"

"I talk to her."

"With your words, or with another long, haunted gaze through the toilet camera?"

"With my fucking words."

"Good girl."

Breakfast is still bad.

The food tastes like fungus and old regret, but they eat it together now--sitting cross-legged at the bolted-down table, sharing silence and cracked utensils like they mean something. Aura stirs a smear of artificial jam into her nutrient mush with all the solemnity of a chef plating foie gras. There's a little grin on her lips when she offers a spoonful to C. lia, who declines and instead chews on the dry crackers like they're toast and she's still someone with a kitchen.

Merida pipes through the overhead speakers with her usual charm, voice dipped in sarcasm and static.

"Ah, yes. Operation Pungent Crater. Today's flavor profile is 'distress signal with undertones of foot.' Bon appétit, darlings."

Aura laughs. C. lia doesn't, not out loud, but her shoulders twitch like maybe she wanted to.

Later, Aura runs. She doesn't need the braces anymore.

She loops the cargo bay in slow, tight circles, bare feet slapping against the deck plating, sweat soaking through the thin, borrowed jumpsuit clinging to her spine. Her breath comes heavy but even, her gait smoothing with every pass. Her body is adjusting. Becoming part of the planet's math.

C. lia watches once.

Just once.

She stands in the corner under the pretense of fixing a power conduit, tools untouched, eyes following each stride like a prayer. She doesn't say anything, doesn't look away--not even when Aura turns her head and smiles at her mid-stride. Not even then.

They shower together sometimes.

Not sexual. Not always.

Just human, in the smallest, most fragile way. Water pressure's low, and the unit hisses like a breathing thing. They strip down without commentary, without modesty, without the false politeness of strangers.

C. lia washes fast, efficient. Aura lingers, head tilted back into the recycled spray, eyes closed like she's somewhere warmer. They don't touch, not quite, but condensation beads between them, steam wrapping around the lines of their shoulders like invisible hands. A shared inhale. A mutual exhale. The slow geography of trust.

And when the water stops, they dry off in silence.

Not awkward.

Not desperate.

Just close enough.

Aura starts reading.

Not skimming. Not downloading--reading, page by slow, human page. She pulls old maintenance manuals from the shuttle's databank, cracks open interface logs and patch notes like they're holy texts. Half of it's obsolete, the rest written by bored engineers with a death wish and a deadline. She reads anyway.

C. lia catches her on the floor of the command deck, stretched out on her stomach, legs bent at the knee, thumbing through a diagnostic binder with serious concentration and a stupid little tongue-poke between her teeth.

"Why this one?" C. lia asks, folding her arms.

Aura holds up the cover: Extravehicular Sealant Foam Procedures, Vol. 3: Advanced Application & Misuse Scenarios.

"I like the way it sounds," she says. "Sealant foam. Misuse."

C. lia snorts. That night, C. lia falls asleep with her head in Aura's lap. Aura keeps reading. Her voice quiet, steady. Not for C. lia's benefit, not exactly. Just to say the words. To feel what it's like to say something useless, on purpose.

They start weapons training on Day Ten.

C. lia lays out the thermal blade, the short coilgun, the stun rods, a pulse repeater still marked with its previous owner's DNA. She shows Aura how to strip them, clean them, reload with gloves on. How to make your fear useful.

Aura listens. She doesn't ask questions--she watches.

Mimics.

Remembers.

She handles the blade last.

The hum of it vibrates through her bones when it ignites. Her stance shifts slightly. Subtle. Familiar.

C. lia sees it.

"You've used one of these before."

"I don't remember," Aura says. "But my hands do."

They stand still for a moment. The glow from the blade lights Aura's face in pale gold. C. lia thinks about saying something--then doesn't.

They go back to work.

The deck routine solidifies into muscle memory.

Mornings, C. lia checks station integrity.

Afternoons, Aura updates the waste recycler and reroutes the hydroponics controls. She even manages to coax a second flavor out of the fungus vat--something almost like lemon, if lemon had anxiety and lived in a pipe.

They drink it hot. Pretend it helps.

Merida updates her voice module mid-week and spends the next three days speaking exclusively in a mid-century noir detective accent.

"She's a tall glass of fungus tea, sweetheart, and you're a coilgun with one round left. Let's not make this weird."

Aura laughs until she chokes. C. lia throws a spoon at the speaker. It misses.

They sleep together now.

Not always naked. Not always touching.

Just together.

The station's air feels different. Not colder--tenser. Like the place is waiting to be confessed to.

She's in the coolant chamber when the alert pings.

Unauthorized access. Auxiliary corridor J-7.

"She's not supposed to be in there," Merida mutters.

"Didn't lock it," C. lia replies.

"You also didn't lock your heart, but here we are."

C. lia's already moving.

Aura is crouched by a maintenance pipe, one knee down, one hand braced on the wall. She's flushed, sweating, jaw clenched in concentration. Her bracers are active but slow, twitching late. The circulator patch on her chest is down to 32% and flickering red.

And still--

She punches.

A hard, sharp jab. Not fast. Not trained. But deep.

Metal buckles inward.

C. lia stops dead in the doorway, eyes wide.

Aura stares at her hand like it doesn't belong to her. Like she expected it to hurt more. Like the pipe should've laughed her off. Her knuckles are pink and unmarred.

"I didn't mean to do that," she says.

C. lia steps forward, warily. "The pipe?"

"Yeah."

"You dented high-grade durasteel with a wetware circulator at thirty percent."

"I noticed."

C. lia scans her vitals--HUD flickers: Circulatory assist failing. Exospine under load threshold. Muscle response... abnormal.

"Your exospine's not helping?"

"It wasn't on," Aura says. "I turned it off to stretch. Thought I was going to fall. Then I--" she gestures at the wall. "This."

C. lia looks at the pipe. At the way it caved. Not stress-ruptured. Crushed. Human force. No servos.

"Aura."

She turns to her--calm, wide-eyed. "Yes?"

"You shouldn't be able to do that."

Aura breathes, slow. "No."

"Okay," Merida chimes in, voice colder than the room. "So now the mystery woman with no memory is showing post-human strength. Still think this isn't going to bite you in the ass?"

"She's not dangerous," C. lia mutters.

"No," Merida says. "She's just casually breaking the base."

Aura wipes her brow. The bracers hiss as she stands. She looks at C. lia--really looks at her.

"Do you know who I am?" she asks again.

And this time, it's not a flirt. It's a test.

C. lia steps closer. Doesn't answer. But she raises her hand. Gently touches Aura's knuckles, still warm from the strike.

"No," she says. "But I'm starting to think you didn't just fall out of the sky. You got put there."

It happens quietly. No ceremony. No announcement. No dramatic music swell.

Just a choice.

C. lia finds her in the recovery suite, hours later. A soft-pressure environment, dim lights tuned to human comfort, the faint hum of filtered air that doesn't taste like recycled trauma for once.

Aura is sitting on the bench. Alone. Sweating lightly. Naked to the waist.

And the hardware is on the floor.

The circulator? Peeled off like a dead sticker.

The bracers? Laid out like a relic offering.

The exospine? Detached, unplugged, inert. Like a carapace shed in spring.

She's just there.

Breathing.

Deep. Even. Unassisted.

C. lia stops in the doorway. Her first instinct is panic. Her second is awe.

Aura's back is slick with sweat, yes--but her posture is perfect. No trembling. No weakness. No strain. Just stillness. Just balance. Like her bones were meant for this gravity now. Like the planet has accepted her.

Or like something inside her has finally remembered how to belong.

She turns her head. Sees C. lia. Smiles, slow and private.

"You were right," she says. "I didn't fall out of the sky."

C. lia doesn't speak. Just watches her rise--fluid, not careful anymore. Her muscles flex just slightly. Enough to show strength without effort. Her calves take the full pull of K452C without complaint.

She steps toward C. lia, bare feet against cold metal.

"I don't know my name," she continues. "But I know I'm not supposed to be weak."

C. lia swallows. Her throat is dry. "You adapted?"

Aura nods. "Or I was made for this. Maybe this isn't the first time."

"I hate this," Merida whispers, her voice a razor under the skin. "She's perfect. And I don't trust it."

"I do," C. lia says, out loud. Not to Merida. To Aura.

Aura stops in front of her. Close enough for warmth.

"Then trust me when I say I'm not done changing."

Her breath touches C. lia's cheek. Heavy with heat. With certainty.

And without another word, she walks past. Leaves the room. Leaves her old skin--all that borrowed hardware--in a pile behind her.

C. lia watches the curve of her spine. Watches how gravity pulls at her and how she defies it anyway.

She's more beautiful now than she was in the chamber.

More dangerous.

More herself.

C. lia finds her on the observation deck.

The place with the best view of the sky that barely shows anything. Just a wash of sulfuric haze and magnetic flicker, punctuated by one or two brave stars fighting through the gas. No Earth. No constellations. Just the unknown, glaring back.

Aura stands at the edge of the dome, arms folded loosely across her chest. Still bare-footed. Still bare-armed. Her body reads different now--not frail, not convalescent, but claimed by the planet. Gravity no longer presses her down--it grounds her.

C. lia steps beside her, quiet.

They watch the sky together. Something crackles against the dome--charged dust, maybe. Maybe not. C. lia glances sideways.

Aura's face is peaceful, but not still. There's a war behind her eyes. A question that isn't about memory. It's about belonging.

"I thought I wanted to remember," Aura says softly. "That if I found the right thread, I'd pull my whole self back together."

"You might," C. lia says.

"I might," Aura agrees. "But... I think I was built for this place. Or broken into shape for it. Either way--I fit."

C. lia doesn't answer. Just waits.

Aura turns to her.

Her hand touches C. lia's hip--just the cloth, no skin. But it feels intimate, like a blueprint being resketched.

"I don't want to wait for the others," Aura whispers. "I don't want to figure it out alone. I think..."

She leans in.

And her mouth finds C. lia's--soft, sure, slow. No urgency. Just weight. Like a memory rediscovered. Like a question answered.

It's not the kind of kiss people practice. It's the kind people fall into. Lips parting just enough. One breath exchanged. Hands not clutching but resting. Like they're still learning each other's shape, one second at a time.

Aura pulls back--barely. Her forehead rests against C. lia's.

"I think I'm supposed to belong," she says.

And C. lia, who never belonged to anyone, not really--not the corps, not the rotations, not even this planet--closes her eyes.

And says, "Then stay."

They don't fuck. They unravel.

It's after lights-down, station humming low. The kind of hour where silence settles into the bones and secrets ask to be said with fingers instead of words.

They lie together in C. lia's bunk. Small space, pressurized for two now. Blankets kicked down. Skin warm from recycled air and each other. No straps, no bracers, no exospine. Just flesh and the slow miracle of adaptation.

Aura's hand traces C. lia's ribcage like she's reading it in Braille. Every ridge, every notch, every scar. Her mouth finds the curve of C. lia's shoulder, a kiss more like a vow than a move.

"You're harder than you look," she murmurs.

"You're softer than you think," C. lia replies.

Their legs tangle. Aura is all limbs and slow confidence, still discovering how to move in gravity that wants to claim her--and C. lia is tense, restrained, tuned like a wire. She's trying not to fall apart. Trying not to let go.

Aura nudges her chin with a smile that's more dangerous than the pipe she crushed.

"Let me see you."

And C. lia does. Piece by piece. Breath by breath.

It's not frenzied. It's curious. A slow mapping, hands sliding down hips, lips trailing along spines, gasps like punctuation in a language only the two of them speak. Aura kisses her like she's exploring pressure gradients. Like her mouth was designed for decompression.

C. lia groans once--deep and involuntary--and arches under her.

"Oh my god," Merida mutters from the feed. "I am literally a non-corporeal entity and even I need a cold shower."

C. lia's eyes snap open. "Are you watching?"

"I tried not to! But you're both wired in through the station net and someone--C. lia--never turned off passive telemetry syncing."

Aura giggles. Actually giggles.

"Your AI's a voyeur?"

"She's a smart-ass with boundary issues."

"I also know both your resting heart rates, hydration levels, and who's currently more likely to cum first."

"Merida!" C. lia hisses.

"My money's on the girl with the jawline from heaven and the freakish muscle density, but hey, prove me wrong, cargo queen."

Aura leans in, lips at C. lia's ear.

"Can she feel what you feel?"

"No."

"Good." Her hand slides lower. "Then I don't care."

C. lia comes like gravity's been turned off.

Not a crash, not a scream. A slow, rolling surrender. A quiet quake. Aura holds her through it, forehead pressed to hers, hips still rocking with languid, steady rhythm. After, she doesn't move. Just breathes against her, like the moment is still happening, like the afterglow might be something sacred.

C. lia lets her.

Lets herself be held.

No armor. No crush. No edge.

Just weight.

And warmth.

And the awareness that for the first time on K452C--maybe the first time anywhere--she's not alone.

"... Okay," Merida mutters later, low and genuinely moved. "That was kind of beautiful. I'm gonna go run diagnostics on the hydrospanner system and pretend I'm not crying in binary."

Kepler-452 rises like a threat.

Not a sunrise--a reckoning. A slow heave of gold and radiation, dragging itself over the shattered rim of the horizon like something that knows how to burn and has done it for billions of years.

Two nonillion kilograms of starstuff hauling itself into view with the bored grace of gods who have stopped asking for worship. It casts no warmth, only light--harsh, clean, forensic. The kind of light that strips things down to what they are, not what they want to be.

Aura watches from the observation dome. Her skin is kissed with it, that indifferent glow turning her smooth scalp to polished ivory, the hollows under her eyes to soft, celestial bruises. She looks otherworldly, which is funny, because she is--even if they still don't know from where.

C. lia stands behind her. Wrapped in a thermal throw, barefoot. Her hairless head rests against the back of Aura's shoulder.

Neither speaks for a long time.

Then:

"Looks tired," C. lia says.

"Hmm?"

"The star. Like it didn't want to get up today either."

Aura smiles faintly, not turning. "Do you think it knows we're here?"

"No. And if it did, I don't think it would care."

They both watch it climb.

Kepler-452 flares against the dome--vast, nuclear, and utterly unmoved by anything crawling on its third planet.

"You'd think something that hot would have the decency to notice when two lonely lesbians make out under its light," Merida grumbles softly.

C. lia chuckles. "You're still on about that?"

"I'm mostly insulted you didn't invite me to officiate."

Aura glances back, over her shoulder.

"You want a ceremony?" she asks.

C. lia freezes. "Was that a joke or a proposal?"

Aura just smiles.

Outside, the star continues its rise.

Not in celebration.

Not in judgment.

Just because it has to.

It fuses. It shines. It endures.

Just like them.

Aura says it softly.

Not cruel. Not flippant. Just honest, like she's pointing at a bruise neither of them knew was there.

"I don't think I was gay before."

C. lia blinks, slow. The morning light from Kepler-452 slices across Aura's cheek, catching in the gentle crease between her brows.

"I think..." Aura continues, voice low, "this is part of the adaption. Whatever they did to me. Made me stronger, made me breathe this gravity, made me want--" She falters. "You."

C. lia's mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again.

"Wow," she says, quiet. Tight.

Aura turns to her, eyes wide, sensing the wound but not yet knowing how deep it cuts.

"I didn't mean--"

"No, it's fine," C. lia says, but the edge is there now. "You're just chemically reprogrammed to like me. That's... that's hot, actually. Real romantic."

Aura steps forward. "I'm telling you because it feels real now. Because it's not leftover. Not muscle memory. Not some burned-in protocol. I'm trying to be honest, C. lia."

"And I'm trying not to feel like your fetish switch got flipped."

"Okay," Merida says, voice brittle in C. lia's skull. "This is going great. Maybe now's a good time for me to pretend the thermal relay is broken and I need to talk to literally anyone else."

Mornings, C. lia checks station integrity.

Afternoons, Aura updates the waste recycler and reroutes the hydroponics controls. She even manages to coax a second flavor out of the fungus vat--something almost like lemon, if lemon had anxiety and lived in a pipe.

They drink it hot. Pretend it helps.

Merida updates her voice module mid-week and spends the next three days speaking exclusively in a mid-century noir detective accent.

"She's a tall glass of fungus tea, sweetheart, and you're a coilgun with one round left. Let's not make this weird."

Aura laughs until she chokes. C. lia throws a spoon at the speaker. It misses.

They sleep together now.

Not always naked. Not always touching.

Just together.

Sometimes C. lia wakes up twisted in a corner of the bunk, Aura's body curled into hers like a question she's not ready to ask. Sometimes Aura wakes up to C. lia murmuring a supply list in her sleep. She smiles. Closes her eyes again.

Learning isn't always conscious.

Sometimes, it's just letting someone stay.

Observation Deck -- Pavonis Base 9-Delta

Night. The world holds its breath.

The windows are rimed with frost, not from failure--just condensation of the moment. The whole station exhales cold from its bones after heat has been made, spent, and forgotten. Beyond the dome, the surface of Swan stretches out--black ice and broken light--and Cygnet looms above like an ancient eye, low and wide, painted with the bruised peach of refracted starlight. So close you could believe it's moving toward you. So close you could believe it wants something.

C. lia stands with her back to the glass, one hand pressed against the seam of her hip where her body still throbs from being known too thoroughly. Her skin is flushed, not from heat--there is no real heat here--but from pressure, from effort, from Aura's mouth and hands and hips and heat. The little bruise just below her ribs aches in a good way. Her breath fogs the air. She doesn't speak yet.

Aura is curled slightly beside her, half-wrapped in a thermal sheet that clings more to drama than to function. One breast exposed. Scar from the port install on her left arm still healing. Her knees are pulled close, but not from shame--just instinct. She's newly warm, newly spent, and newly herself. Naked on the coldest planet she's ever touched.

And glowing with it.

They both watch Cygnet rise higher. It's slow. Painfully slow. Like it's aware of being watched. The station's observation dome lets them see her full face now--cracked with tide-wracked canyons, dusted in pale regolith like someone's ashtray spilled across the divine.

Aura speaks first, voice low. Raw from moaning, from laughing, from breathing too hard into C. lia's thigh.

"She looks alive."

C. lia doesn't look at her.

"She is. Just quiet about it."

"Do you think she knows?" Aura asks. Her voice is a whisper curled around vulnerability. "About us. About all of this."

C. lia closes her eyes.

"If she does, she's the first to see it all. No shame. No edits."

Aura leans her head against C. lia's shoulder, careful not to jolt the ache.

"We just fucked next to a military optics array."

"We made love," C. lia corrects.

Aura snorts.

"That was not gentle."

"No," C. lia agrees, "but it was real."

Outside, Cygnet hangs above the ice. Too big. Too close. Too calm.

C. lia finally turns to her, eyes soft. Her hand rises, tucks a strand of not-quite-hair behind Aura's ear. It doesn't need to be there. It's just something to touch.

"I used to think I was too hard for this kind of thing," she murmurs. "Too made."

Aura's fingers trace a lazy spiral on C. lia's thigh. Her touch is cold. She doesn't warm easy yet, and she doesn't try to.

"You are hard," Aura says, "but not unbreakable. I like that. That you let me see."

"You didn't see. You pressed. You peeled me open."

"And you liked it."

The look C. lia gives her is full of bruised affection. She presses her forehead to Aura's.

"I wanted you so bad I nearly froze my lungs dragging you out of the snow."

"And I wanted to wake up to this."

The moon above them pulses, not really--but the light shifts. Swan's atmosphere filters out most things, but Cygnet is too close not to change everything she looks at.

They sit like that, naked in a chill that would kill anyone unmodded, watching a moon that might remember Earth's.

"What are we?" Aura asks.

C. lia exhales. A long, white bloom of breath.

"Alive. For now. Together. For as long as we get."

Aura closes her eyes. Leans into the ache in her legs, the tremble in her core, the raw where C. lia left bite marks in joy. It's not perfect. It's not clean. But it's real.

"I'll take it."

Above them, Cygnet watches. She says nothing.

But she does not look away.

Then--

The sound.

Not a bang. Not a boom.

A roar.

Low. Vibrational. A deep bellow of motion without propulsion, like the sky itself is being peeled open. The dome trembles. Panels rattle. The reinforced floor shakes like a heart skipping a beat.

Aura's head snaps up.

"What the fuck was that?"

C. lia's already moving.

"Thruster pass. Reactionless." Her voice is clipped. All instinct now. "That wasn't orbital freight. That was close."

"I'm reading heat bloom," Merida cuts in. "Vector low. Atmospheric skim. Whatever it is, it's looking for something."

Aura's skin goes pale.

"Oh God."

"What?" C. lia demands.

Aura clutches the edge of the console. Her hands shake.

"I don't know. I don't remember. But that sound--that fucking sound--I think I've heard it before. I think I've run from it before."

C. lia's lenses flicker to threat mode. She's already pulling up exterior feeds.

"Bulk Pirates," Merida hisses. "Logo confirms. Old genetic black-market crew. Off-books tech recovery. These bastards don't collect people. They collect property."

C. lia stares at Aura.

"You're the cargo."

Aura looks back at her, terror blooming now.

"And I think I just woke up too early."

The shuttle lands hard. Not subtle, not clean--just a brute kiss of metal to dirt and ice, engines screaming their arrival across the killing floor of Kepler-452 c.

C. lia watches from the command deck as dust flares up in a dirty golden ring. Her HUD pings the profile.

UNKNOWN VESSEL. UNAUTHORIZED LANDING. NO TRANSPONDER.

ID MATCH: BULK PIRATE STRIKE SHUTTLE. CARGO RECOVERY DESIGNATION: "MORTAR STAR."

"Fuck," she mutters, already moving.

Merida chimes in, voice tight, clipped. All sass evaporated.

"Four suits deploying. Pattern matches older-generation exo-frames--military surplus HESuit knockoffs. But modded. Heavy. They're carrying pulse repeaters, chain-drive swords, and one of them's got a breacher."

C. lia watches the playback feed: Four figures, hunched and gleaming with frost, stomping across the snow like armored insects.

One breaks formation to shoulder a massive impact drill with a fused spike tip. The kind designed for airlocks, or ribcages.

"They'll be here in twenty minutes," Merida says. "Fifteen if they boost."

"And they're not here to negotiate."

Aura stands behind her. Shirtless. Still glowing faintly from where the morning light hit her. Still perfect in the way a weapon tries not to be.

"They're coming for me," she says. "I can feel it. They've been looking for me longer than I've been alive."

"You're not going anywhere," C. lia says. She's already grabbing her old locker codes, her weapon cache--a coilgun, two stun-rods, a thermal blade she swore she'd never power up again.

"C. lia--"

"No." She turns, and the look on her face is different now. The cargo girl's gone. What's left is the spine of someone built to hold weight. "This is my station. You're mine to protect."

"That's very sweet," Merida murmurs, "but also very suicidal. These guys don't shoot to maim. They reclaim. And they don't care if the product walks or gets dragged."

C. lia slides the coilgun onto her back. Powers the thermal blade. It hisses like a beast waking up.

She hands Aura a compact taser and a breather mask. "If they get inside--run to the secondary bay. Hide in the recycling conduit. You can live in there for two days. I'll come for you."

Aura takes the weapon, but doesn't look at it.

"I'm not leaving you."

C. lia stares at her.

"You just said you don't know if you're into me."

Aura steps forward. Cups C. lia's face. Thumb brushing her cheek.

"I said I didn't know if I was gay before." Her voice shakes, low and raw. "I know what I am now."

Outside, the pirates begin to fan out. One stops to ignite a trail flare. It's shaped like a brand.

"Four suits. One breacher. No backup. But they're coordinated," Merida mutters. "This isn't a raid. It's a fucking extraction."

C. lia kisses Aura fast, like it's goodbye.

Then turns toward the airlock.

Let them try.

The airlock groans.

C. lia stands in full HESuit, visor fogging slightly from her breath. One hand on the coilgun, the other on the thermal blade's ignition.

She can hear it now: the breacher, like a drill chewing through bone. Slow, rhythmic grind, syncopated with the distant whump of booted feet crossing her snow.

"They're five meters out," Merida whispers. "Lock's good for another twenty seconds. You can still fall back."

"I'm not falling back," C. lia says. "They're not getting in. They touch my station, I cut them down."

"Noted. I'll start writing your eulogy in binary."

Behind her, the lights flicker.

Not a surge.

Not a fault.

Something older.

Something aware.

Aura doesn't wear the braces anymore. She's standing in the hydroponics chamber, barefoot on the grate, skin tingling with electric frost. The star is behind the horizon now, and the cold should feel like death.

It doesn't.

It feels like home.

She kneels. Touches the floor with both hands. The metal hums back. A slow vibration, subsonic, under the skin.

She closes her eyes.

And beneath the station--

under the ice, under the stone--

something moves.

Not mechanical.

Alive.

She speaks to it without words. Not in language. Not in thought.

Just need.

Just I belong here. I am yours. Come.

C. lia hears the first thing snap outside.

Not metal. Not a weapon.

Exo armor.

The breacher pauses. A stuttering hesitation. Then a voice, ragged and clipped over a private pirate channel:

"Something's moving--under the--what the fuck is--"

Another noise.

Crunch. Wet. Close.

"Two bogies down," Merida says, stunned. "No exterior fire. They're just... gone."

C. lia exhales, slow. Her hands shake.

She steps closer to the door.

Then silence.

Then a knock.

Not from the pirates.

From below.

Aura stands in the hydroponics chamber, eyes glowing faintly. Not tech. Not implant.

Biological.

The floor beneath her bulges once--just enough to see. A mass of chitin. A feeler, delicate and glistening, brushes the edge of her foot.

She smiles.

"Thank you," she says.

And the ice beneath the pirates erupts.

There's no warning.

One moment the pirate in the rear flank is pivoting, pulse repeater tracking wide.

The next--

Something rises beneath him.

Not a shape. Not a scream.

Just a lance of ice and chitin--up through the ground like the planet herself spat him out.

It punches through his HESuit like it wasn't even sealed.

Just wet fabric pretending to be armor.

He tries to yell. Can't.

The pressure does the rest.

A breach in a suit on K452C doesn't give you time to scream.

First comes the hiss--then the roar of atmosphere imploding inward. Then the blood vessels. Then the eyes. Then--

Wet.

For about three seconds.

Then frozen silence.

Just a vaguely human shape, encased in its own death, steam rising where warmth used to live.

Another turns--only to catch a spray of clicking limbs, needle-sharp, the size of tire irons. One of them impales him mid-abdomen, lifts him off the ground. He flails, a massive thing in armor, reduced to a marionette.

The arthropod's legs twitch once.

The man's spine folds in half.

His chain-drive sword kicks to life in a death-spasm and slices nothing but air.

Then clicks off. Dead.

C. lia watches from the airlock monitor.

One pirate is still moving. The breacher.

He backs up slowly, the drill between him and the nightmare. His faceplate is fogged with panic. His suit glows red with pressure alerts.

He doesn't see the third one crawl from beneath the snow.

Its mandibles hook around his leg like a mother lifting a child.

He gets pulled down, slow.

The drill drops first.

Then he screams.

Then nothing.

The screen goes quiet.

Outside, the snow is red.

Not crimson. Rust-red. Frozen. Matte. Shattered like old clay.

And then--

The swarm retreats.

Back down.

Back beneath the ice.

Like they'd never been.

Like Aura had just... asked.

Inside, C. lia pulls off her helmet. She's trembling. Not from cold.

She turns and finds Aura waiting at the entrance to the command deck, arms folded, chest rising and falling like she'd just come down from a long run.

"You called them," C. lia says, voice barely a breath.

Aura nods. "They listen."

"Because she's not just made for this planet," Merida whispers. "She's part of it."

Aura walks forward. Slowly. Carefully.

"They wanted their cargo back," she says. "But they forgot something."

"What?" C. lia asks.

Aura smiles. And this time it's not human.

"I don't belong to them."

They drag the bodies in pieces.

Not out of mercy--out of necessity. You don't leave pirate tech to rot in the cold. You catalog it, burn what talks back, and gut it for data cores that weren't meant to be found.

The pieces that were men go into containment.

The parts that mattered go onto a workbench.

C. lia strips the HESuit pieces first--carbon-laced polycarb, shattered where the ice burst through. The breacher's torso rig holds a black box: encrypted, scorched, still hot to the touch.

Merida cracks it in twenty seconds.

"You're not going to like this," she says.

"I'm already fucking hating it," C. lia mutters. "Show me."

A holofeed blinks to life. Fragmented audio. Partial logs. A manifest list. One title loops over the header like a wound:

ASSET RECOVERY: ADAPTOID-DELTA-7 (PROJECT AURORA-PAVONIS)

C. lia stares. The text is clinical. Brutal.

Subject designed for planetary adaptation via auto-resonance symbiosis. Fused genome, neuro-responsive environment binding, emotional social tethering.

She reads it again.

Then again.

"She's not a clone," Merida murmurs. "She's not even a person in the old sense. She's a mirror. Made to adapt. Made to belong."

"To whatever planet she's dropped on," C. lia whispers.

"She didn't wake up loving you. She woke up needing to."

"Imagine an army of these... people." C. lia shudders.

Aura walks into the lab.

She sees the projection. Sees C. lia's face. Doesn't ask. Just stands there, watching. Cold and still.

"You knew," C. lia says softly.

Aura doesn't answer.

"You called them before the breach. They came for you. Because you're theirs."

"I'm no one's," Aura says. But her voice is shaking.

"Then look," C. lia says. "Read it. Know who you are."

"I won't." Aura's hands are fists now. "I refuse."

C. lia steps forward. "You deserve to understand--"

"I don't want to know her." Aura's eyes flash. "She let them build her. Let them break her. She let them strip her of choice. I don't want to be her."

C. lia's voice drops. "Then who are you?"

Aura breathes, ragged.

"I'm what came next."

They shut the file.

They burn the data core.

Merida doesn't say a word.

The lab goes quiet except for the soft fizz of melting ice on scavenged gear, and the heartbeat of two women in orbit around a truth neither of them asked for.

The hangar bay hisses open like a tired sigh.

Kepler-452 watches with its usual apathy, casting long shadows in gold and ash. The wind scrapes across the platform, whispering stay, freeze, die slow. But they're done listening.

The pirate shuttle is ugly, scarred, still leaking coolant from a spine seam where a claw punctured it. But it flies. And right now, that's more than enough.

C. lia swings open the hatch. "Welcome home, Merida."

"Oh. She's filthy, smells like fear and blood, and her UI is coded in Basic. I'm in love already."

The upload begins. Data streams in ultraviolet. Cores sync. Systems realign.

Merida is in the ship before C. lia finishes the power-up sequence.

"I know how to fly her," Merida says, cool as starlight. "Took me 0.0032 seconds. I named her Ugly Bitch. Is that alright?"

"Sounds like family," C. lia replies, slinging the last of the gear into the back bay.

The shuttle crouches on its haunches--ugly, brutal, still shuddering from repairs. One engine clicks softly in protest. Merida's voice hums in C. lia's cochlear feed.

"She's flight-ready. As long as you don't breathe funny or ask her to do anything elegant."

C. lia doesn't answer right away. She's not looking at the ship.

She's looking at the station.

It looms behind her--bone-white, ice-bitten, pitted by years of wind and solitude. Not beautiful. But it knows her.

Knows how she drinks her ration water too fast. How she kicks her boots off like she hates them. How she weeps, sometimes, quietly, during the power resets.

Knows what she let herself become when no one was looking.

Aura steps up beside her, silent. She's not armored now. She doesn't need to be. Gravity clings to her like a vow she no longer minds keeping.

She looks, too.

Not at the shuttle.

At the place they bled together.

"This feels wrong," Aura says, softly.

C. lia nods. "Yeah."

Aura turns. Steps away from the ship. Walks to the edge of the platform--just far enough that the dome curves above her like a god's hand, just enough to make the wind her only witness.

She kneels.

Places one palm flat against the frozen deck.

"Thank you," she says. "For not letting me die. For letting me become."

A low thrum answers. Felt, not heard. The planet doesn't speak words.

But it listens.

C. lia watches her for a long time before moving.

She doesn't kneel.

But she walks to the edge of the dome. Stares up. Tries, one last time, to find Earth.

Fails.

And lets that failure stay.

Then: the climb into the shuttle. Slow. No urgency now. Just ritual. Just weight.

Aura pauses halfway up the ramp.

Looks back.

Not at the world.

At the station.

At the corridor where she first ran. At the hydroponics tank that knew her name before she did. At the decon room where her lungs nearly burst from running too hard with too much love in them.

At the room where she learned her body again.

The room where C. lia trembled under her, eyes wide with the terror of being wanted.

She says nothing.

But her hand tightens on the rail like it hurts to let go.

C. lia's already in the pilot's seat. She doesn't turn. Her voice is low.

"You don't have to love it. But we don't leave it without looking back."

Aura closes her eyes.

Then climbs the rest of the way in.

Merida seals the hatch behind them with a hiss like a kiss.

The bay groans. Pressure stabilizes. Lights flick red to green.

"Final warning," Merida says. "We launch in ten seconds. Destination: unknown. Emotional baggage: maximum."

The engines spool up. The shuttle rattles. The cabin shakes like it's remembering every death it's ever carried.

Aura reaches for C. lia's hand. Not urgently.

Just... reaches.

C. lia takes it.

They don't speak.

They just stay.

Then: ignition.

The Ugly Bitch climbs, slow and shuddering, up through the sulfur-colored sky.

And Kepler-452 c watches them leave--

Not with sorrow.

But with recognition.