Lodestone TLR-99

Midnight confession

All this time, she thought they'd been in perfect sync together.

Maybe it was true back when they still fought for the Sunnr Armed Forces, for the 1st MRD. The way she could focus everything on the opponent in front of her, while her "highly compatible" remote co-pilot let loose on the enemy reinforcements, with as many guns as could reach in that direction.

Now, though, lying on her back in the double-bed, in the living quarters that used to be a hab-pod attached to a cargo ship, Kath began to think that maybe the decision to desert from the SAF was having consequences. The kind of consequences that would keep her dear partner awake and crying next to her, despite the warmth of another body, despite the plush comfort of her secret-favorite stuffed llamanoid. She rolled over, trying not to yank the covers, and positioned herself in whispering range. "Hey. Shhh. I'm here."

"I know." Mehr did not whisper back. It was more of a groan, a tired exhalation. "I can't quit thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

"Everything." She sounded so exhausted. Sleep would have been a mercy for her, if only the rest of her would agree to it. "I've never felt so useless."

Kath clung herself to Mehr's arm. "I know how you feel, but don't listen to your brain. You've made so many big steps, away from that place. They can't hurt you now."

"The army trained me to keep you alive. They provided me with the means and the tools. I did that job well enough."

"I'm still here, so I'd say you did that job perfectly. But you're not thinking about you."

Mehr brushed the tears from her face with a corner of their shared blanket. "That's exactly the damn problem," she whimpered. "The SAF gave me a mission and I followed it. I followed my orders so well that I could never quit thinking about you. And after the Red Baron, you wanted to leave, and I followed you, because..." She sniffled futilely. "...I couldn't not follow you, damn it all."

Kath put her free hand up to Mehr's sopping cheek. "I know. I asked you to follow me, back then. I knew you were still impressionable and eager to follow your orders, which is why I gave you an out. I told you you could stay behind if you wanted."

With no word of reply, Mehr wiped her face with the blanket again.

"You still followed me. You left behind the world you'd built up. The job security, the safety, the single minded dedication to your mission."

"I didn't leave behind my world. I didn't leave behind the mission." Mehr's voice took a note of seriousness, an implicit message: You're wrong. "I followed you because it was my duty to keep you alive. No matter the cost. It went beyond my orders. I'd fallen for you."

"Mehr, do you remember that day in the repair bay?"

"Yes." Her voice didn't want to carry it.

"When we were both sitting there, looking at how bad it was. Pondering our own lives. Swearing to each other it'd never happen again." Kath fought back her own tears now. "I want you to know, Mehr. I fell for you, too. The day I lost you, I realized you were more to me than just my backup. You weren't just some government-assigned plaything. If you were ever out there with me again, you know I'd do anything to save you."

"I was already safe. I was never out there with you. I was in that basement."

"In that pod? That wasn't safety, that was compliance. Following their orders to avoid reprisal."

"I shouldn't have followed you. I could keep you safe from down there. I want to go back to Sunnr again so I can protect you."

"Staying down in that basement is cowardice. You know well why we left, Mehr."

Mehr now turned her head sideways on her pillow, to look Kath dead in the eye. Her voice shook with bottled-up rage. "You are gods-damned right, I am a coward. I fear my own pointless death, but I fear yours most of all."

Kath wrapped her arms all the way around Mehr's chest and pulled as tight as she could. "You listen to me. You know so well that if anything happened to you, I would go right back to the SAF and not stop punching until everyone responsible for this fucking war was flattened into a big red crater."

"You say that, but what about me? Every day you go out there on your own, when I can't protect you, I feel like one day, I'll be the one grieving the way you did back then. I can't calm down until I see your face again."

"Then come with me. Follow me into the heat and the fire. Then you can keep me safe. We can make it work."

"No!" Mehr crumpled in her arms, shaking and shivering. "I hate it out there. It's nothing but empty sand and gunfire. I see what it does to the people who have to live out here. I can't go back out into that and I don't want you to do it either."

"Do it for me?"

"I'd keep you here if I could. But I know I can't."

"Because somebody has to go out there."

Mehr finally grabbed back, pushing her tear-stained face into the shoulder of Kath's night-shirt. "And I wish it wasn't either of us."