Womb

It was pitch-black no matter where Tet looked. The sort of black that felt like her eyes weren’t even open. Like she hadn’t woken up yet, or she was still dreaming. And if that alien cavern had been cold, outer space itself was in another league.

The tether tugged at her suit as she floated near the Dalia’s spine. She hovered her fingers over the titanium. For some reason, touching it felt embarrassing. Least, not while Millie was listening.

Stupid. She unscrewed the panel, and her headache instantly worsened.

“...I don’t get it,” she muttered.

Somehow, the Dalia was completely fine. No visible damage, aside from the earlier wear. Its chest was even in one piece. There was only a single thing wrong.

The coolant. One of the Dalia’s cooling pipes had split. Coolant sputtered out from the tear and crystallised into transparent snowflakes of ammonia.

There wasn’t any way to refill it, either. Once their supply ran dry, it wouldn’t be long before the Dalia overheated. They’d be stranded.

“Everything alright?” Millie asked quietly. They were treating Tet like she’d gone insane.

Sure, it made no sense that they’d sustained zero damage. Sure, it made no sense that their enemies looked hundreds of years old, or that one of them had up and vanished. But, she knew what she saw.

A stray crystal landed in the palm of her suit, shattering into glitter. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing had made sense for years.

“Yeah,” Tet lied. “All good.”

* * *

The coordinates ticked closer. First, it was 0.1. Then, 0.06, and 0.02. The issue was, Tet had no clue when the Dalia’s cooling systems would give out.

Smears of iridescent stars and planets streaked past the windshield. Millie wasn’t talking to her anymore, not that she would’ve filled them in. It wasn’t like they could fix it. Nothing left to do but watch the diagnostics and pray.

Pumps churned underneath the flooring. Tet sucked in a breath as the engine’s temperature spiked to 2,000 degrees. She waited for it to normalise.

That time, it didn’t. Hexagonal error messages littered the screen: High temperature. High temperature. High temperature.

Millie’s face appeared beside the blinking messages half-flushed, while the rest was buried in grainy glitches.

“Tet,” they buzzed. “The engine—“

The systems chimed. 0, 0, 0, 0.

Another message appeared in between the errors: Destination reached.

Millie went still. Stiller than during their reboots.

“Hah.” Tet thrust the handles forwards, and the ignition roared. Just in time.

In the distance, a pint-sized planet.

“That’s gotta be it,” she shouted.

The pilot’s seat wobbled as their engine’s temperature climbed past the redlines. Sweat started beading on the inside of her helmet.

Millie snapped out of it.

They pointed at the diagnostics, their ponytail dropping frames as it bobbed. “Hold it! The engine’s too hot!”

They weren’t kidding; the cockpit was boiling. Warning sirens blared over the Dalia’s rattling frame.

“No can do.” Tet gripped the controls tighter. “We’re out of coolant, anyways.”

Millie’s glossy eyes shot open. “We’re out of what!?”

“It’s cool. Long as we can land before—“

The Dalia bucked. Millie vanished mid-syllable as the monitors and sirens clicked off.

“Damn it.” Tet gritted her teeth. “Power’s cutting out.”

Seconds later, the monitors rebooted. The planet’s terrain barrelled closer and closer meanwhile. It felt like the pilot’s seat was melting into the flooring, with her still in it.

Whatever. It didn’t matter. Just one more minute. That was all she needed.

Somehow, she always seemed to come up short. Just this once, if they could hold it together for one more minute, it’d all be over.

Flames engulfed the windshield to the point that she couldn’t see their destination anymore. They were coming in hot. Too hot. Exhaust poured out the cockpit’s vents and stung at her eyes. The air smelled like somebody had torched what was left of her rations.

Suddenly, the Dalia’s handles jolted, and the mech lurched.

“The hell?” She tried tugging at them, but the controls wouldn’t respond.

Millie’s avatar had disappeared offscreen. The Dalia’s arms rasped, and its titanium hands shifted to rest on the windshield, cradling the cockpit.

The speakers popped. Then, Millie spoke.

“…That’s enough.”

Tet wrestled with the handles, but the Dalia’s arms still wouldn’t budge. “Damn it! Did you take control?”

Bolts and panels clattered, threatening to pop loose. Patches of deep navy peeked out from between the Dalia’s fingers and the flames. The engine’s temperature shot past 2,600, then 3,000 degrees, before the cockpit powered off.

They were going to crash-land. Without power. She should’ve worn her helmet.

“Shit—“ She shielded her face with her hands.

“…et!”

“…Tet, please!”

Tet coughed up blood. Her ears were ringing.

“Urgh…”

It was cold. And wet. Her head hurt. Her everything hurt.

She peeled her eyes open, blinking away the blood blurring her vision. Behind the red smears, clouds and a rosy sky.

She turned over. The Dalia’s palm was underneath her. She turned some more. Water.

Ahead, the Dalia was armless. Sizzling wires and machinery jutted out its shoulders. Its chassis was charred and busted open, dribbling droplets onto a shore of rippling grass. Somehow, she’d survived.

Not somehow. Millie. They’d saved her life.

It was funny. Even beyond the grave, they were still nicer to Tet than she deserved.

“Tet! Are you alright?”

Millie’s voice broke through the malfunctioning speakers.

Tet tried sitting up, only to roll off the Dalia’s dismembered palm with a groan. She splashed into the cold stream underneath. The Dalia instantly stirred, chassis screeching.

“Tet—“ Millie started.

She spat out a mouthful of the mucky water and held up a hand. “I’m… I’m good. Just, take it easy.”

Good might’ve been optimistic. But, she was good enough to stand at least. She struggled to her feet.

Apparently, the centre of the universe was a riverbank. The stream reached up to her ankles and soaked into her tattered spacesuit. The only sound aside from it was a loud chirping that might’ve been the wildlife. Debris from the Dalia littered the stream like mechanical fish.

“This’s… the centre of the universe?” she breathed.

Then, that meant they’d made it. She’d fulfilled her promise to Millie, right? It was all over. Finally.

She waded towards the Dalia collapsed onto the muddy shore. Smoke poured out its ruptured cockpit. One look at it, and her parents would’ve murdered her where she stood.

Blots of blood spotted the river as she sloshed forwards. Massive cement cubes and rusted poles surrounded them. Some poles seemed to shine light while others held up bundles of cables.

What the cables were for, she didn’t have the slightest idea. Couldn’t have been efficient.

She hauled herself onto land and sighed. “Wait here, Mills.”

Trying to move the Dalia in that condition was useless. Maybe she’d find a better vantage point up ahead. She climbed the bank, leaving a trail of damp grass with every footstep.

More cement. It was all cement. The ground was cement, split up by yellow and white painted lines. At the top of the hill was another building. Cement too, obviously.

The planet’s single sun peeked over the horizon, putting in overtime drying her drenched suit. But for someplace with so much concrete, there didn’t seem to be anybody around.

As she stepped up to the building’s glass entrance, it slid open with a lousy ding.

“...Alright?”

She shuffled through, sputtering as a stale gust of A.C. blasted her face.

The inside was colourful, to say the least. Rows of multicoloured boxes and packages lined the painted walls. The numbers on them, she recognised. The letters, not a clue. But, they were vacuum-sealed like her rations. So, food.

She snatched the most appetising-looking package with a bundle of wavy, lime green plants on the front and tore the foil open. It smelled fishy, but edible. Mostly. Or, maybe she was just starved.

The doorway dinged again as she left.

“No hostiles, at least,” she called out to Millie.

The Dalia turned halfway before its hinges clanged stuck. It was a depressing sight. Tet squatted down beside the battered robot and faced the river.

“That’s good,” Millie mumbled.

The sun had almost disappeared, subbed out for a pale planet that wasn’t even half as bright. Its cratered reflection glistened in the stream’s miniature waves.

There was about a minute of static before Millie spoke again.

“…What’s it look like?”

“Whaddya mean?” Tet turned towards them, but she couldn’t see the monitors from the outside.

“Ah, well, the camera sensors… They seem to have died.”

“Oh.” She fiddled with the package in her hands. “Did they?”

With a landing like that, it made total sense. It was a miracle the Dalia was still running in its condition. She gave the mech another lookover before staring out at the landscape ahead.

Blocks of light peppered the cement buildings. Metal poles buzzed around them. The Dalia’s dismembered arms jutted out from the water’s surface like natural landmarks, oil pooling at their base.

“It’s pretty, I guess,” she lied again.

“Ah,” Millie hummed, almost quiet enough to be drowned out by the stream. “That’s nice.”

Tet slipped a hand into the package. The inside was made up of flakey, greenish sheets, crumbling to pieces between her fingers as soon as she touched them. Still, probably edible. She lobbed one into her mouth.

The Dalia shifted. A puddle of inky oil had formed underneath it.

“Tet, I still…”

“Hm?”

Tet was still chewing. She turned towards the Dalia.

The lights inside the cockpit had dimmed, leaving the reflections of that distant, pale planet in what was left of the windshield. It’d finally shut down. She forced herself to finish chewing, and swallowed.

It was saltier than her rations. Left a terrible taste in her mouth, too. Tet crumpled the package up, the foil digging into her fingers, and raised her hand to toss it.

She stopped herself. Her arm thumped down onto the Dalia’s cold chassis instead.