“
Stars, Sam. We mucked it. I mean, I mucked it. And not just for us.
Yet I recall pure joy: your bike hot between my legs, your arms locked ’round my waist. I recall poor Second’s chiding before I blinked it off. I recall laughter and all of those soldiers from someone else’s war standing on that terrace singing yet another Terran victory rag.
You told me later that you didn’t know I’d make a run at the canyon wall ’til I torqued it, thumbing your bike’s twin throttles hard enough to singe our legs as the acceleration turned into an increasing roar. By the time we hit fifty, I couldn’t even hear you yelling at me to stop over the wind.
I didn’t think you were serious. We’d climbed that mesa in daylight when we were younger, smaller, bendier. We’d done it with safety rails and belts, with hoverbikes that floated back down like carnival balloons when we failed; we’d done it with our parents cheering and a Grass Priest standing watch in case we needed healing. That run should’ve been a lark, Sam. But the night was dark as space, and our planet has no moon.
You grabbed hard as I pulled the yoke. The engines screamed. I meant to pull up, climb that mesa vertically—see if we could rocket to the top before I gunned again like we’d done a hundred times as kids. But I timed it too late. I saw the mesa wall in our headlamps, and then everything went black. The next thing I recall is waking up on the Unity ship Ascendant with Ken’ri Mureen of Glos smiling down at me. Those big round eyes in her lovely, lying face.
I thought I’d surely killed you, Sam, but Mureen swore you were fine. Mureen swore removing my Second was only temporary—swore surgery would fix the soup the crash had made of my brain. She made me sign forms, and then Ma came in with pastries. I still didn’t believe you’d made it out, but Ma swore it too.
You know the gist after that—mostly—but there’s a lot I never told—
”
”
H.M.H. Murray (Navvy Dreams (Tales From a Stinking, Star-Crossed Milky Way #1))