Page 28 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

Signy [13:39]: how was flying

Cora [13:39]: oh you know

Cora [13:39]: mixed bag

Cora [13:39]: the usual

Signy [13:39]: you can come get a hug for it

Cora [13:40]: I will cash in on that later

Cora [13:40]: I love you

Signy [13:40]: I love you too

Chapter 14 Cora, Fortune

Cora rubbed her right temple, pressing into it hard with the tip of her thumb. Her mouth was dry from the “vitamin C” she’d chased a tab of ginger with—the third tab she’d taken that day, after the aspirin she’d already taken had done fuck all for her headache. So many pills, and she wasn’t sure if they were the right ones. Sometimes a headache was just a headache, but sometimes it wasn’t, and she hadn’t sussed out the difference yet. If there was a difference, even. A doctor could’ve given her a straight answer on that, but she couldn’t ask a doctor, and there were only so many medical references she could pull before she started feeling paranoid about, like, what if her computer broke and IT noticed her search history, or what if another pilot was looking over her shoulder while she was reading and she didn’t realize, or what if—

“You okay?” Smokey asked from the other side of the common-room couch.

“Hmm?” Cora said.

Smokey threw a roasted peanut at her. “Where’d you go?”

“Oh, I just, uh—” Yes, Cora, where’d you go? “I was running back through my flight review. They want me to shave three hours off my Big Quarry average, if I can.”

“Three hours?” Smokey repeated. They extended the bowl of nuts her way. “That’s nothing. Why?”

Cora took a few peanuts, tossed them in her mouth, and chased them with a sip of beer. Snacks and drinks were laid out on the chicory table; couches and chairs had been dragged in a semicircle facing the radio cabinet. It was handball night, but the weather was making their chances of actually catching the game pretty grim. “Colibri and I keep showing up at the drop-off dock right around shift changes. I have no idea why. Coincidence, I guess, but—”

“Okay, but that’s a station crew problem, not a you problem,” Smokey said.

“Well, they’re making it my problem.”

“Fine, then lap the planet a few times until they’re ready for you.”

“Aw, Smokes, come on, you know they have to find something to bitch about in reviews. Otherwise, why do ’em at all?”

“That’s fucking stupid. You two already make great time.”

Cora looked sympathetically at Smokey, whose reviews often came back with a repeated request to speed things up. “Did they get on your ass again?”

Smokey sighed into their own beer. “I’m not gonna push Sugar,” they said plainly. “He doesn’t feel comfortable going past mark six when he’s pulling a full hitch, and, like, sorry, but that’s up to him. They can either get deliveries fast or get big loads. I’m not gonna give him the prod for something like—”

“Fuck’s sake,” came a hiss from around the back of the radio cabinet. Lydia—a fellow pilot, and the most ride-or-die for handball night—was trying her damnedest with the radio, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the cabinet as she adjusted the bandwidth with surgical delicacy. Her determination was admirable, but Cora didn’t have high hopes. Outside, the rain was coming down in buckets, and nobody was getting signal for anything.

“Do you want me to get my booster?” Adam asked from across the room. He was playing cards with Simon, and he didn’t really give a shit about handball, but he was into Lydia, and Lydia hadn’t caught on yet.

“That would be great.” Lydia sighed as she continued tinkering. “Come on, you bastard—”

Adam abandoned Simon and headed for the hallway that led to the pilots’ quarters. Cora exchanged a flex of eyebrows with Smokey. This kind of would-they-or-won’t-they wasn’t any of her damn business, but as far as she was concerned, if Lydia never noticed Adam’s interest, that was totally fine. Adam was an okay guy, for the most part, but he had kind of a douchey side, and in Cora’s opinion, Lydia could do better.

Cora took another sip of her beer, even though the beer Smokey had bought was piss. Her heart was racing uncomfortably, thanks to the ginger, and she hoped the beer might calm things down. She hated ginger, hated the weird metal taste of it, hated the way it made the world too sharp and too fast. She hoped as hard as she’d ever hoped for anything that the plant lady would be able to sort her out. But even if nothing else, the “vitamin C” was working, despite it only having been three days. Cora could feel some nameless grunge in her blood being drawn out in a way she hadn’t known she’d needed, kinda like how you might not clock how bad the showers needed a scrub until they actually got scrubbed. Her whole body felt a little better, and right now, “a little better” was a big difference.

“If we can’t get the game, do you all wanna play poker?” Smokey asked.

“Sure, I’m down,” Cora said.