S.G. MULHOLLAND

      Blio looked up at the ceiling of her cabin and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth for the hundredth time. The large spread mattress was unbelievably comfortable. She preferred a hard mattress, so hard she could have cracked her head of it, yet even the comforts of her beloved bed did nothing to alleviate the tedium.  She reached over to her bedside table and grabbed the book she was currently reading, ‘First to the Beyond’ by Ingvar Storm.  It was a thorough account of the intrepid Dutch captain and his crew’s first long distance voyage into deep space, the voyage that allowed humanity to leave behind Broken Earth.

      Ingvar Storm had spoken eloquently about his fears, hopes and dreams as well as the stresses and pressures put upon him in by his crew in the day to day running of the vessel. He seemed to omit the part where he described the mind numbing tedium of space travel.

    She was bored, insanely bored, even the prospect of landing within the next few hours did nothing to rouse any sort of excitement from her.  It had been a long trip from Capoeira, a full week by Broken Earth time and there had been little to do except sit around and play cards with the boys and after three days of losing their money to Douja, even they had had enough of each other’s company.

     She pulled open her book and resumed her reading. She was lucky to have found an old print version of Storm’s biography.       Most books were on Hand Scrolls nowadays but there was still a high demand for the print books of old and most could be found at flea markets, usually the ‘sell & shoot’ sales out of a crews cargo hold at dockyards. She was about to resume her reading when something flashed in her peripheral vision accompanied by a delightful little ding noise.

Blio looked to her left and saw a new message flashing on her vanity monitor. She grunted loudly and jumped off the bed to see what it was. As she came toward the screen, she moaned as the words on the screen refused to move and the numbers began their countdown.

DESTINATION: ELYSIUM.

ETA: 1 HOUR 26 MINUTES.

   “Elysium, what a fucking dump” she said to the four walls.

   Reaching for a pair of shorts, a red t shirt and slipping into her oversized army boots she slid open her cabin door and walked into the cold, unforgiving steel corridor outside. The Mundilfari may have been running at full burn when she last checked their speed rate in order to calculate fuel consumption and that usually heated the ship from the pilots cabin to the cargo bay doors. However, there was a serious chill to the air and Blio immediately suspected Douja had been skimping on the heat circulation again.

    As she walked down the corridor and past the living quarters, the ship gave an almighty shudder and rocked violently to the left, slamming the poor girl sideways. Immediately followed by a forceful jolt forward, landing her face down on the floor.

    “Fucking Douja!” she snapped angrily.

   “Having trouble?” asked a shy quiet voice. Blio knew who it belonged to and groaned inwardly. Petch was the very last person she wanted to witness such a juvenile outburst. She opened her eyes gingerly and saw, from the feet upwards, a man looking as unkempt as a drifter.

   Long scraggy hair hung around a face framed by a full scruffy beard.  A large white t-shirt covered a broad shouldered figure whose precise outline was difficult to discern. His torn jeans hung loosely on his legs, while his boots, oddly enough, were polished to a high shine and in one hand he carried a guitar case.

  “Yeah, Douja’s landing skills are the trouble!” she snapped as she got to her knees and held out a hand which Petch took and hauled her to her feet.

   “He’s not usually this bad” she explained, “he only ever does harsh landings like this when he’s either angry or…”

   “Or what?” Petch asked.

   “Talking to someone down on the surface” she said groaning, “he’s got to be dealing with port authorities. I should never have gone for a nap and left him on his own. You know what he’s like having to deal with admin people, he’s a bloody nightmare.”

  “If you need your rest then it’s nothing to feel too concerned about. He’s a big boy, he should try being more tolerant with people” he explained, “Where to anyway?”

   She looked at him curiously, a little surprised by the question. Blio had noticed that, in all the time he had travelled with them, Petch never once asked where they were going until they were actually bearing down on their destination; almost as if he didn’t care where they were going, as long as the stay was short. He was a drifter and the only concern he had was to stay on the move, something he and Douja had in common.

   “Elysium” she said walking toward the end of the steely grey corridor.

   “I thought we were going to Old Regret. Why the course correction?” he asked. Blio shrugged her shoulders and shook her head showing her annoyance.

   “You tell me, I thought we decided these things as a fucking crew, turns out we just go wherever the fucking captain decides to go!” she snapped. If Petch had any objections he was keeping them very close to his chest. “I need to speak to him, it’s the only way we’re going to get answers, let alone stop him from crashing the fucking ship!”

   “Well if you want something else to scream about, your brother’s asleep on the sofa in the Rec room” Petch offered with the barest wisp of a smirk.

    “Asleep or passed out?” she asked.

    “Judging by the smell he’s leaving in the place I’d say he’s passed out”

    “Great, that’s all we need, a street tech with a hangover!” she said marching into the Rec room.

   The recreational room was a small, dingy hole of a room that had, at one point, been nothing more than dead space. Now however two broken armchairs sat mournfully next to each other, a metal spring protruding from of the shoulder of one whilst a giant tear on another was ludicrously stitched back together with duct tape.  An old and dilapidated television sat on an equally decrepit T.V. unit underneath a jumble of old books and films. An outsider might have wondered why they hadn’t dumped such an archaic piece of electronics and accepted swipe screen tech, but Douja had insisted they keep it and would hear nothing of its expulsion. 

    Blio took yet another disgusted look at the walls. Never one for elaborate interior design, the mustard coloured walls, more stained than painted was enough to make the artist in her cringe. She hated the way in which the mustard clashed with the four portraits Douja had been kind enough to let her paint around the room in an effort to make the place at least bearable to sit in.

   She glanced at the dishevelled figure sprawled across the dirty brown sofa, ginger hair covering a five o’clock shadow and wearing only a pair of battered blue jeans.

   Without skipping a beat, she strode across the room, grabbed a half full glass of last night’s beer from the coffee table and tipped it over him. Shaking the rank and stale beer from his red hair, Bolli looked up slowly at his sister.

    “Fuck sis!” he groaned, shaking the rank and stale beer from his hair “I’m up okay, where’s the fucking fire?”

    “I’ll tell you where the fucking fire is you idiot, we’re headed to Elysium, not Old Regret! Why has Douja changed course?” she demanded.

    “Elysium… what… why?” Bolli asked. Blio squat down in front of him and began to shake him by the shoulders, sending his bright red hair into a wild, damp and reeking spin.

    “You were drinking with him last night, he must have said something to you?” she insisted, nearly screaming at him as she continued to shake him.

     “The last thing I remember is us discussing whether Kyle Nelson was any good in his last Remington Tombs movie?” he said, slurring his speech slightly. Blio growled and pushed him back on the sofa where he sat looking dazed and confused.

    “Get him up and get him sober, if Douja fucks the landing gear on entry again we’re going to need him with a clear head!” she snapped. Petch snapped off a mock salute and began his attempt at hauling Bolli to his feet while Blio marched toward the door at the far end of the Rec room. She ig-nored the sign adorning the Captain's cabin door: FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ENTER: PLEASE! FUCK OFF; and pressed onward, pushing through the heavy metal door, that always stuck at the base and stepped inside.

    The cockpit was in its usual state of disrepair. Most of the consoles had not been updated for years and there were stains on the monitors, usually from Douja spitting coffee at them in a fury.  The bright flashing lights of a dozen consoles flashed on and off with monotonous repetition. An old poster of ‘Tombs Man III: The final awakening’ hung at an awkward angle on the wall next to Blio’s Navi-comp.  Several empty coffee cups and one half full one sat on the floor next to piles of cigarette ash and dead cigarette butts.

    The only things that appeared to be new were the two black leather reclining pilots’ seats which, surprisingly, seemed barely used.

    Blio steadied herself in the doorway as the ship began to shudder uncontrollably and looked down at her erstwhile captain and pilot. As ships navigator it was her job to share the pilots cabin with Douja, but even after the years they had shared the space together, she could still not get used to the sight of her Captain piloting the Mundilfari in nothing but his boxers and string vest. Sometimes he wore slippers but that was in no way anymore merciful then the rest of his ensemble. She did have a special appreciation for Douja’s amassed collection of body art, in particular the one depicting a sword going through a heart on his left breast with the words ‘bleeding hearts & question marks’ in script beneath.

   He would have looked positively ridiculous were it not for the intensity of his grip on the control wheel that shook slightly in his grip. Her captain was many things and often misled people by his appearance but one thing that could never be denied was his expert piloting abilities. The cockpit was a natural habitat for him and the controls were every part an extension of himself as the arms that guided them. The ship was his home and the cockpit most of all.

   “Listen lady, I don’t care what day it is or how busy you are! I’m telling you that my ship is currently on descent and if you had responded to my earlier hails, you’d know how dangerously low on fuel we were and….” Douja said into the headset that held back his long greasy black hair. “… What do you mean? Look, either you find a space for me or I’m going to dump my ship right down on your boss’s office block building and tell him that you wouldn’t give me landing co-ordinates and had to make do, okay!”

   Blio could not make out what was being said over the sound of the ship shaking, but the perceived silence on the other end of the line only lasted a minute.

   “Glad to see that you’re seeing sense, now give me the landing co-ordinates and you can finally get rid of me!” Douja said easing back on the throttle causing the Mundilfari to cease shaking. Blio swept into her seat next to Douja and sat cross legged as she swung the chair to face her own control panel and began typing in an elaborate sequence of numbers. In a moment the control wheel pulled itself from Douja’s grip and began to operate under its own steam.

    Douja pulled the headset off and allowed his greasy hair to fall past his eye line. Pulling a cigarette from the packet next to the radiation scanner, he struck a match he had been keeping behind his ear and inhaled deeply.

    “Any reason you’re giving me that look?” he said blowing smoke out of his nose.

    “What look?” Blio replied bad-temperedly.

    “The one that looks like I just told you I just fucked your favourite cat before eating him” he said. Blio grimaced in disgust at the revolting image and tried her best to put it out of her mind.

    “Why are we landing on Elysium?” she asked. Douja rolled his eyes and scratched his privates before continuing to smoke and refusing to answer her. “You do know what’s waiting for us down there or have you forgotten?” Blio asked.

     “Believe me, if I could forget I would!” he said bitterly.

    “Then why the hell are we landing on a planet that has a law enforcement who have a reputation for beating, abusing and arresting Stargazers. You in particular and on more than one occasion!” she snapped, staring him in the face and forcing his gaze to the floor like a child being chided by his mother.

    “Do you remember why we had to leave Capoeira in such a hurry?” he asked after a long pause. Blio could already feel where the conversation was headed and immediately felt the moral high ground falling out from underneath her. She gave a begrudging nod of her head and waited for him to continue.

     “Because you decided it would be a good idea to get into a fist fight with Vymskig’s brother over… what was it over again?” he asked.

      Blio stayed defiantly silent but it was now her turn to look the scolded child.

    “Well whatever it was, you’re the reason we left Capoeira short on fuel and without the requisite parts we needed to fix the Campylobacter. I’ve been burning the engines as hot as I possibly could in order to get us to Old Regret but that’s not going to happen now. Bolli gave me a full report on it last night. He’d been awake for thirty hours trying to keep the ship running before he finally listened to me and got some rest. But you’d know all of this if you hadn’t been locked in your room sulking over whatever happened back on Capoeira” he finished, no hint of sympathy forth coming.

    Blio adjusted herself in her seat and tried not to feel as low as she did. This was not the first time her actions had caused them to flee an otherwise safe planet in a hurry. Even among the intergalactic travellers, known to each other as Stargazers, she had a reputation of being hot headed and a little too free with her temper. Capoeira had been no different and she winced at its memory.

    “I’m sorry, okay! It’s my fault, I didn’t mean for it to happen but it did!” she said forcefully.

   “Don’t apologise to me, apologise to Petch” he said dousing his cigarette and turning to face the cockpits windshield. The descent into Elysium’s atmosphere was far more pleasant than the planet itself. The light from the mustard yellow smog shone dimly at this altitude but the view saw it stretch out way into the horizon. It looked like the whole world had been carpeted in a chemical cloud that had a malicious beauty all of its own.

    “Why?”

    “It’s Foyers day and there’s a pretty big celebration going on down there” he said.

    “Shit. He won’t like that” she said with a grimace.

    “No, he won’t. Luckily, I’m not the one who has to tell him now am I?” Douja said giving her a wide sarcastic grin, showing off his stained yellow teeth.

     “Thanks a bunch” she said getting up, “do you need me to help guide the ship down?”

    “No thanks, I’ve got this, you go get ready. We’re going to try and make some money while we’re here and, maybe, we’ll be able to eat this week” he said.

    “Alright then, just try not to break the landing gear when you come in for final approach alright” she said reaching for the door.

     “I’ll have you know that my landings are always perfect, we’ve never had a serious incident of any kind while my hands have been on these controls”

    Blio chose to ignore Douja and headed back to her room. She opened the metal doors to her over-sized wardrobe and began to search for the perfect outfit.  As a street artist, as well as a Stargazer, it helped that she dressed practically as well as to sell her work. Knowing the territory they were headed to and given Elysium’s fluctuating temperatures, Blio assumed, as always, it would be best to dress accentuating her long legs. She had always believed that her legs were her best physical asset; her ability to run hard and fast had served her well since childhood and even to this day, she required little in the way of exercise to maintain her high level of fitness.

    Pulling out a set of hot-pants, a tight white t shirt along with magni-goggles and her red leather jacket, she dressed quickly and once more headed into the corridor. She pulled her hair into a high ponytail and fixed the magni-goggles on her forehead and headed toward the stairs that lead down into the bowels of the ship. The smell of burnt bread and meat wafted from below, Blio’s faced scrunched up into squint of disgust as she realised that Bolli had been cooking one of his hangover cures; a terrifying mix of tobacco, grease, sink mould and bacon topped up on burnt toast.

    She held her breath as she walked down the stairs, past the entrance to the corridor that lead to the kitchen and carried on southward. She did not bother to stop and see if Bolli was present, but was more than a little exhilarated to hear the sounds of Petch’s lonesome guitar strings echoing from the foot of the stairs and resonating off the walls. She looked over the railings and saw him seated in front the cargo bay door, plucking away with expert precision; he floated easily from lonesome blues to fiery flamenco chords, he pulled at a folk reel before following it with a hard rock rhythm, all of it without thought or concern and completely natural.

   Blio stopped on the stairs and watched him play for a few minutes. She always enjoyed watching him play and openly relished his every performance. There was a strange harmony about him when he played, a peacefulness that seemed oddly absent when he did not play. He seemed to walk through so much of their shared life together as though he was haunted by something, a memory, a thought or a core part of himself, whatever it was it vanished as soon as his fingers touched the strings.

   “Are you going to hover up there all day or are you going to join me?” Petch asked, looking up at her through his shaggy hair. She skipped girlishly to the foot of the stairs and sat on the bottom step in front of him. The half-light of the poorly maintained lights obscured his face slightly, making his jawline appear somewhat skeletal and altogether more menacing than she had ever seen.

   “Was that an original piece or something you just learned?” she asked.

   “No, just letting the notes flow. It pays to let your fingers find the song, your soul will do the rest” he said playing a slow adagio. “A bit like you and your painting, right?”

   “I don’t think sitting on the street and hand drawing pictures of people and their kids, no matter how weird they all are, is allowing my soul to guide my brush. Anyway, I don’t think my brush is nearly as sad as that song you’re playing.”

   “I think that mural you’ve been working on in the Rec room may disagree” he said as he re-tuned the martin. Blio shrugged and put her hands in her coat pocket.

   “Work in progress, that’s all I’ll say about that” she said giving him a sideways glance.

  “Well if we’re not going to share musings on the soul and how it relates to our art, will you tell me why we’re landing on Elysium?” he said resuming his playing. Blio took a sharp intake of breath and gave him an awkward look, which aroused the guitarist’s suspicions.

   “Before I say anything I have to ask you something…” she said hesitantly, “… have you been keeping an eye on your calendar?”