Nine angles make the circle.

  Nine points make the nonagram.

  Three of nine — three lives within the lives of nine.

  The

  Planet

  Fall

  Has

  Left

  Me

  Aellyce woke with a start, sat up like a bolt of lightning. Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt.

  She was in the hospital, beneath a clean linen bedsheet. Her whole body was covered in bandages. Tubes ran from the inside of her armpit to an IV drip. Wires ran from all over her body into a set of slowly beeping machines.

  But that beep was far from the pleasant beeping of a Casket. That beeping was unkind.

  "Hey."

  She lifted her head through the haze of iodine, through the fog of the morphine in her veins. There was Longwood, his bushy, messy brown hair, tall and slender. He was still wearing his slick black combat jumpsuit, a dark green military jumpsuit overtop. “How did I...?”

  “I brought you here.”

  “You did?” she asked. “But you—”

  “It was hairy, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I wish I could at least say we got some invaluable data out of it, but I’m not really sure what we accomplished.”

  Aellyce nodded. She looked through the vacant hospital chamber, beds lining both walls under bright tungsten lights. It was a horrible, uncomfortable place; she’d always done her best to avoid ending up there. Unkind was always the word she thought of. This was a place where people went to die, in her experience.

  “Bella’s on her way.”

  “Huh?” That was a second, much worse jolt to her system. The adrenaline of that almost beat out the morphine's sedation.

  “Not sure she’s exactly happy at how you reacted to... just about everything.” He slid a small PDA out of his jacket pocket, tossed it to her.

  Aellyce caught it. She pressed the center button to turn it on, and looked down in horror at the blinking screen. “...No way!”

  Aellyce Noa

  Level 0

  [STATUS RESTRICTED]

  Level 0. All of her hard work, all of her training... Reduced to nothing. Did Bella do this? Is she punishing me for being a coward?

  She felt tears well in her eyes. She did her best to keep them in, to prevent Longwood from seeing them.

  But he began awkwardly, as though he knew exactly how she felt. “I... can't say I've ever seen someone get dropped so many levels so quickly. Bella might honestly be wanting to send you to another department. I mean — it's possible that... she lowered your level, y'know...”

  She pouted.

  With a little more confidence, he asked, “Isn’t that what you want? You’d be off combat duty, no more scouting... Hell, you might end up working alongside Cel.”

  ...But I don't want to work along Cel! Even putting the smell aside... She's...

  “Just stay optimistic. These things happen for a reason. Bella's the one that brought you here. Somehow I doubt she's just going to...”

  A door slid open down the hall, interrupting him, and suddenly it was time to escape. He left with hardly a goodbye, just a nod and a mouthed ‘good luck.’

  Immediately came the call, “Aellyce,”

  “Yes, ma’am!” She saluted. Be stoic. Be stoic.

  “Ease up,” commanded the woman, approaching with two steaming mugs of coffee.

  Bella was an Earther just like her — but so much unlike her. Sleek, combed black hair, straight like a sword, all the way down to her lower back, a beautiful, knife-like face, with big, dark eyes... Sometimes people gave her the obnoxious nickname Beautiful Bella. Though Aellyce found it immature, she couldn’t contest that title. Bella was, in fact, beautiful. Beauty like that had been scarce even on Earth in Aellyce’s experience. Clean skin alone was a blessing.

  “Thought I'd bring you a coffee. The machines in this part of the wing are broken, and I can't get Proton to deliver you any.”

  “Oh?” She accepted the cup, hugged it between both hands, and quickly began to chug the hot, sacred beverage. “Thanks. I’m surprised Cel would leave anything on this ship broken for long.”

  “Well, she doesn’t drink coffee, so I doubt she cares too much about the machines this far out.” Bella sipped from her own mug, looked off into the distance. “Probably why she’s such a... How do I put it?”

  Aellyce could think of many names to fill in that blank.

  “She's eccentric.” Bella smiled, leaning onto the counter beside the bed, filled with all sorts of tools and medical instruments. “Her space jitters are more like spasms, or like she’s possessed, sometimes. Or just crazy. The rest of us, we just get shaky without our caffeine. You ever wonder about that?”

  “Mhm.” She nodded, finishing her cup. “I never drank coffee before coming to space. I think it’s something about Earth-born people. Maybe it just reminds us of home? Something homegrown, and a whole process of steeping it, made by humans?”

  “You think so?”

  Aellyce nodded again, placed her empty mug on the counter beside her bed. "I don't really know. You'd think tea would work just as well, or caffeine pills, but it's just coffee. And somehow, it's less bitter up here."

  "Mm." Bella stared down into her mug, thinking. Without looking up, she said, “This is floral coffee, to be fair. I put some in my personal reserves after we found it on the last transport we captured."

  Aellyce said, "It's good."

  "I take it you saw your PHS report. Longwood showed you?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry—”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. And before you ask, I wasn't the one that lowered your level.”

  “You weren’t?”

  "Aellyce, you think I'd do that to you? You can have confidence issues in the field, you can get frightened... But you're still our scout. I wouldn't give up on you like that."

  The pain in her heart eased. She smiled slightly, though the tears felt like they'd rush out more than ever.

  “It was something in that black Casket — whatever weapon it used, it interfaced with the PHS. It’s bad enough that I can’t even undo it.”

  "What happened out there?"

  "He fired just a single round, kinetic. 120mm, just like the guns we equip ourselves. Longwood got ahead of you and took the shot into his own Casket. But as Longwood started retreating with you in tow... It fired some other weapon. A weapon we still don't have data on."

  Aellyce felt a chill down her spine.

  "It seemed like a direct hit, but we couldn't find any damage. Best clue we've got is your Honor Level."

  “Then I need to go back out there.” Her face became resolute. She wiped her eyes. "He's still out there, and we don't know a single thing about him. If I just get one good scan, close-range..."

  "It'd be enough levels, huh?" Bella took another long sip from her mug. "Well... The Caskets we have, the WB converts... Their base protocol is set to only allow people with Level 5 at a minimum. Even then, the guns demand Level 8, so you'd be practically useless in the field. As much as I wish there were another way, I’m afraid you’re off of recon for now.”

  Aellyce pouted. "But what if I rode with Longwood?"

  Bella gave a coy smirk. "You think Longwood would let you retrofit a chair into his Casket?"

  She returned her own weak smile.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Are you scared of something, ‘Llyce?”

  And her smile died out again. “I... Don’t know. Space is usually so peaceful for me. I don’t like war, but... Well, maybe it’s just the Caskets. You remember how you found me in one? Back on Earth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think they feel like home. They remind me, at least, of that last chance I had... It’s like I’m convinced, with just one more minute, one more chance to pilot... That I’ll find my parents. Even out here.”

  Bella sat on the foot of the bed.

  “You don’t need to tell me that it’s not true. I know.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you that. I was going to tell you that I feel the same. I lost my sister in the same attack, remember? I was older than you, but still just a teenager. When I hold a gun, or when I’m in my seat at the helm, I feel like I’m in control. It’s like the whole world can be manipulated, just by the small dent I can make upon its surface. Sometimes we think about pulling the trigger—and the repercussions from just one bullet can go well beyond what any of us could dream of.”

  “Like World War One...”

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I guess that’s a good example. I’m not too studied.”

  “History was my favorite.”

  “I was more about math, I think. Though, most of the time I should have spent in school was spent doing grunt work.”

  “I guess that’s just how Lower Earth was.”

  “Yeah. That's just Lower Earth."

  "Home," she said somberly. “But you didn't answer my question."

  Aellyce looked at her hands. "I don't know how to answer. Aren't we all scared of dying?"

  "Sometimes. But sometimes we do our best to put that aside, especially in this line of work. Did you have more of those dreams?”

  “Just one. I was wondering about that too; I wasn't this panicked before the dreams started.”

  Bella nodded. “Could be jitters. You don’t drink nearly as much coffee as the rest of us.”

  “Right.”

  Then Bella exhaled, preparing herself to say something else. “Maybe it’d be a good idea to a ask Celeste. I’m going to pair you two together for a while, soon as you’re fit to walk. That’ll be a quick way to gain Levels.”

  “Celeste? You want me working in the Underbelly?”

  “For a week, tops. Hey, you might even like it.”

  I sincerely doubt it... Have you smelled it down there? Even just passing Celeste in the hallway is...

  “But if they’re jitter dreams, she’d be the one to know. I bet she’s got dreams a million times more insane than yours.”

  Right.

  —And that much was true.

  “And he was there, in the mech! In a JX-100X, he came out like it was an anime or something! Like Char Aznable! And all the rockets, the funnels were firing, but he was focused on me like I was the girl of his dreams!”

  Celeste had dark hair, but not as dark as Bella’s. And especially unlike Bella’s, it was never combed.

  “And he touched my hand! I woke up right after, but if I knew how to lucid dream—oh man!”

  Her big glasses were thicker than any glass Aellyce had ever seen, thicker even than the bulletproof glass holding their ship together.

  “I breached the PHS protocol to generate an approximation of what our kids would look like—see?”

  Celeste pointed at the monitor, and there was a crudely generated image of a person who didn’t exist. And Celeste — her clothes were dirty, her overalls were soaked with grease, her fingernails were black with soot, her boots were torn and scrapped... She was a mess.

  And the smell of her lair—it smelled like a nest of homeless people, like the underside of a car, like dead rats and mold and...

  Aellyce hated it already. Even visually, there was grime, tar, oil leaking down the bare steel walls around her stacks and stacks of old CRT monitors all wired directly into the Proton Honor System, the AI interface which controlled the entire ship. Her bed was covered in books, bags of chips, spilled cup noodles, and candy. Aellyce didn’t know how she got half of it. The books, especially, mostly manga and comics, had covers that were raunchy beyond belief.

  Celeste was still grinning, waiting for Aellyce’s approval.

  “Ah...”

  “Isn’t it cool, all the things Proton is capable of? And we limit it to PDA software and ship controls... I’ve been using it to generate fanfiction for weeks now, boy does it make some good stuff.”

  “I guess there’s nobody left to write anyway, huh?”

  “Yep. Just me and my ideas. And the Proton has a personality anyway — it learns, y’know?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Celeste spun her chair to face Aellyce. “Well, it’s almost living. Consciousness tests in the early 3000s proved that Proton-IDV was more or less sentient. Now we’re onto Proton-B, specifically Proton-BCel, courtesy of me, and I can attest that it’s basically alive.”

  “Basically?”

  She sighed. “I’m not gonna spell it out for you, man. But Proton is just like you, or me, or Bella, or even Longwood. It has its own personality, it learns, it creates. Sometimes it creates of its own accord, without even being prompted. Those Caskets you and LW took out were its own designs — though the shoddy build was my own fault. It knew that I was working on a design, and it offered to help.”

  “Like HAL9000...”

  Aellyce flinched suddenly as Celeste shot a hair tie at her like a rubber band. “Not like HAL! People always make that stupid comparison! Proton is Proton, end of story!”

  Aellyce didn’t argue with that — she was more perplexed by the fact that Celeste even owned a single hair tie. “So how do you interface with it?”

  “I type, usually.” She pointed to one of the dozen CRTs, a green command line blinking idly on the screen. “But you can talk, too. My understanding is that it’s too shy to speak back audibly.”

  “...Really?” Aellyce approached the computer. “Can it hear me now?”

  The screen blinked rapidly: I CAN. HELLO, AELLYCE. IT’S SO NICE TO MEET YOU.

  Creepy... Is this why Celeste is so eccentric? Because she spends all of her time talking to a computer? Or does she talk to the computer because she’s so eccentric?

  ARE YOU GOING TO BE WORKING DOWN HERE FROM NOW ON?

  “Huh? Oh, no — I’m just here to help out while my Levels recoup.”

  SORRY ABOUT YOUR LEVELS. IT’S GOOD THAT YOU’RE SAFE.

  “Yeah. That’s really the worst of it so far. I can’t complain.”

  “I’m sure you could, but we don’t wanna hear that anyway.”

  Aellyce made a sour face toward Celeste, who then started mashing keys, typing more to Proton.

  The text flashed across the screen almost faster than Aellyce could read it. Proton replied at lightning speed to every fast-typed message sent from Celeste. It was like they had a shorthand just between the two of them — like they were in sync.

  “We’ve got work to do. Say goodbye to Proton for now.”

  “Oh—goodbye, Proton.”

  GOODBYE, AELLYCE.

  The screen shut off.

  “Hope you brought your jacket,” Celeste said as she threw a dark green military jacket over her shoulders, identical to the one Longwood was wearing, if a bit more worn and stained. “It gets cold in the Underbelly.”

  Aellyce nodded, and quickly lifted her own matching jacket from the hook on the door behind her...

  “Hey, Cel...?”

  “Not my name. Watch the cables at your feet, trip hazard.”

  They went through a narrow, dark corridor, lit only by the dim light from Celeste’s PDA screen.

  “You don’t like the nickname?” asked Aellyce. “I thought you liked when Longwood called you that. And what about that Proton variant, BCel...?”

  “My name is Celeste. Like Celestial. Space. We’re in space.”

  Aellyce blinked. Her personality is the furthest thing from charming. “Celeste, then—why don’t you drink coffee?”

  “Haah?”

  “Bella said you’re not a coffee drinker. Don’t you get the jitters?”

  “No.”

  “But everyone else does.”

  “I was born up here.”

  Aellyce stopped walking. Her breath came out in big puffs of steam. “You were born in space?”

  “In sector 3-A, Earthside. I don’t get jitters. Jitters are for Earthborn who come up here.”

  “But... What’s the difference?”

  “Acclimation.”

  Seeing that Celeste had no intention of stopping for their conversation, Aellyce began to follow her again.

  “I was born in space, so my bones are different. My body is different. My muscles are different. My DNA might even be different. You look at me, you see a freak—”

  “I don’t.”

  “—but I’ve never grown up in a Earth society. I’m just doing what comes naturally.”

  “So you’ve always had an affinity for technology?”

  “Technology was all I had in 3-A. My room had CDs and a few computers, some limited access to the ships main controls. There was a CD to request food, a CD to request drinks... a CD to make a toilet slide out of the wall. It was denigrating.”

  “So how’d you escape? Or, did something change? How did you end up here?”

  “I used the computer to hack the ship’s main door system, forced all of the doors open, jettisoning myself and everyone else into space. I survived by holding my breath, and covering my ears for as long as I possibly could. I floated right into White Horse, set up shop in the Underbelly, and lived here until Bella came along and appropriated the whole ship for her mercenary business. Basically, me and Proton are part of this ship. We're the natives, and you're all the filthy Americans coming to manifest destiny or whatever.”

  There was a lot to unpack in that. “That’s... Does space work like that? Surely you can’t just hold your breath and survive that kind of vacuum?”

  “You can’t.”

  “But you did?”

  Celeste stopped walking so abruptly that Aellyce almost walked into her.

  “Aellyce—”

  She froze up, ready to be reprimanded for being annoyingly pestering — even if Celeste had done it first.

  Celeste craned her neck backward slowly, uncomfortably, like a zombie rising from the grave. Her face, in the dim, pale light, was dull, and lifeless. “I lied.”

  Aellyce felt her face turn red. I’m not really that gullible, am I!?

  “But we’re just about there now, anyway.”

  Aellyce looked up—the tunnel ahead opened up into a much larger tunnel. It was still too dark to see, but she was grateful that she’d be out of Celeste’s stink soon enough.

  “Proton, can we get some light?”

  A blinding light suddenly filled all of the tunnels, the ones behind them included. Aellyce gawked, and asked, “You could have done that the entire time...?”

  Celeste slipped her hands into the pockets of her oversized jacket. “I like the suspense. Anyway — welcome to the Engineering Ward.”

  And as Aellyce stepped into that huge, huge chamber, she could only gasp, and mutter a perplexed “Woah...!”