Rebecca looked up into the dusty sky and saw the two figures slowly appear over the ridge of the hill. Her muscles ached from both age and the past few days of work—work which would have been hastened by her husband and sons had they not been elsewhere. Her thoughts briefly wandered to them and then back to the task at hand. She’d been mending fences on the ranch for the better part of three days, and was getting sick of it. A brief respite would be nice, Rebecca thought as she stood up. The two people were approaching on horseback, and Rebecca knew them fairly well. “Mrs. Lange!” One of them yelled as they turned up the long drive to the ranch. Rebecca slowly walked along the fence line toward them. The man she knew as William Patterson, a local rancher on a plot about four miles away. The other figure was his wife. Rebecca briefly mulled over the woman’s name in her head and finally settled on Lucy. Both of them were very young, probably no older than early twenties. The Pattersons reached the end of the drive before William spoke again. “Mrs. Lange, we was just passing on our way to town, and we thought we’d stop by.” Rebecca pulled her hat down, and let it dangle by the strap across the back of her neck. Her brown hair was wavy and wild, and had more gray in it than most people realized. “Why sure Bill. I was going to rest for a while anyway. Gorram fences are pissing me off.” Rebecca stepped over to help Lucy off her horse. She was very obviously pregnant. “Bill, why’d you bring your wife out today? She needs rest.” “Oh,” Lucy said quietly as she climbed off the horse. “Ma’am I wanted to go with him. I don’t get to town all that often, and when he said he’d be coming this way, I thought I’d join him for the trip. It don’t bother me none riding on the horse.”

“Hand me the scrappers gel.” Theo said though his EVA’s com unit. He and his crew were currently floating in the black, trying to salvage an old luxury liner that had lost power. All of the passengers and crew had abandoned ship and been picked up by an alliance cruiser, but their rapid departure left a lot of unclaimed goods, ripe to be taken by the right salvager. In this case, that happened to be Theo Lange. Edwin, his youngest son, reached down and grabbed the tube of scrappers gel and handed it to his father, who leaned down and sprayed a ring of the clear jelly around the bulkhead—large enough to ensure a standard freight crate would fit through. Theo was pretty sure that ship was completely powered down, which meant that the life support probably stopped too. Even still, he wanted to be sure that a pressure blow out wouldn’t occur, so after setting the scrapper gel, he and Edwin cleared the bulkhead. It took him a few moments to get his power strip and probe out, but Theo activated the gel which began eating away at the bulkhead. A few moments later it stopped, and Theo reached over and pulled the loose bulkhead out of the way. The two of them slipped inside, turning on their helmet lights. As they started looking around, there was a slight crackling over the com, and Edwin’s brother, Isaac, came on. “Be careful in there. I’m reading some residual atmo in places.” Edwin smiled inwardly. It was his first time actually going into a derelict with his father. Normally, he’d pilot The Dory, the Firefly class transport they used as a salvage ship, but this time he drew the long stick and got to go out. They had cut through one of the lifeboat hatches, and now stood in a long hallway. The battery powered safety lights still illuminated the hall, casting an eerie reddish hue on everything. Isaac began speaking again. “My diagram says that deck four is the passenger berths, so you’ll wanna start there and make your way down to the cargo deck. I’ll have Danny boy get in his EVA suit and bring the crates back over here.”

William looked out of the window at the ranches new water processor. “So,” He said after sipping his lemonade. “Your husband and boys got the water processor complete. That is a bit of new tech I’d love to get my hands on. It’s been so dry this year.” Rebecca poured a glass of lemonade and handed it to Lucy, who sipped at it thirstily. “Yeah, it is a beautiful piece of machinery. It’s gonna drive down our operating cost, and we’ll not have to worry about the wells or river drying up.” Rebecca sat down in her husband Theo’s chair. It was old, and the cushion was barely covering the seat and back, but it always smelled like him, which is why Rebecca loved it. “Do you want to go take a look at it?” William turned toward her, his face glowing. “Could I? I mean I’d love to see how it works. Maybe I can get my own working.” “Sure. Go ahead. Just don’t touch nothing. If you don’t mind, I’ll sit here a spell and talk with your wife.” Wordlessly, William set his lemonade down and rushed outside. Lucy sipped her drink again and spoke. “It must be hard,” She said. “Running this ranch by yourself, with your husband and sons in the black.” Rebecca looked up, her face hardening a bit. “No. It’s not. It’s what we do. They do their thing, and I do mine, and they know they’ll come back to a fully functioning ranch just the same as I know that all four of em’ll come back to me.” She knew that she was lying to Lucy. Every time they left she felt her heart sink, and every time she got a wave, she prayed it wasn’t bad news. “If you don’t mind, and it isn’t too forward of me, I’m going to give you a bit of advice...”

The search for good salvage wasn’t what Edwin thought it would be. It was tedious, long and uncertain. They’d spent the past six hours on the fourth deck looking for personal belongings and other cargo they could sell. While they found little in the way of substantive salvage, they did happen on some little things: Safes with jewelry, loose cash, electronics and other assorted stuffs. So far, six crates had been sent back to The Dory with his brother Daniel. Still, Edwin was holding out hope that they’d find more as they continued their search. He and Theo had split up to cover more ground, with Theo at the front of the ship checking out the companions lounge while Edwin was nearing the VIP lounge at the aft. Heading toward the rear, Edwin was confronted with his first internal bulkhead. He withdrew his scrappers gel and slowly began to line the outside of the bulkhead with it. After he was done, Edwin set down a powerstrip and inserted the probe into the gel. A moment later, he keyed his com. “I’ve found a bulkhead sealing the VIP lounge. I’m gonna pop it.” Standing off to the side, Edwin pushed the toggle on the powerstrip as his com crackled. “Edwin, be careful. Sometimes the acid reacts with the-“a moment later, there was a violent explosion. Edwin felt huge chunks of the bulkhead strike him, throwing him backward. Many of them perforated his suit, and he realized in horror that his face plate was fragmenting as well. The explosion continued to rock through the lounge, and from space, huge pieces of the ship’s aft could be seen being torn asunder. Feeling the explosion, Theo began making his way toward the aft of the ship, hoping that the scrappers gel didn’t mix with some of the hydraulic fluid that older ships used. It was rare, but sometimes the acid could mix with the fluid and if there was some air in the line, it could cause a chemical explosion. Edwin grabbed the side of the ship to stop his momentum, and exhaled deeply as the faceplate shattered. Immediately the world fell silent.

“It’s not an easy life we lead.” Rebecca said, looking at Lucy. “We’re about as far removed from what most people call civilization as you can get. Now we can get into all sorts of semantic differences about what civilization is, but we are not like them as live in the core. It is a hard path to walk out here. One day you may wake up and your husband may be sick, or maybe you or your child. He,” Rebecca said, nodding toward William, who was on top of the water processor. “May break a bone or fall off his horse and not be able to walk anymore. That were the case, most people’d die before getting to a doctor or a medic. It don’t matter none, because our lives are filled with tragedy from the moment we make the choice to be here.” “The only thing we have,” Rebecca continued. “Is duty. We can love and we can hurt, and we can hope and dream, but in the end, we have to go on and do our damndest to make sure that we don’t fail in our duty—because one false step, one mistake, and someone don’t come home. It’s all we have to keep our lives the way they are.” Rebecca stared at Lucy in stoic silence, watching the young woman look at her husband through the window. “Now, when you due?” “Um,” Lucy said as tears welled up. “About a month.” “Well then,” Rebecca said as she took the half finished glass from Lucy’s hand. “You best be getting home and staying there. Don’t want to put too much stress on that little one, do you?” She reached down and helped Lucy up. “I know it’s hard to be pent up here, especially for someone who’s not use to this life. But, now ain’t about you. Now is about someone else.”

Theo got to Edwin just as he saw him pass out. He had already withdrawn the parinux syringe from his hip pouch and quickly plunged the needle through Edwin’s suit and into his heart. He simultaneously toggled his com. “Edwin’s down and his suit’s compromised. Get the EV bag over here now! I’m making my way back to the hatch.” Theo grabbed Edwin and effortlessly lifted him, tucking his son’s arms into the harnesses and grabbing the egress handle on the back of Edwin’s suit. He prayed that the hypercoagulant and adrenalin he’d just injected his son with would offset the tissue damage that was probably wreaking havoc on Edwin’s body. It took Theo over two minutes to get through the ship to the hatch, where Daniel was waiting with the EV bag. They quickly put Edwin inside and inflated it, a moment that seemed to Theo to stretch on forever.

William and Lucy had left, leaving Rebecca to her thoughts. She had hoped that she wasn’t too hard on the young woman, but also that she was hard enough. Despite the love she felt for her ranch and her family, Rebecca believed every word she had told the young woman. As they departed, back home at Lucy’s request, Rebecca watched them, feeling a bit hopeful. Turning to go back inside, she heard the familiar chime of a wave broadcast. Her feeling slowly slipped away as she sat down. The CORTEX terminal was in standby mode, but Rebecca didn’t move to activate it yet. That familiar feeling of dread had started welling up as the console chimed again. Sighing, she toggled it on. Her husband’s face was there suddenly, his eyes glazed, red, and sober. He was in his EVA suit, with Daniel and Isaac behind him. The looks on their faces were unmistakable, and immediately Rebecca knew.