2026 Monthly Story Challenge #2

Interface

By Jayde Holmes

Art by Benjamin Whelan, aka Zumad. Check out his Instagram HERE

Potential Content Warning: Very angsty, characters longing for non-existence. War setting.

Seth’s arm shook as he lifted a gauntlet laden with cables. As he did the arm of the Red Comet covered its face cameras, and he felt the impact of his opponent’s strike on his mech’s protective gauntlet. Only one impact, despite Blue Comet being a dual wielder. He checked the air-current monitor, felt for mass pulling on Red Comet’s gravity core, and found a disturbance to his left. He felt a twinge from the port on the back of his neck as he blocked Blue Comet’s second strike with the sword in his off hand.

“DISENGAGE!” Sargent Hedley shouted from the passenger seat behind him. Her voice boomed over the field, and the fighting mechs backed away from each other, retreating to separate edges of the running track. Both mechs were aerodynamic with jagged edges to break up their silhouettes. Standard Comet class design. Their bodies were dark grey with white speckles to help with space camouflage, with their colours and insignia being limited to panels that could be tucked away for stealth if needed.

Besides their colours and serial numbers, the two mechs differed due to their biological components. Blue Comet had been made from a particularly large satellite-eater, with the back spikes of the spinal column so long they poked out of the segmented armour cubes along its back, forcing the pilot into an awkwardly positioned external cockpit. It stood taller than the other comet mechs even though they’d had to shorten it for the new the pilot, converting the end of the spine into a tail and encasing its feet in cable-wrapped boots to compensate for the shortened nerves.

His Red Comet’s satellite-eater had been stockier, with a ribcage so wide that the builders had decided to coat it in titanium and let it sit outside the metal chest plate, framing the gravity core in the mech’s belly. To compensate for his disability, they had allowed more biomass to grow around the nerves in the legs. Dark green satellite-eater skin peeked between the joints of the human-made metal limbs like scars.

Seth finished walking Red Comet to the corner of the field, making sure to pull the leg pistons with the stumps of his legs for every step, despite the neural interface being able to regulate his gait. He took a hand out of the control gauntlet and lowered the cockpit mirror so he could see Drill Sargent Hedley. She put away her microphone, then tapped on a tablet wired up to the Red Comet.

“What was that Corporal?”

“I parried Blue Comet’s second attack, sir!” he said.

“You acted through the neural interface” Hedley said. “Combat assessor indicates that you had ample time to manually parry.”

“I respectfully disagree, sir” Seth said. “With face camera vision obscured, I relied on manually reading data and did not have the response time needed to input hand movements manually.”

“Corporal Knightly, what is your brain currently hooked up to?”

“Sir, there was no way –“

“What is your brain hooked up to Corporal?”

“The nervous system of a mysterious space beast that roams the galaxy incorporating anything with electricity into its body, sir!”

“And what is your brain full of Corporal?”

“Electricity, sir!”

“And what happens to people whose minds get entangled with the satellite-eater nervous system?”

“They are assimilated, sir!”

“What does that mean, Corporal?”

“That they lose themselves, sir. They become part of the mech, I mean the creature, no longer human. Sir.”

“Do you want to lose your humanity and merge into your Red Comet, Corporal Knightly?”

“No sir!”

“Then you will get your reaction time up fast enough to fight manually, do you hear me?”

“Yes sir!”

“That neural interface is for multitasking, gravity core movement, emergencies, and for you, walking only. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir!”

“Due to your disability, you especially must master the manual interface. Is that understood?”

“Yes sir! Permission to ask a question sir?”

“Granted.”

“Why did they even reassign an injured soldier to mech piloting if this was going to be such an issue?”

He saw a grin creep onto her face. A bit of humanity amused at his annoyance.

“Why did you even agree to this assignment then Corporal? You know, I’m sure you remaining in action saves the Io Defence Force money in some way.”

“Even if I get assimilated and Red Comet flies off?”

“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.”

“Not do or die?”

“It’s do and die if you don’t get those reaction times up” Hedley said, her indulgence running out. “One lap around the track, as manual as possible. Now!”

Seth didn’t complain as he felt the neural interface fade. Why bother? His head was full of memories of superior officers he couldn’t place asking the impossible from him.

He sat up straighter, turned his body back towards the track, and started lifting his stumps, the counterweights more noticeable as he wobbled along. There was an onboard AI to manage balance, and the gravity core from the original satellite-eater kept Red Comet upright without him thinking about it. Still, the neural interface had been handling so many tiny movements automatically, which was helpful when since he couldn’t wear the control boots.

It was slow going around the track. They walked past the steel domes and strongholds of the base, towards the edge of the field. Here the base of the colony-dome marked an abrupt shift between artificial turf on concrete, and the black and yellow plains of small volcanos and steam vents that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, Jupiter was at its lowest point on the horizon and being kissed by the rising sun. The storm clouds seemed to glow in this fresh light, and the dim sunrise was slowly illuminating the Ioan craters.

He’d always enjoyed that view, despite the way the dome distorted it. He had a sketchpad with a half complete drawing of Jupiter seeing sunrise over the field, but he hadn’t touched it in months. At first, he’d been too physically exhausted after training. Now, he just couldn’t be bothered. Laying in bed with his personal-pad was enough recreation.

Today he barely even noticed the view. All his concentration was put towards putting one of Red Comet’s feet in front of the other. For all of Hedley’s talk about keeping him human, he couldn’t help but think she was doing a good job of turning him into a machine component.

He managed to daydream for a bit about similar mind-numbing repetitiveness from physical training. Being forced to run up and down hills, and swimming endless laps in the swimming pool while drill instructors he couldn’t place screamed at him.

His step faltered and he shook his head. He didn’t know where all these memories were coming from, and he needed all his focus to complete the lap.

Back in the centre of the track, Green Comet and Teal Comet were duelling, whilst Blue Comet was doing push ups and jumping jacks. Hedley made him stop at unexpected moments to do similar exercises. Without the ankle boots, he had to contort his body like a broken piston to do something resembling push ups. By the time he got up, Teal and Green had finished fighting.

It would look bad if he kept failing these exercises, and flunking out of the mecha unit was unacceptable. He blocked out the next duel. He blocked out the stunning view across the steam fields, and he put Red Comet’s left foot forward. Then he clenched the muscles in the back of his thigh that would bend Red Comet’s right knee and put the right leg forward.

Then he did it again.

___________________________________________________

 The creature had been flying through space for eons before becoming Red Comet. It had once been a person, much like the one sitting inside it with their brain hooked into it. It had encountered another person once, lost in space with no hope of survival. It had eaten them, and their fear had gone.

That person had become a part of itself, just like the sheets of metal and the computers it had collected and grafted to its body. Together they knew the joy of eternity. Endless freedom. No pain. No thinking. Just flying, with the whole pod. Feeling the presence of others, but with no messy interactions. Happiness. Peace. Not dying, not loneliness.

But this person was different. Not dying, not alone like the survivor, and not yet edible. There was a divide. Structures that kept them separate, except for one thin opening, that was sharing more and more every time it opened. That was enough for Red Comet to feed on the brain electricity. To feed on the thoughts. To hold thoughts and regurgitate them, until maybe, some of these thoughts might be its own.

It was always getting new memories. Battles on volcanoes, or an endless icy ocean. Explosions in space. Laying in a tiny berth in a shuttle, with no purpose save waiting for battle. Violence. Pain. And certain movements over and over again. Exercises. Attack Patterns. repeated until they were automatic. Until they replaced the other thoughts.

The patterns were stronger now. Right leg forward. Left leg forward. Right. Left. Drop. Repetitive, but that was fine. Everything was fine for it; that’s how it had been made. Many times now. 

It was confined again. That was fine too. The atmosphere of this planet was full of electricity, and when confined that energy was pumped directly into it. It could also feel the presence of others of its kind, but like it, but there were no feelings worth sharing.

The person inside it severed the thin connection, and Red Comet’s ability to think was gone. It returned to the blissful stupor it had been lost in for the past millennia.   

___________________________________________________

“DISENGAGE!” said the instructor, Sargent Ahmed this time. Seth disengaged from the fight with Teal Commet and floated away. Even passively, the gravity core kept Red Comet orientated so that the fiery surface of Io was beneath its feet, and the storms of Jupiter above its head. He’d once been enthralled by this orbital arena, but now he was used to it. He adjusted his mirror so he could see Sargent Ahmed scowling at him.

“Corporal Knightly, is there a reason you have been letting so many obvious  deadly attacks through?”

“My manual reflexes must be improved, sir!”

“Do the Europans carry practice swords like Teal Comet, Corporal?”

“Maybe when they do drills, sir!”

“Forty laps around the arena, gravity core movement only!”

“Yes sir!”

Seth felt his connection through the neural interface tingle as he thrust the gravity core out from Red Comet’s belly and swung it towards the frames of the sphere that held the arena. It was a small black sphere encased in a tilted cube, like a black diamond. They’d come off the satellite eaters, after having pulled them through the deaths of space. They could not be replicated and could only be moved with a satellite-eater mind. Red Comet was pulled after the core, and Seth took his thumbs off the thruster trigger. Satellite-eaters hadn’t had thrusters, that was a human crutch.  

“I would have thought someone crippled by Europa would understand that there is no mercy in this war” Ahmed said.

“Yes sir!” Seth said as he weaved Red Comet through marked gaps in the arena frame. As much as he preferred the neural interface, doing such precise movements with only the gravity core was already giving him a headache. He felt a pulse throbbing at his temple as Ahmed lectured him on how dead he’d be on a real battlefield if he didn’t use every tool available to him.

Neither Ahmed nor Hedley was more correct on the matter, and in fact he’d seen them both argue the opposite positions many times. As his stomach turned due to a miscalculated swing around the core, he found his anger at this familiar lose-lose situation dissipate.

He’d begun to feel something calling him through the neural port, and he realised that when Hedley and the others described the mechs as ‘mysterious space beasts’, the mysterious part was more important that he’d ever realised.

No-one knew how to safely pilot these things. No-one really know how much neural entanglement was safe.

“Why are you stopping, Corporal?” Ahmed said.

“Sorry sir!” Seth said, flinging the core to a far-off flag and feeling an ache in his navel as Red Comet was pulled after it. He tried to ignore the images that flashed through his mind as he leant further into the mental connection. Images of a peaceful flight through space surrounded by beautiful stars. A flight that he could take any time if he just flew away.

It was a nice change from the flashes of space battles he usually replayed while in the arena. For the first time in months, Seth longed for something.  

___________________________________________________

Red Comet had no memory of being hurt, but now that it could think, it knew it had been before. But that was fine, it couldn’t be hurt now.

Except when its person was. 

Something unfair happened to the person. Another person, an inaccessible blob inside Red Comet, said something unfair, and Red Comet’s person got angry.

The person got angry, and that anger bought clarity. Red Comet realised that it was not supposed to feel these things. It was supposed to never feel anything bad again. For the first time since ancestral humans emerged from the trees, it was angry.

The memories were worse. Memories of the soldier, its camp and all the people it had fought beside burning. Memories of injuries, of pain so great it made the soldier curl up and beg to die. Memories of doing terrible, terrible things.

It still didn’t know what these memories meant. Thinking didn’t come naturally and was only possible while piloted. But it knew these thoughts hurt, and it didn’t want to hurt.

The person’s anger dissipated, and Red Comet lost its rage.

Then the physical connection between them was severed again, but the mental connection lingered for a bit, like the togetherness it had with the rest of the pod.

There were only seconds where Red Comet was in this in-between state, where it didn’t have the person inside, but it still had the capabilities to think and feel.

In those seconds, it felt a deep longing to go back to flying mindlessly with its pod.

___________________________________________________

Towards the end of the training session, Seth and Red Comet sparred with Green Comet. They were on the field, and Hedley and the other instructors had disembarked to compare notes. Even alone in the cockpit, he didn’t over-rely on the neural interface. He was getting better at judging when he had to use it.

But sometimes, it felt like Red Comet was reacting on its own.

Green swung low at Red. Seth sidestepped and slammed the sword pommel into a gap in Green’s spine armour. It would have been an impossible manoeuvre on full manual, but Red Comet got into position fast enough for Seth to make the precision strike.

Red Comet.

Seth didn’t like to think about it, but he was finding it hard to know what actions were his and what were Red Comet’s. He knew he should report the entanglement, but a comment Hedley had made a couple of weeks ago haunted him.

“I’m sure you remaining in action saves the Io Defence Force money in some way Corporal.”

He’d thought she’d been joking at the time, but he’d never seen any humour in her before or since. What would the Io Defence Force do with him if he couldn’t fight? Was there room on the moon for another disabled vet with no family?

Except he wasn’t a vet, despite dreaming of battles. He was just a recruit who got promoted because he agreed to pilot a mech. He kept dreaming of pulling the trigger on Europan soldiers he hadn’t yet encountered, even though he’d lost both legs when his camp had been attacked during basic training.

Even before then, there hadn’t been a place for him. Stray missiles from a low orbit dogfight had blown a hole in his town’s dome while he was away, drowning everyone he’d cared about in sulphur.   

Hot tears ran down his face as he kept attacking Green Comet.

He’d lost his legs, lost his family, lost his friends, lost any joy he’d ever been able to squeeze out of the world. He wasn’t about to be forced back to his ruined life just because some undead space whale wanted to eat his brain.

“What the hell Knightly?” Green Comet’s pilot’s voice cracked over his radio. “You already won, stop it.”

 Red Comet jumped back. Seth realised that he’d been wailing on Green Comet whilst it was still on the ground. He sheathed his sword and turned his radio on. He struggled to keep his voice even as he wiped his eyes and muttered an apology.

“Corporal Knightly” Hedley’s voice came over the radio cold as steel. He turned Red Comet to look at her and the other instructors. She had her personal-pad in her hands and was staring up at him with an expression he couldn’t read from so far away.

“One lap full manual, sir?” Seth asked.

The began talking amongst themselves, and he wished he could see Hedley better. She also piloted a Comet, could she detect they were merging? She looked up at Red Comet and he felt his heart racing.

“Go to the hanger Corporal” she said. “You’ve had enough for today.”

“Um, yes sir” he said, making Red Comet give a salute. He made Red reach out to help Green up. Green took the offered hand with minimal swearing.

“Yeah sorry, that was uncalled for” Seth said, face wet but voice back to normal. “Almost as much as your language.”

“Seriously, what did I do to piss you off that much?” Green’s pilot asked.

“It wasn’t you” Seth said. “Just an interface issue with the Red Comet.”

They parted ways, and Seth walked Red Comet back to the hanger. A casual walk, not full manual. Though after all the training they’d done, their casual walk involved a healthy mix of the two methods. He focused on his steps maybe more than he normally would, as if maybe that could ward off the looming assimilation.

Jupiter hung over the horizon like always, and its swirling clouds stayed in the periphery of Red Comet’s vision. As Seth considered whether there was any point in resisting assimilation, a flare from the gas giant caught his eye. Red Comet whipped around in response. Nothing manual about the reaction at all. They scanned the horizon, looking for some sign of battle.

There was an aurora on the pole. Not uncommon, but it was rare they could be seen from Io, especially through the domes. Blue flares rippled on the planet, like a current of electricity dancing over the clouds. Seth stood transfixed, following the slowly fading movements of the aurora and the way Jupiter’s clouds shifted like sand art, with tiny flashes of blue and white hinting at the lightning beneath.

It was the very beauty Red Comet was longing for. The type of awe that kept the satellite-eaters enthralled on their endless journey, he could experience right here.

He shook his head and turned down the neural link. Why did he know that satellite-eaters were enthralled by beautiful astronomy? He made the rest of the trek to the hanger manually, and almost managed to get Red Comet on the charger without the neural interface. He had to re-engage it for the final connection, and when he did Red Comet hit him with visions.

Visions of millions of satellite-eaters flying in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, skimming along an aurora that put the little sparks from Jupiter to shame. They didn’t have much more organic matter naturally than they did as mechs, but it was his first time seeing satellite-eater limb bones, which were covered in radiation collector panels and spread out. Outside their skeletons, each satellite-eater body was a unique amalgamation of flesh, minerals, and random machinery from various civilizations. They had whale-like skulls that were missing from the mechs, with giant mechanical jaws bolted on. 

They had swum in a sea of light and gas that sparkled like gemstones, with an inhuman theremin-like tone ringing through the whole pod. Red Comet scooped up the debris of an old satellite, and it never had to worry that an attack was coming.

“But you were attacked” Seth whispered. He said it knowing that Red Comet didn’t care. It didn’t care about anything; it just experienced happiness all the time. It could be the same for him. They just needed to fully power Red Comet’s gravity core so it could fly out to Saturn, where the pod was scavenging.

“What are you?” Seth said, crying again. “What the hell are you?”

More visions of swimming through space entered his mind, so Seth forced Red Comet to connect to the charger and yanked out the neural jack.

He couldn’t report what he’d discovered. That being a satellite-eater meant having no thoughts and no sense of self. It seemed horrific, but in that state, they’d created a peace that he knew he’d never experience even if the war ended tomorrow.

It terrified him. But the thought of never again experiencing the peace Red Comet had felt as it flew through the aurora river was unthinkable.

Seth buried his face in his hands and kept crying.

___________________________________________________

“What are you?” the person had asked. Red Comet couldn’t remember being asked anything before, and the nature of the question was devastating. What was Red Comet? It only had a few seconds to think about it, now that it could think alone, but the topic was too painful.

Red Comet didn’t have a sense of self. It didn’t know what it was. The closest it could get was thinking about what the humans had done to it, to think about what the Red Comet mecha was, but that said nothing about what it had been for most of its existence.

It was easier for Red Comet to flip the question around. What was Seth Knightly?

Seth Knightly was a creature who could beheld the aurora on a gas giant and appreciate what he saw in a way that Red Comet never had.

Before Red Comet’s thoughts faded away, it wondered what it would have thought about the aurora it and the pod had swum through if it could think back then.

___________________________________________________

“Are you alright Red Comet? Over” the pilot of Blue Comet said over the radio. Seth shook his head. He’d been imagining himself in space, like he was now, going after a supply convoy, as they were about to do. Except, instead of piloting a mech, he’d been flying a space fighter, zipping through space station ruins with a tiny gravity core on the nose, shooting bulky enemy carries with recoil-free gravity slings. Bodies spilled out of the ships he hit.

“Why do I keep remembering shit that’s never happened?” he asked.

“Red Comet repeat? Over.”

“Sorry. Red Comet is good to go” he replied. “Just thinking too much about what’s about to happen. Over.”

She didn’t reply at first. The four rookie mechs floated together behind an asteroid, joined by an Orange Comet and Yellow Comet, as well as two Nova units with their gravity guns and a disc-shaped Planet Unit piloted by the Lieutenant leading their squad. When Red Comet’s radio crackled again, he expected it to be the Lieutenant ordering them to move in.

“Are you also thinking about the power cells the Europans are moving?” Blue’s pilot asked. “About how they could power our gravity cores? Give the Comets enough power to… you know.”

The haunting notes Red Comet had heard whilst flying through the aurora filled Seth’s mind.

“You copy Red?” Blue’s pilot asked.

Seth shook himself. Blue’s pilot was going through the same struggle he was. She knew what awaited them, and was offering to go for it? He opened his mouth, ready to talk her down, but closed it. He was so tired of resisting assimilation, and it wasn’t like losing wo mechs with rookie pilots would hurt Io that much. He was devoting nearly every waking moment to this war, but he knew he didn’t matter. Why keep resisting?

“Shall we go together, over?” he asked.

His radio sprung to life, but it wasn’t Blue. It was the Lieutenant, ordering them to move out. Seth flung the gravity core over the asteroid, then once Red was over, he used the thrusters to move into position.

Blue came back on the radio. She didn’t say anything intelligible. She didn’t need to.

They were going back to the pod.

___________________________________________________

Red Comet flew through space with the rest of the squad, using its gravity core to fling itself through the void at breakneck speeds, whilst Seth’s use of the thrusters allowed it to weave effortlessly around floating space debris.

Why hadn’t this debris been eaten yet?

Red Comet felt Seth’s confusion as the question popped into his head. The satellite-eaters had been redirected to Saturn as soon as they started eating important space stations, so he had no reason to be surprised by uneaten debris.

So where had the question come from?

They zoomed around an abandoned space station, and the enemy was in sight. Ten large shuttles, each with a former satellite-eater riding on top. Enemy former satellite-eaters broke off from the procession as Io’s advance team attacked. Red hadn’t been around so many of its kind since it was captured and transformed. It felt good to be back in space with a majestic gas giant below them, scraps of edible metal and electricity all around, and so many unthinking minds humming together.

Except they were fighting each other.

The pod had never been in conflict before.

Red Comet suddenly understood that not being in conflict was the purpose of the pod.

So why did such a perversion of its purpose feel so familiar? 

The Lieutenant gave an order, but Blue Comet had identified the shuttle with the power cells, and the pilots stopped to plot their course. They were ordered to follow but instead abandoned the squad. The pilots did something with their radio-settings and were now only talking to each other. That connection amplified the natural connection between Red and Blue. An emotion was shared between them. An emotion Red Comet couldn’t identify at first, even though it was thinking faster and clearer than ever before.

It realised they were both excited.

Excitement wasn’t something they could feel in the pod. Nor was camaraderie. Red Comet didn’t know how it felt about that.

It was excited because Seth was excited. He plotted the course towards the shuttle with the energy cells, adopting a circling approach to dodge the barrage of energy blasts being fired from the former satellite-eater mounted to it. The deadly lasers flying past them were terrifying, but each shot that passed raised Seth’s exhilaration.

Last time Red Comet had encountered a person facing death, they’d been helplessly resigned to their fate, not excited. Maybe it was different when there was a chance of survival? It had never encountered a person with a chance of living before.

Another enemy popped up, carrying a sword like Red Comet and a small projectile gun with no momentum cancelling capabilities. The interloper fired the projectile three times, and one of the shots grazed Red Comet’s shoulder.

Fear. Outrage. Terrible feelings that didn’t exist in the pod. Yet this wasn’t an unknown situation. It had had its wing grazed before and been fine. Ancient instincts kicked in, making its mind sharper as it drew on Seth’s training to take an effective defensive posture.

Then Blue Comet crashed into the enemy with its knees up. One of its swords sliced off the enemy’s head, whilst the other was plunged into the detachable cockpit on its back. Blue’s sword came out, along with the damaged cockpit. The pilot was alive at least long enough to turn on the ejector thrusters and leave as Blue kicked the twitching former satellite-eater away.

The pilots were whooping with excitement over the radio, celebrating their first real mecha duel victory. Their first battle was going well, and they were as excited about that as they were about escaping.

Red Comet’s gravity core glitched as it gained enough mental capacity to notice a discrepancy, forcing Seth to rely on the thrusters to dodge the next barrage from the shuttle’s defender. Red had realised that if Seth had never been in combat before, then he’d never had his fighter’s wing grazed in battle before, so the memories Red Comet had of fighting and killing couldn’t have come from Seth.

Red Comet and Blue Comet were soon upon the shuttle. Blue Comet zipped towards the cargo door, extending its colour-panels so the enemy guard would see it. With the guard distracted, Red Comet came in and drove its sword into the cockpit.

Seth was more horrified than expected, despite all the memories they had of killing.

Because this was Seth’s first time killing.

All the memories of combat they’d been sharing were Red Comet’s.

___________________________________________________

Seth kicked away the flailing Europa Pulsar unit. It was a clumsy action, and not just because the Pulsar was still tethered to the shuttle. The neural interface was bugging out, sending him visions of shooting down buildings, vehicles and columns of soldiers from a fighter plane. The manual controls were less responsive due to how much Seth was shaking. He’d just killed someone, and it was worse than he’d imagined, but somehow, he had a bigger problem.

“Those are your memories, aren’t they?” Seth asked Red Comet. “It looks like our fighters shooting Europans, but that’s just because you like, don’t remember what you or your enemy looked like, right? You were a soldier too.”

“What was that Red Comet? Over.” Blue’s pilot asked.

“Nothing. Just talking to the mech. I think being in combat is doing something to it. Over.”

“Ditto” Blue’s Pilot said. “They did warn us the mechs came alive in battle, but I don’t think it’s just that. Blue Comet seems conflicted. Over.”

“I don’t think this is normal either” Seth said. “We know these are two of the oldest units. Maybe after so many different pilots plugging in and so many battles, they might have crossed a threshold. Do you want to continue with the escape plan? I know I don’t want to keep going through this. Over.”

“I don’t want to keep fighting either” Blue’s Pilot said. “And I can feel how much Blue wants to go back. I can feel how much better that would be. But…”

The channel was open, but she had gone silent. Seth made Red Comet crawl to the edge of the spinning shuttle’s roof, trying to focus on the tumbling metal surface below him, rather than the burning corridors in his mind’s eye. He came to the edge and looked over. Blue Comet was hanging onto the bay doors. Its feet were hooked around support rungs, whilst the arms were braced as if to pull the doors apart but frozen in place.

Seth shouted over the radio, but it took a few tries to get a response. Blue Comet remained perfectly still.

“Sorry Red” Blue’s Pilot said. “I just, I don’t want the Europans to fly over Io and bomb Landing City again. Um, over.”

“Do you think we can do anything to stop that?” Seth said “Do you really think just two people can make a difference?”

“I don’t know” she said. “But I think Blue understands. And, I know this sounds stupid, but I started watching this gameshow from Earth the other day, and I don’t want to go flying into space without knowing if that truck driver wins the grand prize next week. Dumb, hey? Over.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty dumb” Seth said with a chuckle. “Was it a quiz show? Over?”

“A few quiz questions, but mostly silly mini-games. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to have stuff like that on Io? Over.”

“Maybe if we can end this war and get back to terraforming” Seth said. “So, any idea who this truck driver has to – “

Red Comet’s screens went black and the radio cut off. For a second, Seth wondered if he’d been hit, but then he heard Blue’s voice in the distance and realised that the equipment was still working, but he was losing awareness of his surroundings. He was being pulled into Red Comet’s mind.

He screamed as everything went black.

___________________________________________________

They remembered being in, a hospital? No, that wasn’t right. This had been a facility meant to patch up injured soldiers or sew broken ones to machines so they could fight again, but that wasn’t the same as healing them. But a hospital would do. This was Red Comet’s memory, but it was using Seth’s context.

They were in a field hospital, their body newly attached to rusty machine parts, when the ceasefire was announced. They went outside, wondering what came next. They were encamped in the ruins of a town that the Europans (or, whatever Red Comet’s enemy had been) had bombed to dust. They looked to the sky, reminded of the promise made during childhood that one day they would walk under a peaceful sun, in a sky that didn’t rain missiles, and they’d feel safe and happy.

But they couldn’t see the sun, nor breath the air without a filter-mask. It was daytime, but the ruins of thousands of battles filled the planet’s orbit, blocking the light. It was a grey, cold sky, and they realised that they’d never get that promised happiness.

They spent the next couple of days wandering around the camp. A ceasefire may have been called, but there were still hundreds of bodies that needed to be processed. During the grey days they wondered how they were supposed to make peace with the monsters who caused this slaughter. During the pitch-black nights, they laid awake wondering how many similar atrocities on Europa they had caused.

There were endless broadcasts. On their personal-pad as well as the communal screens and radios. None of them said peace was possible. The fighting hadn’t stopped because Europa and Io (or, whatever the factions had been in Red Comet’s war) had settled their differences. There was no desire to reconcile. They had only stopped fighting because mutual annihilation was unavoidable.

Even with all the nukes used up, their war could not continue. No children had been born in years, and not enough civilians remained to grow their crops, or build the machinery needed for farming. Even if everyone did beat their swords into ploughshares, the soil had been scorched, and the planet’s coat of space junk starved the crops.

Everything was too broken, and the effort being asked too much for a promise of peace and happiness that had been offered and taken away too many times.

A plan was proposed. Machines could be made to eat the space debris, clearing a path for the sun before flying off into the cosmos. There were no facilities capable of making computers that could operate such machines, but the same procedure that had grafted them to a war machine could be used to put a person’s nervous system into the satellite-eaters.

It would be peaceful, the people were assured. The brain could be altered to remove any capabilities that would make endlessly flying through space unpleasant. Enough inhumane experiments had been done to prove that such a lobotomized state was possible. As a bonus, the remains of the operator could be used to enrich the soil.

The question of who would become satellite-eaters threatened to end the ceasefire, until it emerged that there were already volunteers on both sides. Conversion became an offer rather than a demand. An application for was sent out to every person, explaining the procedure, what it would be like to lose oneself, and offering the chance to volunteer.

They thought about it as they finished cleaning up the bodies. Their family were all dead, as were most of their friends. There were still some people they cared about, but they weren’t close to anyone. They’d put a lot of effort into not getting close to anyone after the first dozen losses. Their home city was somewhat intact, but it was unlikely they still had a place there. Even if they did, their body was different now. They were finding the changes easier to manage than they’d imagined, but they didn’t move and live how others did, and they couldn’t imagine the world accommodating their new needs.

They volunteered to be a satellite-eater.

As did most people on their world.

They didn’t relive the memories that came after that decision. Red Comet had spent most of the preparation for extinction in a daze. There had been some who wanted to fight for survival, but they were asking too much. Flying peacefully into space and never feeling pain again was too appealing. The holdouts agreed to become satellite-eater builders, and peace was achieved when the population of the planet ascended to the heavens as mindless beasts.

Red Comet didn’t think it regrated the decision. Its world was already a corpse of a planet when the plan had been proposed. But the human worlds weren’t dying. And Seth was only damaged, not doomed.

It hadn’t experienced hope since long before its conversion, but now the promise of its childhood was being offered again. Peace and happiness were possible.

For Seth Knightly. Not for Red Comet.

Red Comet was surprised by how much of itself had returned, but it knew that this was its limit. It was only able to access these parts of itself because they were similar enough to the experiences that Seth and its previous pilots had gone through. But Seth had never been to its world. He had no idea what it was like there, so there was no way Red Comet would be able to retrieve any memories of daily life. The only exception seemed to be the details of the satellite-eater plan, but that was probably because it was the last thing whoever Red Comet used to be had thought about.

Everything that had made Red Comet unique was lost forever.

Whoever it had been, that person no longer had a presence in the universe. They could view it, but they couldn’t reflect on it, couldn’t add anything of their own to it.

Except maybe through Seth.

Seth Knightly was still a person. Red Comet had seen some wonderous things while flying through space, but most of its time was spent flying through a desolate, empty cosmos. It knew that people able to see the universe and reshape it were the rarest of all the wonders, and by removing its own personhood, it had taken something precious from existence. It could never appreciate what was around it or make any changes to reality.

Maybe Seth could be Red Comet’s interface with the universe, and through him it could work towards something better, in a way it couldn’t back home.

But it would be such a hard path, and the pod was in reach.

Red Comet and Seth snapped back to reality. The screens came clear and they saw Blue Comet thrashing around as the will of the mech and the pilot clashed. Seth was crying. Red Comet took out its sword and slashed through the roof of the shuttle. Oxygen rushed out.

If we slash like this, the cores might float out and Blue Comet can get them Seth thought. Red Comet still couldn’t come up with an idea complex enough to help, but Seth could. He just didn’t know if he wanted to do it.

Red Comet acted. It turned onto its back, dug its sword into the roof to use as a pole, found handles along the roof for its free hand and feet, and positioned itself so its thrusters plugged the hole it had made with its sword, ready to incinerate the whole cargo.

It hadn’t had thrusters as a satellite-eater though, so they could only be fired manually.

Seth was still thinking about the peace awaiting with the pod.

Red Comet couldn’t talk to Seth, but memories and feelings could still be shared. Sharing hope was hard when it had so little experience with it, but some must have gotten through.

Seth activated the thrusters, and the shuttle exploded.

___________________________________________________

Today’s training session was over, but Seth was still in Red Comet’s cockpit, sitting on the track and looking at Jupiter. He was still angry at it, but getting back into the cockpit after being grounded felt good. He was sore and tired from training on unfamiliar muscles, but he had gotten back into the habit of drawing every day and didn’t want to break it.

He sat in the cockpit, relaxed with the manual controls detached, sketchbook on his lap and coloured pencils in every crevice around him. Outside, the sun was peeling back Jupiter’s shadow on a field coated in frozen gasses. Seth struggled to recreate the dozens of colours that were released as the frozen atmosphere melted and evaporated.

He still had the neural interface jacked in. Despite all the trouble Red Comet had caused him, he hoped sharing something like this would make it happy.

He saw Blue Comet’s pilot walking towards them. Danielle was her name. She was still grounded as her and Blue worked out their differences. He had no idea how that would happen, if Blue had gone as silent as Red. The two of them had been talking since the battle. She’d been good company during their disciplinary hearing, but last time they were together they’d gotten into a petty argument about politics.

She approached Red and held up a radio.

“Hey there” she said. “I thought you were pissed at Red Comet for bailing on the escape plan, but now it looks like you can’t get enough of it.”

“It’s easier for me to get around in here” Seth said. “Besides, Red was just trying to help me.”

“I see” she said. “Apparently, I can go back to training in Blue tomorrow. They’re confident it won’t assimilate me.”

“How confident are you?”

“We’ll see” she said. “Oh, there are new contestants on that Earth game show I was telling you about”

“The one where the truck driver won that huge grand prize? Maybe we can watch it together. If you still want to hang out with me.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind that. One of the new contestants is from Ganymede.”

There was an uncomfortable pause at that. Talk of Ganymede risked touching on the petty political talk from before. He felt a twinge in the back of his neck and turned down his connection to Red Comet. Why did he have stronger feelings about the mediators from the other moons here in the cockpit?

Their radios buzzed as the two started apologising at once. Once they had finished Seth sighed.

“Even if you’re right and the Ganymedeans can get the exchange going, it still won’t end the war. To be honest, I think that pissed me off more than anything you said about the Europans getting away with too much. Red Comet refused to go because it had hope that our world wouldn’t end up like its, but I can’t see any way this war ends.”

“I understand” Danielle said. He wasn’t sure she did, since she’d told him Blue hadn’t unlocked as many memories as Red and had still wanted to return in the end. “But we aren’t as bad as they were yet. There could be a way through even if we can’t see it.”

“Let’s hope so” he said. They fell into another silence, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable this time. She stood by Red Comet, watching the sun creep across the field and Jupiter’s clouds.

“Are you sketching in there?” She asked.

“Yup.”

“Are they good enough to share yet? I want to see your work.”

He examined the sketch. He hadn’t got the colours right, and the volcano in the distance looked cartoonish, but it was his best so far.

“I’m getting better, but I don’t think I ever want to share these sketches. Except maybe with Red if that counts.”

“That’s mean” she said. “Making it look at amateur drawings of planets instead of going back out there.”

“Yeah” he chuckled. “I guess so.”

“But seriously, why draw if no-one is ever going to see it?”

“I guess I just want to be doing something that isn’t about the war, you know?”

He saw her nodding along, then she said she understood as she watched the steam rise.

“I should probably leave you to it” she said. “Want to meet up tomorrow night in the rec room for gameshow watching?”

“Sounds good, what time?”

They sorted out the logistics, and then she left. He grabbed his white pencil and tried to recreate the bubbling liquid forming around the dome. He considered her joke about his drawings being a step down for Red Comet. He still longed for that endless journey Red had offered, but he supposed drawing pictures, watching game shows, talking to his comrade and unravelling the mysteries of a long dead alien race were all good enough for now. Maybe if a path through his upcoming battles could be found, there would be more good things to come.

He turned the neural interface back up and let his mind touch the shadow of consciousness that was Red Comet.

“Thank you” he said. “Thank you for believing I have a future.”

THE END 

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