It took about another week to get up to orbit of the planet that the councillor had suggested in his hurried, dashed-off text message. In official records it was known as Moss k18h79n8764gd790, a snappy designation that encapsulated every relevant factor about the planet’s atmosphere, gravitic-magnetic signature and geo-resources in a code that was understood by absolutely nobody alive in the Empire today.
Luna, whose turn it was to fly the ship, sat at the control stick idly singing along to a pop song in a dead language. She didn’t like flying, but Asta refused to let autopilot take the wheel for tricky maneuvers like orbital insertion. She waggled the control to dodge a point anomaly that was soaring towards them on the graviscanner. The planet was practically an EM deadzone, all blue and green, even lower than the empty space around it. Must be an insulating atmosphere, she thought.
She depressed the comm button on the dash and pronounced: “We’ve arrived.”

Asta’s arrival was short after that. She looked at the scans. “Not even a signal buoy,” she said. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“It must be,” said Luna. “I double-checked it twice.” She flicked a switch, and the screen switched to the nose camera of the ship, a grainy picture of a drab, dusty planet. “It’s dead,” she said.
“He’s screwed us, then. There is no meeting place. If he was meeting us here, his ship would be up here or down there, and it sure isn’t up here.” Asta punched the back of the seat. “Sorry,” she said, as Luna rubbed her back, looking hurt.
Luna reclined in the chair and stuck her booted feet up on the co-pilot’s seat. “How does this not bother you?” said Asta.
“So we don’t sell it to him. Big deal. We’re smart, and people know us. The right kind of people do, anyway.” She thought for a second. “The right kind of wrong kind of people,” she corrected. “So we don’t sell it to him. Two days good flying gets us to Chiron station. Embed in the party circuit for a week, and we’ve made enough cred to set ourselves up for a decade. Anyway,” she said offhandedly, “none of that matters.”
“Why not?” asked Asta, shoving Luna off the co-pilot chair and sitting down.
“Because he is down there. Look at the scanner. The EM down there is lower than baseline. You know what that means.”
“Blacked out,” Asta said. “The perfect-”
“The perfect place to hide,” Luna finished, “If you are, say, a very stupid man trying to hide from your disgruntled wife.”
Asta smiled. These were the moments she loved about Luna. The flashes of genuine cleverness. The cocksure posturing she could take or leave.
“You ever seen the councillor’s wife?” said Luna. Asta shook her head. “Absolute dime. He’s the stupidest man in the galaxy. Stiff competition, but I think he just edges out over the guys who put saucepans over their heads and bash them together to see who can go deaf first.” She nudged the stick, and the ship twisted like a salmon going down a waterfall and began the long swoop down to the planet.

Luna held the ship steady like the seasoned pilot she was as they skimmed lower and lower in the stratosphere of the alien world. On the grainy videoscreen, a shimmering aurora wrapped around them in a blanketing embrace, like air currents around a flying fish as it skims across the surface.
“Wow,” said Luna. “I’m keeping this tape.” It was hypnotic. Asta reached over and stabbed a button with her thumb, and the picture winked out, replaced with a neon-coloured instrument readout.
“Eyes on the altimeter,” she said softly, clicking the record button so that the camera would keep running.
“Ah, I was watching that-” Luna broke off. “What does this mean?” she said, pointing at a flashing light on the dashboard. It was blue, and it had a spiral icon printed on it in white.
“I don’t think it’s ever lit up before. Let me check the index file…” Asta got up and ran over to the terminal on the back wall. “Cockpit instruments… indicator lights…” she trailed off.
“Well?” said Luna. Asta’s face had turned grave. She knew her well enough to know that it took dire circumstances to make that happen.
The ship jolted. Luna sprawled, nearly smacking her head on the dash. “Asta?” she said groggily. Her partner hadn’t been so lucky as to have a seat to hang onto. She was laid out flat on the floor grille, groaning. A red wound on her forehead oozed horribly.
“Asta!” Luna cried out, crawling over to her. Alive at least. She looked up. The terminal screen had a long spiderweb crack in the centre of it, stained crimson red where she had struck. “Talk to me,” she said. “What is this? How do I get us out?”
Asta’s eyelids fluttered. She was struggling to form words with silent, breathless lips. Luna couldn’t make it out. She grabbed a railing and pulled herself to her feet, the ship shuddering beneath her feet with nobody at the controls.
Beneath the centre of the crack, Luna could just make out the words: PL/SMA S/TO. She threw a few curses into the void and lurched back to the controls, pulling back on the stick. She could feel the pressure of the G-forces as the ship turned upwards, nose to the sky once again and flying for freedom in the open silence of space-
There was a noise like God tearing a phone book in half, and the G-force released suddenly. Luna knew instantly what had happened – the strain too great, the engines had been wrenched bodily off the ship by the buffeting of the storm. She was flying a hunk of burning twisted metal-to-be. There was no salvaging this landing. Something liberating in that. Now it was just about survival. She got up, ignoring the floor tilting rapidly under her feet, and knelt beside Asta. Still breathing. She checked her eyelids. Unconscious.
Luna carried her down the narrow hallway sideways – all the way to the room right at the end, the one that was sealed tight under normal circumstances. She slammed her fist on the safety glass over the button and it shattered harmlessly. The door opened noiselessly.
Two pods. One person each. It had been cost-effective to do it that way. And what were the odds they’d ever need them? Thousand-to-one, easy.
The thousand-to-one chance shook the ship again. Luna laid her partner down in her pod, set the GPS link and timer, and pulled down the big lever that initiated the countdown. Now she had twenty seconds to set her own.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One…
The explosive bolts fired and the pods blasted backwards nearly simultaneously – Luna had set her time-offset well. She felt sick, spinning out of control like this, though she knew the pod had auto-systems to prevent dangerous levels of G-force. It was a windowless, black compartment. She closed her eyes, though it made no difference to what she could see, and repeated a silent prayer over and over again as the pod kept on spinning down towards the planet.
“Please be okay,” she whispered to herself.

After a few minutes there was a jolt as the drag flaps opened and the spinning slowed to a stop, the shaking smoothing out as the pod’s systems activated its programmed glide path. Soon they would be flying down in a wide spiral to the ground.
Luna wondered where the ship was going down. The pods launched perpendicular to their trajectory, so there shouldn’t be any risk of a collision. Still, in her windowless coffin-pod, she couldn’t keep the image out of her head. The comparatively vast interstellar vessel, sleek and streaming smoke and flames from the back of it, careening towards her tiny, bulbous pod. Cold comfort was at least provided by the fact that if she did get hit, she wouldn’t know it had happened before she was splattered across the nose of her own ship. Suddenly, without prompting, the image changed, and the face was not hers but Asta’s. The pod began to shudder and shake again – the gravity chute was deploying. Luna kept repeating her mantra all the way to the last, the horrible grinding scraping sound of the final touchdown no relief at all.
After a few seconds to take readings and ensure atmospheric conditions were safe, the door blew open, and Luna went blind.
The world still a white and incomprehensible nightmare, she staggered out onto solid land. It was sandy, and there was dry, scrubby grass beneath her feet that crackled when she stepped on it. Asta’s pod was still in the air, only just, and as Luna watched it touched down with a crunch as the pod’s crumple zones absorbed the worst of the impact.
She broke into a sprint, tripping and stumbling and barely catching herself.
She had to be there as soon as those doors opened.