Angel Wings

Written October 27 2024.

This story contains descriptions of blood, physical and verbal abuse and violence. If you feel like this might upset you, please do not read further.

„I heard they caught another one yesterday,” Kessel said. He looked slyly at Lacerta.

“Yeah,” she replied curtly.

“What do they do with ‘em anyways, eh?” His eyes darted between the cards in his hand and Lacerta. He gave her his shit-eating grin that he only pulled out when he thought Lacerta was going to fail or embarrass herself. His upper right canine was missing, which gave it a certain comedic streak, or so Lacerta thought.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Lacerta said. She put her cards down.

“Oh, come on, Laz,” Gurt chimed in, putting his hand on Lacerta’s shoulders and shaking her. “Tell us. I wanna know.”

“Yeah, I mean, you never see ‘em, do you? It’s all hush-hush and cloak-and-dagger shit. I wouldn’t even know they’d caught one if my buddy Land wasn’t unloading that ship when they came back. Kept it in a cage, he said.” He leaned closer to Lacerta. “Come on, just tell us if they’re… you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did,” Lacerta said.

“Oh, come on. I want to know what they look like.”

“Right. Are they hot?” Gurt asked.

“Yeah, man. Like, can you–”

“Stop it,” Lacerta said. She stood up. “We should get back to work.”

“You don’t have to be such a killjoy, you know,” Gurt said. The two soldiers grumbled, but they got up anyway. “We all know you’re the Commander’s pet dog; no need to keep all the meat for yourself.” At this, Gurt and Kessel both laughed and high-fived each other. Numbnuts, Lacerta thought. Pervert numbnuts.

“Let’s get back on patrol, before I schedule you two for cleaning duty on the prison deck,” she said. The two stopped laughing. The warehouse was dark, the only windows were tiny and high up on the wall, covered in soot from both sides. The only real light came from their shoulder lamps. Gurt’s and Kessel’s were pointed directly at her eyes. She couldn’t see them.

“Listen here, Serg” Kessel said. “Just because you’re the Commander’s lap dog doesn’t mean we won’t beat you up, if you try to pull some bullshit like that. Sergeants go missing all the time, you know? You wouldn’t be the first one.”

“Yeah, man,” Gurt agreed.

“Don’t try to threaten me, Private,” Lacerta said. “I’ll report you if you keep this up.” Her tone was flat, controlled. Her hand was placed firmly on her hip, one hand’s breadth away from her sidearm. It was a show of seriousness more than anything; the two men were each a head taller than her and had their rifles ready. In a fight, she would lose, badly.

“Don’t ‘Private’ me, Laz,” Kessel said. “And who’re you gonna report it to, eh? Your beloved Commander? As if she gives a crap. Think you’re so precious to her that she’ll come running and protect you? You know what she does with her dogs, right? Oh, she loves ‘em. She loves ‘em to death. They run behind her, slobbering all over her shoes, getting scratched behind their ears, until one day they turn up with their necks twisted ‘round three or four times or a big hole where the top of their skull should’ve been. Tough love, isn’t it? Gets tired of her toys real quick, doesn’t she?” His voice was calm, though far from unthreatening. “So, if you really wanna put us on cleaning duty, I’ll make sure it’s your head we’re cleaning toilets with. Got that, Sergeant?” He let out the last word in a mocking drawl. “Let’s go,” he said to Gurt and they both started to saunter down the aisle. “Four more hours of guarding boxes. I can’t wait,” Kessel shouted into the dark.

Lacerta stood there, unmoving. Burning coals were rolling around in her stomach, filling the space behind her face with hot smoke. She could see Gurt’s and Kessel’s lights grow smaller in between the containers. They left her behind next to their discarded playing cards. She bent down to pick them up. Gurt had an ace on his hand. Kessel had two. She had zero.

* * *

Lacerta leaned on the railing of the scout deck and looked up at the sky. She let her eyes go blurry, until the big plumes of exhaust fumes blended into the dusty orange sky. She let her upper body fall back as far she could without falling over the railing. They flew so high that you couldn’t even see the ground. Falling off the side of the airship meant you’d never be found again. They regularly took advantage of this fact. Now that I think about it, she thought. She turned around and looked down. Past the bulging corpus of the airship, the giant propellers and the exhaust pipes, past the support struts and the stubby runways, there was nothing. Distant fog, the same dark orange-brown of the sunset sky and the horizon, a uniform color with nothing to disturb it. I’ve never seen the ground, she thought. It’s not like anyone ever comes back to tell us if there even is one. She looked to the horizon. The sun was a dull red smear beneath the clouds, dim enough to look at and ready to set. But the sun vanishes at night, so there must be a ground somewhere. Right?

As if to answer her, her comm rang. The little display showed the Commander’s frequency. She hesitated for a second before putting it to her ear. It was still beeping. She opened the line. “Lacerta, Hawk. Are you there?” the Commander’s voice asked.

“Go ahead, Commander,” Lacerta said.

“I need you in my cabin. You have ten minutes. Out.” Static.

Lacerta looked out over the orange waste one last time. She held her comm out over the railing. If I threw this thing over the edge, she thought, would it hit the ground before the Commander calls to tell me I’m a disgrace? She held it with five fingers, with four, three and then just two. In any case, I’d finally find out what’s beneath the fog. She put the comm back on her belt and went below.

Going back into the ship was like descending into a cave. The air was stuffy and damp and reeked of other people, despite being constantly ventilated. The upper decks were lit by fluorescent lights. Stark white, they made everyone look sick, which wasn’t entirely wrong for most people here. Lacerta preferred the golden glow of midday on the scout deck, even though it wasn’t much lighter and the air outside was full of dust and constantly smelled of smoke.

She walked past senior officers and bureaucrats of rank and nodded respectfully toward them. They knew she was the Commander’s dog, either by her reputation or the leather collar on her neck. No one here ever bothered her. Although, if they wanted to, they could do worse things to me than Gurt and Kessel ever could, she thought.

The door to Commander Hawk’s cabin looked like any other. Dark gray, bolts all around. Not very pleasant to look at but blast resistant and easy to barricade. Power needs no ornaments. Lacerta took one last breath and touched her forehead to the cool metal before going in. She could feel every heartbeat.

Commander Hawk was standing by the window. This one was large and clean and bathed the whole rotund room in an eerie orange glow, like outside but darker from the window’s tint; many pilots went blind from the unfiltered light. Or maybe it was from the air. The lights were off. She could make out an overturned table and what looked like smashed glass on the floor. The Commander leaned on the window frame, her head pressed against her forearm, face turned away from Lacerta. She didn’t move an inch. “I have a special task for you.” Her voice was calm and even, but that didn’t mean much. “Do you hear me?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Lacerta said.

The Commander turned around. Lacerta could only see the outline of her angular face, her cheeks and brow, traced by the amber glow from outside. “Come here,” she said. Lacerta went over to the Commander and kneeled beside her. The Commander didn’t look at her. “We caught another angel. They brought her in last night. Looks like the recent search flights aren’t as successful as we’d hoped they would be. That’s only the fourth this year.” She went over to her desk and poured herself a drink. “Still, that makes up for the delay from last time. It’s a lot earlier than we actually need her, though we’re still in a serious drought. So, you’re going to guard her until she’s ready to use. Night shifts.” She sipped on her drink in between sentences. “The wardens would be too rough with her, you know? It’s boring down on the prison deck. And lonely. We need her alive. That’s why I want you to do it.” She caressed the side of Lacerta’s face with her free hand. Her leather gloves were worn smooth and soft. Then she grabbed Lacerta’s chin and gently tilted her head up. Half the Commander’s face was covered in shadow, though her eyes still felt like searchlights pointed at her face. “You’ll do that for me, won’t you?” she asked. “Like a good dog?”

“Yes, sir,” Lacerta said.

“Will you kill for me, if I ask you to?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Commander Hawk said. “Now, as for your time…” She dropped her glass in front of Lacerta. It landed on the ragged carpet with a muffled thud, its contents getting soaked up by the fabric. It smelled alcoholic and oily. The Commander put one of her boots on the glass and slowly crushed it, breaking down all the big chunks into small, sharp-edged pebbles. They looked like glimmering embers or little pieces of amber. “You were twenty seconds late.” Lacerta looked down at the Commander’s boots. “Why are you like this? You know what’s coming, but you’re still late. Why?” The Commander grabbed her face again, digging her gloved fingers into Lacerta’s cheeks, pulling down her lower lip and running her leather fingers over Lacerta’s gums. “You have only yourself to blame for all of this.” She put her thumb further down Lacerta’s throat. “You could learn. Let yourself be trained. Become a better dog. But you’re only a mutt, aren’t you?” Lacerta gagged. She couldn’t get out any words, only a grunt and a whine. She could feel the Commander’s thumb digging into the inside of her mouth, pressing further down her throat. She could feel acid and puke rising in her stomach and couldn’t help but writhe in the Commander’s grasp as she tried to hold them down. The Commander let go. “Down.”

Lacerta did as she was told. Her spit was dribbling onto the floor and on her arms in thick strands, too exhausted to close her mouth, but she lay down on the carpet, on the glass shards. Little amber knives cut into her forehead and cheeks and needles pierced her nose. She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that she began to see static and white waves forming on the gray canvas of her vision. “Now roll,” the Commander said.

Lacerta heaved her body around, from left to right. The glass found new places to cut her each time. All she could smell was iron and alcohol. She could feel the blood pouring down her face and into her nose and mouth, mingling with her spit, tiny pieces of glass sticking to her wet face.

“Stop.” She stopped. “Get up.” She got up. Glass beads fell off her uniform like ice crystals. She tried to open her eyes, but had to wipe away the blood first, smearing it further across her face. “Don’t ever be late again,” the Commander said. She was leaning against the wall. Her voice was as uniform as that of a robot. “Get yourself cleaned up. Your first shift starts in half an hour. Don’t be late.”

* * *

The prison deck was near the bottom of the ship. Below were only some storage levels and machinery. The outward-facing cells had open windows – escape was impossible anyway – which made the whole tract smell of dust and smoke. All you could see outside was dark orange slowly fading into gray.

A warden led her to her new charge. “They put it all the way back here,” he said. “Don’t know why they didn’t just put her in a storage crate, if she’s so important. Personal guard just to watch it sleep, oh my.” He was a squat man, who seemed more bored of his job than anything. They went past dozens of cells. Small-time thieves. Drunken brawlers. Wrong-place-at-the-wrong-timers. They sat in the corners of their cells, the lucky ones who had a cot were lying on them, looking asleep or simply dead. They all looked sickly, leathery, malnourished and exhausted, some like they were in the early stages of mummification. It smells like there’s a woodfire beneath every window, Lacerta thought. The smoke irritated the cuts on her face.

“It’s not like these guys here get that sort of treatment. It’s hard enough to look after dozens of criminals. We can’t spoon-feed every single one of them,” the warden said. Lacerta wanted to smash his head into the iron bars of the prison cells. The angel was held at the far end of the prison deck. The cells there were tiny and Spartan. All were empty, except one. “Hasn’t really moved since they brought it here,” the warden said. “Pretty, isn’t she? Too bad.” He nodded at Lacerta and sauntered back down the corridor.

The whole cell was bathed in the soft glow of the evening light streaming in from the wide window above. The only furnishing was a bucket. The angel was slumped in a corner of the room. In the dim light, Lacerta could only make out rough features. It was wearing what looked like a large, ragged flour sack, no doubt given to it by the prison staff. It had long, light hair and fair skin, though the lighting made it look orange-brown, and the shadows made its face seem eerily long. Its wings were half-wrapped around its motionless body. Lacerta could barely make out its shallow breathing. It looked like a discarded doll; like an unloved childhood toy thrown in the gutter.

Lacerta kicked against the iron bars separating her from the angel, once, twice, but the angel didn’t move. She dragged her gun across the bars, but not even the metallic staccato sounds could get the angel to wake up. She sent me to guard a corpse, she thought. It was quickly getting darker outside and she could barely see the outline of her own hand. She pushed and pulled on the bars, but they wouldn’t move. Ten hours of this. Her face was hot, littered with tiny cuts that haven’t closed yet. She stood there looking at the angel expectantly, demandingly. Give me something. Anything. I don’t want to be stuck doing guard dog shit forever.

She tried to sit down for a while, eyeing the angel. Nothing about her changed. She walked up and down the corridor. Special task. She stopped again in front of the cell. It hadn’t moved. She began walking in circles, in figure eights, in zig-zag lines. She counted her steps. She looked at her clock. Not even an hour had passed. She walked up to the cell, pressed her whole body against the bars. The angel just laid there. It didn’t have any visible injuries. Maybe they sedated it? she thought. “Don’t just lie there,” she said. “Do something, for fuck’s sake.” It didn’t. She punched the metal bars separating her ward from herself. She punched it again. She punched it again. Her knuckles were scraped open and her wrist hurt. Even an abomination like this gets its own cell.

She sank down on her knees and leaned her face against the cold metal bars. Her face stung. She could feel tears carving their channels through the smudges of encrusted blood on her face. They were boiling hot. “Wake up,” she whispered. What would I even do, if you were awake? She sat there in near total darkness. The occasional shuffling noise or muffled shout drifted over from the rest of the prison ward, though Lacerta could barely hear anything over her own labored breathing and the constant hum of machinery. The darkness in front of her began to form lines and splotches, subtle forms that were shifting like waves. She closed her eyes, but they only became slightly darker. I wish they’d thrown you into the blender already.

* * *

Lacerta was walking through a corridor, somewhere in the soldier’s quarters. Her shoulder light was illuminating the ground in front of her. Everything else was pitch black. She was on patrol. Her steps barely made a sound. It sounded like the ground was made out of carpet, but it was rough sheet metal.

She moved forward slowly. She held her gun ready. It was heavy. She tried looking down the corridors coming off of either side of the main hallway but when she tried to point the gun down them, it felt sluggish and only turned slowly. Even when she stemmed her whole weight against, it only moved in a slow arc, like a large gunship doing a turn.

“Laz,” something said down the corridor behind her back. The voice sounded familiar. Every hair on her body stood up. “What’re you doing here, Laz? Shouldn’t you be down in prison?” She turned around and pointed her shoulder light up, but it was too dim, it barely reached the entrance to the hallway, which was filled with a thick dark fog. “You know what they do to dogs that run away, don’t you?” The voice was coming closer. She could hear a rhythmic thumping coming from the getting louder and faster. Her gun wouldn’t turn around. “They catch ‘em in big nets and put em in a cage.” It was like it was whispering in her ear. The thumping was almost drowning out his voice. Then, the darkness parted in a huge grin. Wolf’s teeth; upper right canine missing. Her shaking light reflected off the teeth like crystal shards. “And then they twist their necks.”

Lacerta let go of her rifle and ran down the hallway just as the wolf was pouncing on her. Looking back, she could only see her rifle hang in midair and the enormous creature walking, not running, toward her, though somehow gaining ground. She knew these corridors, lived in them, but it was like they were sticky, melting before her eyes and twisting. The ground felt uneven, tilted, as if the ship was being thrown about in a storm. She looked back again; the wolf was filling out almost the entire corridor. In front of her the corridor ended. A dead end. Nothing but a garbage chute at the end of the wall. “Come on, Laz,” the wolf. “It’s your room. Let’s go in.” She looked at it. It was drooling all over the floor. The spit ate through the metal flooring as if it were paper. She threw her keyring at it, her comm, but they just disappeared into its black fur. Step after step, it moved towards her, its mouth unhinging further with each advancing motion. She backed away until she stood against the wall, could feel the handle of the garbage chute against her back. She pushed it open and threw herself into it.

At first, it didn’t feel like she was moving at all. Then she fell upwards. And down. She didn’t know which way her body was oriented, only that it was thrashed about in the tight metal chute, bruising more with each sudden turn. Slowly, everything around her grew lighter and she began to fall downwards once more. Somehow, relief washed over her. She was ejected from the garbage chute and launched headfirst into the fog. She could see the dark shape of the ship below her and the orange glow above. With closed eyes, she dove into it.

* * *

Something was touching Lacerta’s face. It stung. Startled, she opened her eyes. A white face, mere centimeters from hers. She went for the throat.

The angel was writhing in her grip, letting out raspy gasps. It was trying to move away from her, its wings moving fruitlessly. Its thin hands were grasping at Lacerta’s arm. She could feel the cartilage in the angel’s throat contort. She let go and pulled her hand out from between the prison bars.

It collapsed to the floor with a bony thud, heavy rattling breaths coming out of its mangled throat. It faced Lacerta. She could see that the angel’s throat was smeared with blood and a cold shiver ran down her whole body. The Commander will cut me up if I kill this thing. She kneeled down, trying to get hold of the angel again and managed to grab its wrist. “Hey, don’t die,” she said and tried to pull it closer. “I will cut open your throat if that’s what it takes to get you breathing.” It tried to shake Lacerta’s hand off and seemed to say something with its thin voice. “What?” she barked, without letting go. “Don’t,” the angel said hoarsely. She could see its eyes flickering in the dark. It was like there were candles of grey light placed behind its pupils. She let go and it fell to the floor again. Slowly, it crawled to the other side of the cell. It lay there like a crumpled towel or like a dead bird, its wings still twitching in the wind. Its wrists were covered in blood right where Lacerta had grabbed them. My hands. I’m bloody.

Blood rushed through Lacerta’s head. A constant sucking and rushing right in her ears, it threatened to drown out her own thoughts. “Why did you touch me?” she asked. “Why did you touch my face?” The angel wasn’t answering. It lay there, breathing. “Why did you do it?” It was so dark in the prison that she could hardly make out any details, just the form of the angel, scrunched up, with her wings covering her face. She pulled out her gun and pointed it directly at the angel’s head or where it must have been behind the feathers. There was maybe one meter between the tip of her barrel and the forehead of the angel. “Tell me, now, what were you doing?” she shouted. It whimpered and writhed around on the ground like a wounded animal. “Speak up!” The angel pulled its wings aside, though Lacerta still wasn’t sure if she was looking at its face or the mess of hair covering it. Her vision was blurry. “Please,” it said. It begged her. “Don’t hurt me anymore. Please.” Its voice was thin, wavering.

Lacerta could feel a lump forming in her throat. Her blood felt like slush. The air was getting thicker, harder to breathe. I’m gonna throw up. There was that feeling in her stomach of hot coals, again. The angel looked at her or maybe it didn’t, it was hard to tell in the dark. Maybe it was saying something. Maybe it was pleading again, pleading for her to stop, to stop hurting her, to help her. Her hand tightened around the grip of her gun. I can’t do this. She took off, ran toward the warden, toward the exit. The ground under her shook. Turbulence.

* * *

Right after the morning call, Lacerta’s comm rang. “In my office. Five minutes,” the Commander said. She couldn’t make it in five, not if she wanted to wear something other than sleeping clothes.

She didn’t know how long it took her to get to the Commander’s office. Her shoes weren’t properly tied and her hands were still dirty; she hadn’t thought to wash them thoroughly last night before she dragged herself to her bunk. She was stumbling and running along the corridors of the airship, passing groups of soldiers and workers walking single file like ants to keep this metal colossus in the air. She walked up the stairs on all fours; it was faster that way. She tried not to think anything. Thinking about it made it worse. Hot forehead against the cold steel door. She opened it.

The commander was sitting at her desk. A large round ceiling lamp illuminated the stately room with a bright white-yellowish light. It cast deep shadows across the Commander’s face, like on some ancient stone statue, half-buried under the desert sun. She looked directly into Lacerta’s conscience. “Come,” she said. Lacerta came forward.

The Commander looked up at her. She was a scrawny woman, not muscular by any means, though her stern uncaring gaze felt like a greater threat than any physical strength ever could. She could have choked Lacerta to death right then and there and she wouldn’t even have dared to fight back. Why should she have? Fighting back only means more punishment later, carried out by other lackeys equally as afraid of repercussions as you are.

“You are disgusting,” she said. “Can’t even stomach standing guard for a sleeping half-corpse. You can’t even pretend to do your job and sleep on your post. You just run away.”

Shit, Lacerta thought. I’ll knock that warden’s teeth out. Ratting me out after I slipped him ten notes. She shifted around and looked at her feet. The steel tips of her boots were dirty. She would have to clean them later.

“You always set yourself up for more punishment just to cope with being a failure,” the Commander said. “You like the punishment. That way, you are being treated unfairly. That way, it’s not your fault that you’re a failure. It’s other people. It’s me. But just because you’re getting punished harshly, doesn’t mean that you’re not responsible for your own failings. You’re just harming yourself. You’re in a downward spiral. You can’t even take care of yourself. Come here.” She beckoned Lacerta to come around the desk. The Commander pulled out a napkin and licked the corner of it. She pulled Lacerta down by her collar and started cleaning her face with the cloth. It came away red. “I can’t keep doing this forever. At some point, you’ll have to stand on your own two feet” Lacerta felt her knees getting weak. Everything around her felt as if it moved too fast, as if the whole room was spinning or shaking rapidly in place. “Now, don’t tug at your collar,” the Commander said.

After she had finished cleaning Lacerta’s face, the Commander stood up and pulled her by her collar over to an old leather sofa. She sat down and gently guided Lacerta down onto her knees. She put her head on the Commander’s lap. Slowly, in long strokes, the Commander caressed Lacerta’s head. She had taken off her gloves, so it was just her rough, burned fingers stroking Lacerta’s shaved head. The small bristles felt almost funny, as the Commander moved over them against the grain. Her eyelids were getting heavy, not from tiredness, but from exhaustion. “You can cry,” the Commander said. And so, she did. The whole world felt small, as if she could see herself from the outside, looking in on the room with her and her head in the Commander’s lap, like looking into a doll’s house.

When the Commander chose her some few years ago, Lacerta was enthusiastic. The Commander of the airship was working directly with her, just a lowly Private back then, the unpromising daughter of a specialist navigator. Then it started and it never stopped. She would do something wrong; the Commander would punish her; she tried to run away until the Commander called her back. She always came back. She always came back. To the Commander, to her lap, to the smallness, to the letting go.

People called her the Commander’s lap dog. Her lackey. Her bitch. She never corrects them.

“You will do your shift,” the Commander told her. “Then you will go back to the prison tonight and guard that angel of ours. You will not run away again and you will not disappoint me again. Do you understand?” Lacerta made an affirmative noise. The Commander slowly, gently lifted her face up. She held it in both hands, touching her thumbs over the still sore wounds. “You have such a pretty face. Why destroy it like this?”

* * *

Lacerta and her troop patrolled the gunship hangars. On an airship with a few thousand inhabitants, inevitably there will be a thriving black market of stolen goods. Their job was to curtail it as much as possible.

“Look at it, Laz,” Kessel said. “What’re they gonna do with this shit anyway?” He rummaged around in a box that was just unloaded. A standard exploration run around the giant ruins poking out of the fog. Skyscrapers was how Lacterta’s mother had called them. She had only been to an exploration run once, but they didn’t find much back then. Just burnt paper and other bits of detritus. This one was more rewarding, it seems.

Kessel pulled a white piece of cloth out of the crate. He held it up for them to see. It looked like a shirt, only the material looked very thin and almost see-through. “Who’s gonna wear this, huh?” Kessel asked them. “No one, so I might as well turn it into pillow filling, you know.” This got a laugh out of Gurt. Everything Kessel said did.

The troop was already starting their slow ambling walk around the open deck again. Watchful eyes that didn’t look at people’s hands and pockets too much. Gurt was trying to goad Kessel. “Hey boss, don’t you think the rags in the shitter have gotten a bit too dirty? Let’s pocket it for that,” he said and grabbed the piece of cloth that was still in Kessel’s hand.

Lacerta jumped forward. “First of all,” she interjected, “I’m boss here. And now you’ll give me that rag and I’ll put it back where it belongs.” She tried to grab the piece, but Kessel pulled it away from both of them, making her reach to try and catch it, like a bully on a playground. “You idiot, give me that shirt or I’ll have you reprimanded.”

She could see Kessel’s fist coming but she didn’t have the time to dodge it. It hit her square on the side of her face, making her lose her vision and hit the ground with a thump. Her face burned as the cuts had reopened from the impact and hot blood started pouring across her face. “Sorry, Serg. My hand must’ve slipped.” He knelt down beside her and put his face really close to hers. “Listen. I know you want to please your mistress. And I just want to have a quiet shift, alright. How about we make a deal? I won’t do you like that in front of the group again and you’ll leave me the fuck alone. Got that? Cause there’s a box with real nice leather handbags over there that I’m gonna take a grab at now because I need scraps to fix my shoes.”

Lacerta wiped away some blood that had gotten into her eye. She was still lying on her back as the other soldiers of her troop walked on. She sat up. Everywhere around her, people were working. Dockhands were unloading crates from the gunships. Mechanics were checking the engines and refueling the ships. Another troop of soldiers was patrolling the same hangar, keeping out of everyone’s business. No one cared about the bruised woman sitting on the hangar floor. She could run towards the flight deck opening and jump out of the ship and hardly anyone would care. No, Lacerta thought. No one would care.

As she slowly got up, she noticed that Kessel had dropped the white shirt next to her. Bastard, she cursed him. She picked it up and put it in her pocket. It felt surprisingly soft and light, even lighter than it looked. Scrunched up, it fit fully into her closed hand.

She stormed off after the group. She blew out air through her nose in heavy puffs. Her mother had taught her to do that as a child, whenever something upset her. It only made her a bit dizzy just now. As she approached them, they turned around. Kessel said, “Ah, look who’s co–“

“Raimos,” Lacerta interrupted him, her voice raised to command volume. “You take Inger, Hemd and Franz; I’ll take the rest.” She looked squarely at Kessel. “We’ll go through the hangar gunship by gunship and search everyone working at them for pocketed contraband, starting with the dockhands unloading them. You got that?”

“Laz, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Kessel said. “You think you can just barge in here all goody-goody and rummage through everyone’s pockets just to get another pat on the head from your mistress? Fuck off!”

“I will have you punished for insubordination for this. And everyone here who supports you,” Lacerta said looking at the rest of her troop.

“And who’s gonna punish us? You think any of the higher-ups give enough of a shit to do it? They’re lining their pockets here like the rest of us. The ship won’t fly any faster just because no one’s getting’ a bit on the side. And who’s using this shit here anyway? Dirty old clothes, shoes with heels bigger than my fucking dick. Last week, crates of old electric crap that doesn’t even work. Scrap metal. Trash. If you wanna dig around people’s pockets for that stuff, feel free. We’re just gonna keep on lookin’ around, that alright with you, boss?” Kessel and the rest of the soldiers looked at her. Another hit to the face wouldn’t have been this humiliating. She could feel the tears burning behind the floodgates of her eyes, ready to burst them open. But she couldn’t. Not here. And as soon as the moment had passed and the wind was taken out of her sails, they turned around, turned their backs on her and walked on. And Lacerta trailed them for the rest of their shift.

* * *

Lacerta dragged herself to the prison cell. Her feet would not move any faster; out of fear, embarrassment, self-directed anger, she did not know. Her eyes did not leave the floor. Metal plating, rough but smoothed-over by the work of thousands of feet like hers moving across it. Each step took effort. Twisting her hip to drag each foot forward like lifeless tree trunks. The voices of the other inmates came to her as if filtered through a thick cloth, a blanket drawn over her head to drown out the noise and the harsh light, to shut out reality.

Her mind was empty and tempestuous. Meaningless thought after meaningless thought. Merging into each other. Thoughts being created only to annihilate themselves on the rocky shores of other thoughts who did the same again. Her head was spinning.

She found the cell, let her body fall against the iron bars and be dragged down by gravity into a slumped heap of a human body. Everything was still and it kept on spinning. Kept on racing. Kept on screaming despite the silence.

“You are crying again,” a voice said in Lacerta’s mind. It sounded clear as a ringing bell through the storm.

Yes, I am, she answered.

“You’re in pain,” the voice said again. It sounded light, both airy and luminous.

Lacerta could feel a light touch on her cheek, just below her eyes. Only now did she really sense that she was crying.

“I can only take your tears, but not your pain,” the voice said. Lacerta opened her eyes. Right next to her sat the angel. She stroked Lacerta’s cheek and wiped her tears away. Their eyes met and she stopped. She folded her hands in her lap, open palm facing upward.

“Why do you do this?” Lacerta asked her.

“Because you’re hurting,” the angel answered. Her voice was soft, yet it still had a certain rasp to it. Lacerta could see the bruises along her neck.

“Why did you touch my face? You know that I hurt you the last time you did this.”

“You would still be crying, if I hadn’t done it.” Lacerta didn’t say anything. She let her eyes drift around the walls of the cell and closed them again. She could hear a soft rustle beside her as the angel moved around and could feel the slight trembling in the iron bars against which her face was pressed. When she opened her eyes again, the angel had sat down next to her, her face also leaning against the bars of her cell, eyes closed. For the first time, Lacerta could see her face up close. It was gaunt, almost to the point of being starved. Her nose was thin and slightly crooked as if it had been broken before. She could still make out faint blue spots and healed scars on her pale white skin.

“I almost crushed your throat last time,” Lacerta said. The angel did not move. It breathed softly.

“But you didn’t this time,” she said and after a moment added, “I know you did not mean to.”

“You’re too trusting. That’s how you got those bruises.”

“Did you try to choke me because I trusted you too much?” the angel asked almost imperceptibly quietly.

Lacerta didn’t say anything. She just watched the angel rest besides her. Her hands were placed on the ground right next to Lacerta behind the bars. She held her own next to it. The angel’s wrist was so thin, it looked like it might snap in half from a strong grab. Her fingers were long and slender, the nails almost colorless, just like the rest of her skin. Lacerta’s hand was thick, her fingers slightly stubby and rough, scarred countless times already, the back of her hand was hairy, veins crisscrossing it like pipes in the bowels of a machine.

As she looked back on her day, all those memories were already unclear and faded, as if viewed through frosted glass or the thick lenses of pilot goggles. She could hear the angel breathe beside her and soon she tried to breathe in the pauses between the angel’s breath. The angel breathed in, then did she; the angel breathed out again, then she. Besides their breathing there was only the engine hum. Soon, she thought nothing at all.

Lacerta took the shirt she had picked up in the hangar out of her pocket. It was light and thin and shone unnaturally bright in the dim darkness of the prison. She tied it softly around the angel’s wrist. At the end of her shift, she stood up and went away. The angel was still sleeping.

* * *

“So, you caused a scene in the hangar,” the Commander said.

“I did not intend to cause a scene, sir,” Lacerta said. “I tried to explain to Private Kessel that it is our duty as soldiers to uphold law and o–“

“Shut up,” the Commander interjected. “I don’t want to hear any excuses.” She spoke with an eerie calmness, one that commanded respect and obedience more than any drill instructor’s shouts. “Explanations, not excuses, Seargent.”

“I instructed Private Kessel to return an item he had taken from a box. Then he punched me.”

“And what about the unauthorized and unwarranted order you gave to search every worker on that deck? Not only do you have no control over your own subordinates, let them steal from cargo and only manage to reprimand them when you catch them in the act; not only do you let yourself get punched by a subordinate in front of your troop; you yourself defied your order which were simply to patrol the hangar and make sure no one broke any laws. You’re a disgrace. But you already knew that.”

“What about Kessel, sir?”

“He’s your subordinate, do with him what you must. What kind of question is that even? You fucked up and the first thing you think about is how to shift the blame. You’re spineless. You’re worse than a dog. Come here.”

Lacerta hesitated. “Sir, I believe th–“

“Shut up. No one cares what you believe, least of all me. Come over here before I think of something worse.”

Lacerta went over to the Commander and knelt by her side. “No,” the Commander said. Lacerta’s body shook. “Not today. Get up.” She stood up. Her knees were feeling hot and cold, tense, like something was pulling on them from the inside. The Commander stood up. She guided Lacerta into the middle of the room, away from the desk before which she had been standing. The lights above her were too bright.

The Commander punched her in the stomach. She doubled up from the pain, her knees falling to the ground, stemming her upper body on her arms. It felt like a ball of hot lead was traveling upwards from her stomach through her throat. “Up,” the Commander said. “Up,” she shouted this time. She grabbed Lacerta by the throat and pulled her upwards, so they were face to face. The edges of Lacerta’s vision were still dim. “Pathetic,” the Commander said and threw her on the ground.

* * *

Lacerta could barely see. For one, her left eye was almost swollen shut. Her whole face hurt and probably looked like a lumpy potato, had she looked in the mirror. Her vision was still blurry. She did not want to see either. She half-felt, half-remembered the way to the angel’s prison cell and dragged herself along the wall, along the other cells to it. She leaned on the iron bars; her knees would not bend to sit down.

“What happened to you?” the angel said. As often as she had heard that question, it was always mocking or sardonic, never, as the angel asked it, with concern. She opened her right eye and turned to face the angel who stopped dead in her tracks and backed away to the outer wall of her cell as soon as she saw Lacerta’s face. She couldn’t say anything. She merely opened her mouth. Blood slowly creeped down to her chin.

The angel approached her again, slowly, one step at a time. She held the white cloth in her hands and as she came close to Lacerta, she held it up as if to wipe Lacerta’s face with it. She grabbed the angel’s forearm, their arms crossing through the iron bars again.

The angel’s mouth formed a silent question. “Don’t,” Lacerta spoke thickly. “Don’t let it get dirty.” She let go of the angel’s arm.

The angel had a look of worry on her face, as if she were close to tears herself. She sat down on the hard floor and bade Lacerta to join her. Her whole body aching, Lacerta slid down the metal bars, steadying herself against their weight. She looked at the angel; bright even in the darkness, cool even in the heat; beautiful amidst the brutality of the ship. She slid further down until she was lying on the ground.

She could see that on the other side of the barrier, the angel laid down beside her. “You are in pain,” the angel said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lacerta said. The two stared at each other. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” The angel’s thin hair had fallen on her face and was fluttering about as she spoke. “Will you tell me what happened to you?”

Lacerta took a long look at the angel’s features. She was resting her head on her folded hands. Her face was starved and bruised, yet it almost shone with light. Her mouth was slightly opened, a worried expression in its corners. Her lips were thin, chapped. Her eyes– she stared directly at Lacerta. No, not at Lacerta; into her. Past her bloody outer shell, past the whirring of thoughts behind her forehead and directly into whatever spark lived deep down at the bottom of her being.

The angel stretched out its hand and touched Lacerta’s face with it, lightly resting it on her cheek. Lacerta closed her eyes. A shiver ran down her entire body. A searing, freezing feeling spread out from where the angel touched her face. She opened them again. Her vision was blurry from tears.

“You are in so much pain,” the angel said.

“I know.”

* * *

The light coming in through the portholes was getting lighter, the glow turning from dark greyish brown to orange. Lacerta was dragging herself up the staircases to her bunk bed, so she could get an hour or two of sleep in before lunchtime. She felt exhausted, properly exhausted, not in pain or suffering, but exhausted and tired for what felt like the first time since she was made a soldier. She didn’t want to touch the railing out of fear of dirtying them with her bloody, sweaty hands. Her uniform was ruined.

“Laz?” came a question from the top of the stairs. Raimos. Lacerta looked at him, all orange hues this close to a porthole. “Gods, you look like you’ve been through a trash compactor.” He came down a few steps to where she was and tried to take her arm.

“No, it’s alright,” Lacerta said. “I just got… beat up. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine, to be honest. Let me help you to the quarters.” Despite her protests, he took her arm and helped her up the stairs and into their sleeping quarters.

“Who got you?” Raimos asked her as Lacerta was washing her face and hands in the tiny sink in the corner, scrubbing them to get the caked blood off.

“What do you mean ‘who got me’?” Her fingernails had dark red rims.

“You said you got beat up. Wanna teach ‘em a lesson later? Don’t tell me it was–“

“Yes. Of course it was her. Who else do you think would beat me up? Kessel? He’d hit me in the face but even he wouldn’t beat another soldier into red pulp.”

She could see Raimos’ concerned look in the mirror, sitting on a bunk bed, his hands folded in his lap. “Is it really that bad?”

Lacerta took off her jacket and rolled up her dirty tank top. Her entire flank was bruised blue and purple and yellowish-green on the edges. “Does it look bad to you?”

“Laz… you don’t need to do this, you know? At least you can’t go on like this, you know? You’ll burn up. Or die from blood loss by the look of it.”

“I do need to do this, is the thing.” She looked down at her hands: clean, apart from all the dirt. Still calloused, rough, veiny. Nothing like hers. “If I don’t do it, someone else does. And is that really all that better?”

Raimos looked at her with a sad gaze. “For you? Yes. It would be.” He sighed. “Laz, I like you. As a friend.” He stood up from the bed and picked up his jacket, swinging it over his shoulder. “Think about it. Tell her you don’t want to do those extra duties anymore.”

“You think you can just stop being a dog, Raimos?” She tugged on the leather collar around her neck, the one without a clasp. “You think I can just take this thing off? You think I wouldn’t be killed if I did?” He looked at her one last time and left. Now it was just her in their sleeping quarters. She heard a metallic gong over the speakers – lunch time. She climbed up the side of the bunk bed and spread herself out on her mattress. She felt clean for the first time in weeks. Her stomach had been grumbling the whole morning, but she closed her eyes anyway. She could feel her body swaying with the ship’s movements.

She thought back to last night, to the way the angel’s hand felt on her cheek, the way the tears felt, burning hot on her skin, the soothing words the angel told her again and again. She was lying there, crying, while the angel kept on talking, looking directly into her soul, into her heart. Her words still rang in her head, clear as day, clearer than the day: “You get hurt by others and you take it out on yourself. You cause yourself more pain because you think that’s all you deserve. Because if you didn’t deserve the pain, why would others hurt you?”

* * *

They sat next to each other, only the bars separating them. Their faces were right next to each other as they looked out of the cell’s window. The fog was thin tonight; the ship was flying high. You could see the occasional twinkle of a few of the brightest stars shine through. “Have you ever seen the whole night sky? Without the fog?” Lacerta asked.

“Of course,” the angel said. “We fly far above the fog. The sky is so dark there. Dark, but clear. There are no clouds between us and the stars, though it does look as if there were big clouds in the sky, but they’re only made of more stars.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“Have you ever seen them? Fully, not just through the fog?”

“Yes,” Lacerta said. She took a deep breath. She did not know where to begin. If she even wanted to. “My mother was a navigator. She plotted the ship’s course. They did that by using the stars. So, every night they would take the airship above the fog or at least as high as they could climb and she would look at the stars and calculate where they were and where to go next. She would take me onto the scout deck with her sometimes, which is where she took her measurements from.” The stars outside the window were dim. “I haven’t really seen them since then.”

“But you have seen them? So you can always just remember what they look like. That’s what I do now.”

Lacerta blew air through her nose. She wasn’t used to laughing. “That I can.” They looked out of the window together. Each other’s faces just at the periphery of their vision. “My mother used to tell me stories about the stars.”

“What kinds of stories? The ones the stars tell?”

“In a way, I guess. I didn’t know how to plot a course or whatever, I was much too young, but she still wanted me to know the stars. So, some nights, when she wasn’t busy at work, she showed me this book. To me it looked enormous, but I was also a child, so who really knows? It had this beautiful painting on its cover of a starry night and a lady in a white dress with long flowing hair. It had stories in it of all the stars and their constellations.”

“What are constellations?”

“They’re… I don’t really know. They’re groups of stars, I guess. We give them names and everything. You know the North Star, right? The one we can see there sometimes?” With that she pointed out of the cell’s window. “It’s part of the Little Bear together with, if I recall correctly, six other stars.”

“But it doesn’t look like a bear at all,” the angel said laughing. “You’re funny. We don’t give them names. Only the individual stars. Why would you give a handful of stars their own name? There are too many of them anyway. How would you know which ones belong to the bear?” She kept laughing and stopping and laughing again.

“Is that really so funny to you?” Lacerta asked.

“Yes, it is,” the angel replied.

“Well, we also used to tell each other stories about what the stars were up to, what they did while they were still down here on Earth.” At that the angel laughed even more and Lacerta became worried for a second that she might never stop laughing. She did, eventually.

“My mother told me that I was named for the constellation of the Lizard. It’s not very bright. Not as bright as the Little Bear at least. My mother told me that lizards were small creatures, four-legged and with rough skin. They sat on rocks in the sun all day, warming themselves up, but as soon as danger approached, they scurried away to a hiding place underneath the rocks. They blended in so seamlessly to their rocks though, that barely any predator even noticed them to begin with. They weren’t all that conspicuous. Just like the constellation.” She was quiet for a while. “I don’t know why she named me that. Maybe she didn’t want me to be noticed.”

“Then you don’t seem like a lizard at all,” the angel said.

“I know. I seem to have a hard time not being noticed.” She tried not to think of her mother too much. “What is your name anyway? I don’t think I ever asked you that.”

“We don’t have names. We call each other in different ways. The way you name your children, from mother to daughter – I don’t know what to make of it. Up there in the sky we don’t need names. We are all ourselves and have no need for them. We are all like each other and all just ourselves. We don’t need names for ourselves because we know who we are and we don’t need names for each other because there is no other.”

“But you’re not up there anymore. You’re down here and there is me…” The angel merely looked out of the window at the slightly obscured sky and did not say anything. “There is another constellation my mother used to tell me about a lot. She called it Andromeda, though I don’t think that means anything in our language. Andromeda was chained to a rock high up on a cliff by her mother. There was a giant monster in the water below her. Every day it would try to eat Andromeda. It would jump up out of the water and bite at the air with its giant jaw, because it couldn’t reach her yet. But every day it made it just a little bit higher. Soon Andromeda could hear the gnashing of its teeth already and then feel its warm breath on the soles of her feet. She was getting so worried that every day as the monster jumped up to get her, she pulled in her legs, so it would have to jump higher to get her and she could buy herself a few more days.”

“But she wasn’t eaten,” the angel inserted.

“She wasn’t. But how do you know?”

“Because she wouldn’t be in the sky if she got eaten.” At this she turned her head a little to look at Lacerta and laughed again.

“She was rescued by a knight. He came by the rock where Andromeda was imprisoned and he killed the monster and set her free.” There was no sound left after Lacerta finished speaking. The hum of the airship simply seemed to fade into nothingness. Just the angel and the stars were left. Both quiet.

“You can call me that, if you want,” the angel said into the silence. “Andromeda.”

“If you want me to call you that, then sure,” Lacerta replied. They were quiet again.

“What is a knight?” Andromeda asked.

“They were soldiers, I think. Only they weren’t made to patrol prisons and warehouses, but rather they slaid monsters and, well, they rescued princesses.”

“Are there still knights?”

Lacerta thought about it for a moment. “Maybe.”

* * *

They were patrolling the cargo deck again. “Ah, look,” Kessel announced. “Here’s the fine clothes from the last booty run.” The soldiers were already rummaging through crates before he had even finished that sentence. Clothes were scattered all over the floor.

Lacerta stood by as the rest of her crew fished around their second-hand loot. “Ay, Kessel, look,” Gurt said as he held up a large dress. “This one could fit two of you.” He cackled like a hyena.

Kessel grabbed the dress and held it out in front of him. It looked more like a bedsheet. “Nah,” he said. “This is something Laz’s mother would go for if she wanted something a bit more form-fitting.” The whole troop laughed, including Raimos before he saw Lacerta and bit down on his lip. Lacerta kept her face still. “What’s the matter, Laz?” Kessel asked. “Not having fun?”

“No, I was just wondering if that wasn’t your mom’s baby dress.” Again, the crew laughed; even Kessel. He winked at her. She felt dirty. They went back to picking out pieces of clothing to use as rags, pillow filling, new bandanas; no one cared for a dress or a blouse. After everyone had had their pick, they moved on down the aisle, leaving behind an open crate and scattered fabric.

Lacerta stayed behind. She gathered up the clothes and stuffed them back into the crate. She closed it, took one last look at it and slowly followed her group. She put her hands in her pocket. The clothes she nicked made for good hand warmers.

* * *

“What’s this?” Andromeda asked.

“Clothes, I think,” Lacerta said. “I don’t know what all of them are, I just pocketed them earlier.”

“But why? Won’t that get you into trouble?”

“No. People steal stuff all the time. And I didn’t want you to be wearing those rags anymore.” They were sitting across from each other, cross-legged, with a pile of clothes between them. They started sorting through it. Some pants, made from a really light and soft dark fabric, but with no pockets whatsoever. What looked like a bra made out of white netting. Another airy shirt, like she had already gifted Andromeda. A scarf, a cardigan, and so on.

“I can’t wear those, though. They’ll just get dirty. And what if the prison guards come around during the day? They’ll see that I’m not wearing those old rags anymore.”

“I can hide them for you, if you want me to. And as for the dirt.” Lacerta took off her canteen that she had slung around her shoulder. “I brought a water bottle. It’s no shower, but it’s something.” She showed it to Andromeda. A scarred old thing made of solid metal. Lacerta polished it every other night.

“I don’t know,” Andromeda said. “I don’t think we wear clothes. I don’t remember. It’s been so long since I’ve flown. I can’t even spread my wings in here.” She looked out of the cell. The sky was murky today, dark brown. Huge orange clouds were lit from below my fire.

“Andromeda.” The angel turned around. Her face was framed by softly lit halo of hair. She looked at Lacerta with eyes of indescribable melancholy. “I–,” Lacerta began. A myriad of words competed in her head to finish that sentence.

“I know,” Andromeda said. The words felt like a warm wind blowing through Lacerta’s heart. The angel slowly lifted the old rag she was wearing up over her head and wings. There were bruises all over her body, on her stomach, arms, chest. Lacerta could still see a faint ring of blue around Andromeda’s neck where she had grabbed her.

She took off the cap of her canteen and poured a bit of water on a small cloth she brought. Andromeda came closer and sat right next to her. They worked around the iron bars, Lacerta cleaning Andromeda’s body from the shoulders, along her thin arms to her hands, which she held in her own for a moment, her back and chest and downwards. Afterwards, Andromeda leaned her head back against the bars. Lacerta put her arms through them slowly pouring bits of the water left in her bottle on Andromeda’s light hair. It felt as if it became water itself in Lacerta’s hands, soft and flowing. She helped Andromeda dress, closed the bra, which she couldn’t reach herself because of the wings, cut holes in the shirt for them to fit through. She stood up and walked around her cell and turned around. Lacerta could only see her silhouette, a slight frame, long narrow, flowing dress pants and wings under a halo of wet hair, backlit by the burning world below the prison window.

“You’re beautiful,” Lacerta said. She was still sitting at the bars, dirty water everywhere on the metal floor. She could feel tears forming behind her eyes. Andromeda stepped over and kneeled down in the water. Her hands reached through the bars of her prison cell and softly grabbed Lacerta’s face. She pulled the soldier closer and kissed her.

* * *

“I need you tonight. Weapons training. We got a bunch of new recruits from the last raid and they don’t know how to handle their guns yet, so you and the other specialists will show them how. You got that?”

Lacerta stopped licking the Commander’s boot for just a second to say, “Yeah.”

“Good dog. Training will start after supper. You know the drill. Just show them the ropes so they don’t die within five minutes when we raid the next citadel.” The Commander sounded almost bored – an unusual display of emotion. “You know how it is with that scum, don’t you?” She raised the tip of her boot, taking Lacerta’s face with it. She nodded. “Your mother was just like that when we caught her. Sky nomads or something like that. Little dingy airships they were on. A couple of rounds of incendiary ammo and most of them went down without a hitch. I’m glad we didn’t shoot down the one with your mother on it. She was quite valuable, you know. It takes specialists like her to keep something like our little fortress here up in the air.” The Commander sipped on her drink. “Lean meat though, that newest bunch. Slow. They’ll make good cannon fodder though. That is, if you show them which way to point their guns.” The Commander was silent for a second. “You got that? You don’t even laugh? Well, I suppose you got your mouth full. Now get to the other one.” Lacerta started licking the Commander’s other boot. “Yes, your mother was special. She was such a good subordinate too. Did everything I told her to, right up until the end. Total loyalty. Just like you, Lacerta, isn’t that right?” The Commander looked down at Lacerta, right into her eyes, expectingly.

Lacerta looked up at her. Her mouth was dry. It tasted bitter, of dirt and shoe polish. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“Good dog. You will do everything I tell you to, right? Even to the bitter end?”

Lacerta didn’t break eye contact. She could feel the Commander’s eyes trying to peer into her soul. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. You’re also relieved of your guard duty with that angel thing.” At that, Lacerta’s gaze snapped upwards. “What?” the Commander asked. She didn’t look surprised. The corners of her mouth curled upward almost imperceptibly. “It seems like you’ve been having some fun with her, isn’t that right?” The Commander pulled something out of her jacket pocket. A thin piece of cloth. A scarf. “Prison warden found this in the angel’s cell. Seems her night guard has been bringing her presents, haven’t you?” The Commander looked at her with a full smirk. “Don’t worry, I won’t punish you. That is, if you’ll keep polishing my shoes. Come on.”

Lacerta bent down and started licking again. “We’ll get rid of her tonight anyway,” the Commander said. Lacerta’s stomach dropped. “It’s been too long since the last one, you know? The ship’s engines are almost out of fuel. Let’s hope this one keeps us afloat a bit longer. The last one screamed so much when we put it into the pressure chamber, right up until the end. Can you believe that, Lacerta? I think it was a boy too. But you won’t have to concern yourself with that. You’ll be off training those idiots while we turn your little friend into pulp. Isn’t that right, Lazzie?”

Lacerta looked up at the Commander but kept licking her boots. She tried to kill her with her gaze. “No response?” the Commander asked. “Just as well. Good girl.” She leaned back in her chair. “You’re awfully slow today. Pour me another drink, will you?”

* * *

“Hemd, can you do the next round?” Lacerta asked. “I need to go pee.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “I don’t think these rookies will ever get hang of proper stance.” He sighed. “I think we’re gonna be here all night, Laz. Alright, take your time.”

Oh, I will, Lacerta thought. She made her way out of the gun range, extra handgun and ammunition well secured under her jacket. She hurried down the stairwells of the airship, two steps at a time. One identical looking deck after the other. The stairwells ended randomly and Lacerta hurried down mile-long corridors to the next. It let as if the ship expanded as she tried to make it through its innards, new corridors being made just for her to run through.

She reached the prison deck and stopped, pressing herself into a niche in the wall. They are going to take her tonight. Her head was buzzing with bees, which made forming a plan difficult. She decided on straightforward.

She entered the prison tract. The prison warden’s guard post was to the left. He was sitting at a desk, looking at files. She stepped in front of him. “Hey,” she said. He looked up at her, eyebrows drawn together. He wanted to say something, maybe, before Lacerta punched him in the face. She grabbed his collar and put her hand over his mouth, slowly working her way into a headlock. “So, tell me: Have they already taken her away?”

He struggled to speak with his head locked between her elbow and chest. “The angel. I mean the angel,” Lacerta said. “Is she still here?” His head was getting red. He drooled on Lacerta’s arm. “Alright, I will relax my hold a bit. If you scream, I will snap your neck. You got that?” He grunted, which she interpreted to mean “yes.” She let go a bit.

He started wheezing like a bellows. “They– I don’t know. They haven’t come in yet. I don’t know.”

Lacerta let go of him. ”Good boy,” she said, before slamming his head into the desk. She checked his belt. A giant key ring. She took it.

Lacerta walked down the prison corridor as she had already done dozens of times. Rows of further rows of cells, each the same as the one before it as the one before it as the one before it, except the final one. She stood in front of Andromeda’s cell. She held her gun ready by her side. The angel was sitting on the far side of her cell wall, drowsily slumped against the wall, almost like the first time they met. She looked up at Lacerta. “I thought you wouldn’t come tonight,” she said.

“I will always come back for you,” Lacerta said. She took off the keyring and started trying them out on the door.

“What are you doing?” Andromeda asked.

“I’m going to rescue you,” Lacerta said. “Do you know which key they used when they put you in here?”

“No, I don’t. Why are you rescuing me? Lacerta, what’s happening?” She stood up and rushed toward the bars.

“Andromeda, if I don’t get you out of here right now, they will kill you tonight. I don’t think we have much time.” She could feel her voice quiver. Her hands were beginning to shake.

“Here, let me help you,” Andromeda said. She grabbed the key ring out of Lacerta’s unprotesting hands and started trying out keys herself. Painful seconds passed. “This one works,” she said. Lacerta took the key and turned it around. It clicked. She opened the door as Andromeda stepped back into her cell. It swung open and for the first time, Lacerta could see her without bars in the way.

She stopped and took a breath. “I know,” she said, “I’m not a knight in shining armor, but will you still let me rescue you?” She could feel tears pooling under her eyes. Andromeda nodded. Lacerta stretched out her left hand and Andromeda laid hers in it. “We will have to go now,” Lacerta said. “They’re probably coming to take you away soon.”

They started moving out of the cell, back down the corridors. Lacerta could still feel Andromeda’s hand in hers, warm and soft. Even so, every couple of meters she turned around to check that she was still there. The warden was still asleep at his desk. Their feet barely made a sound on the metal floors as they made their way out and up, climbing up stairs after stairs. “Do you know where we are going?” Andromeda whispered. Lacerta looked back at her and nodded. For the first time while moving through the ship’s labyrinthine guts, Lacerta didn’t feel anxiety or dread. She felt nothing. Nothing but Andromeda’s hand in hers. A warm wind carrying her upward.

Then, sounds from above. The heavy clank of work boots on metal mesh stairs. Between the rings, a voice, gruff and leering. Kessel. “In here,” Lacerta said and directed both of them into a niche on the mezzanine between two decks. They were barely hidden, but they didn’t need to be for long. The voices coming from above were becoming louder. Lacerta could see them walking down the stairs toward the prison deck through the little holes in the metal plates of the stairs. Light, no light, light, like something passing by a window. They made one final turn and–

Before her on the upper landing of a flight of stairs were Kessel and Raimos, talking causally. Lacerta had pointed her gun at Kessel’s head. It didn’t move a hair’s breadth. They stopped. No one said a word. Andromeda was still half-hidden in the niche, Lacerta’s left hand holding her there. Silence.

“Laz, what’re you doing?” Kessel asked.

“I want you both to take off your holsters and kick them down here,” Lacerta said.

“And why should we do that?” Kessel asked.

“Because otherwise I will kill you.”

Raimos and Kessel looked at each other. Slowly, they took their holsters off, dropping them on the ground and kicking them down the stairs. “Andromeda, I want you to pick up those guns and drop them down the middle of the stairwell.” Lacerta let go of her hand. She didn’t break eye contact with Kessel, with Raimos and Kessel again. The angel picked up the guns, dropping them over the railing. They made a distant thud and clank as they hit the ground many floors below them. “Stay behind me,” Lacerta whispered to Andromeda. Slowly, step by step by step, the two made their way up, until Lacerta was face to face with Kessel. What separated them was the length of Lacerta’s arm, her gun and a few centimeters of air. He looked at her with a stone-faced mask, his head straight on and only the eyes looking in her direction, into hers. He looked, for the first time that she could remember, not smug. That was enough for her.

Andromeda went on, further up the stairs and Lacerta followed, walking backwards, testing each step, never letting her two comrades out of sight, until she was just about to dip behind the next set of stairs. “Good luck you two,” she said to them. She looked at Andromeda. “Let’s run.”

They ran up another flight of stairs and another and then two more until they could feel a breeze wafting through the corridors, not fresh air, but outside air at least: Smoke and dust.

“This way to the flight deck,” Lacerta said. They took another corridor, a left turn and a right. Lacerta walked these corridors for the first time not with fear but with purpose. Then through a locker room, changing room and the personnel entrance to the flight deck. A giant hall opened up in front of them, a maw torn into the side of the ship where all its tiny gunships slept. The entire night sky opened up to their side, dark thunderous clouds, angry and lit by fire below and a precious few stars forcing their way through. “I’ll get us a ship.”

There was no sound but the giant propellors that kept the ship in the air, a constant whooshing noise. Their steps sounded so loud on the metal out here, only to be swallowed by the open air. They made their way over to one of the small gunships. Lacerta had piloted one of these before. I can do it. I will do it. She opened the door to the pilot seat, threw her gun on the seat and looked around the cockpit. More levers than I remember. “Lacerta,” Andromeda said quietly.

“Yes,” she answered. She put her right foot on the step.

“I would recommend against that,” the Commander’s voice was clear as ice. She was standing maybe twenty meters away toward the exit of the hangar they had just come through. With her were two armed soldiers, rifles directed at Lacerta and Andromeda. “I got a little call from your fellow soldiers that you were trying to make a daring exit and I thought I would come by and bid you a final farewell.”

Lacerta took a breath. Her eyes darted between the Commander and her soldiers and Andromeda. All of them looked at her. She couldn’t think under stress. An idea.

With two swift steps, Lacerta jumped over to Andromeda and put her in a headlock, putting her as a shield between herself and the soldiers’ guns.

“Oh, sure,” the Commander said. “You don’t even have a gun. They can still shoot you in the head from this distance, you know?”

“I can snap her neck faster than your lackeys can pull their triggers.” She began slowly walking backwards, one step after the other. She could feel the upwind picking up behind her, brushing up against the hairs on the back of her neck.

“You won’t kill her. It wouldn’t help you.”

“No,” Lacerta said, “but it would ruin your day.” Another step. She was on the edge. One more step and they were falling. Blood was hammering in her head, pounding her ears. Still, she could feel Andromeda’s breath on her arm. Warm. Calm. “Can you fly?” she whispered in her ear. She could feel the angel’s heartbeat.

“Yes,” Andromeda said.

Lacerta let herself fall backwards, holding Andromeda tightly in her arms.

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