The Moth and the Candle

- Gonna to sleep with my baby, hold me down, smooth the fair-skinned frown, I hear the sounds of the very last town…

- Shut up Moore, he hissed.

Redshaw clamped his hand over his mouth. Moore’s eyes dilated. His fingers flexed. He turned his head and slipped off the decking. In two very simple movements almost faster than Redshaw’s eyes could follow he pulled a weapon from his belt and scanned the length of the deck. Even Moore was impressed.

- No waiting for the enemy to arrive eh Reds?

He turned and grinned. Pulling his lower lip over his teeth he bit down hard. Redshaw hasn't blanched at anything in years. In times past he had seen whole towns of dead, corpses piled higher than he could think but when the blood dripped off Moore’s chin and sizzled as it hit the scorching deckmetal his nostrils flared slightly. Moore noticed and his grin grew wider. Sucking at his own blood he tilted his head back and murmured in mock-prayer.

- Oh Hesu forgive us all for we know exactly what we do but we just can’t seem to stop doing it. I beeeeseech thee, allow us all to be as we are, as we were now and in the beginning forever and ever amen.

Redshaw watched. He stared him down. Even Moore’s irreverent violence simmered gently when baked by that stare.

- Just a joke just a joke Reds, just my little joke, he said evenly as the gun hang lightly by his side present but in no way a threat.

Redshaw shrugged. He caught up

- It is little to me if you laugh and snigger at anything, least of all things you do not understand. I am just here beside you as you are beside me.

Moore stopped laughing and nodded, his long unkempt hair whorling in the gathering winds. He reached down and pushed himself to his feet.

- And the remainder always knew what to say next. They would shuffle their feet and hang their heads like little boys lost in guilt and oh so delicious wrong but they knew alright. The worst were forever the loud ones, all foghorn mouth and snarling aggression. Usually because they didn’t know what to do with the fear inside of course but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with them. Or make them any less dangerous. Without passion, one told me once, we aren’t anything at all. He went first. Impaled himself on a length of armour metal taken from the wreckage of a landline tank. I remember all his mates stood there looking at him for about half an hour before one of them plucked up the courage and they all ended up going through his pockets. I can still see the smallest one running off with his dear dead friend’s boots tied by the bootlaces around his neck, running as fast as his legs could carry him.

Redshaw turned to look at him.

- What is the point of this Moore?

Moore dragged heavily on his cheroot, shards of black tobacco bursting into crackling flame
.
- Fucked if I know. I just watched them die, one by one until I couldn’t feel anything anymore. By then I knew it was time to leave and find some other occupation. Peace time was not for me. I found neither. Neither time nor peace in the place I was Reds.

- And the place you are in now? Try not to be flippant for once.

Moore spat and stared upwards, contemplative in the silence.

Redshaw shrugged.

- I have heard worse things than that.

- And aye, we have, you have, I have. Seen worse. Even done worse. I am thinking of that time we spent out at the border post on the edge of the NML with that bastard cuntchild of a customs commissioner who tried to have us all executed for smuggling weapons. Remember him? What was his name…Chancer? Geoff Chancer. That was it, man te se, he had balls but didn't he? Even with his men strung out in front of him, bloody and silent for the last time, he never gave an inch. That was the time when Drayton fired the last of his rounds at thin fucking air screaming about the people beyond sight and ran naked into the waiting darkness. He didn’t get more than fifty feet before what happened. Fuuuuck that was a bad one.

Redshaw said nothing. He had nothing to say. He had given the order to execute the customs commissioner. It shouldn’t have felt like anything really considering the deaths that could be laid at their collective doorstep. If he had fought or shouted or even spat it would have made it…simpler. But he just stared with contempt, his defiance made all the more galling for it having only a subtle outlet to demonstrate its worth. Even Drayton didn’t speak when he was hoisted from the broken spar over the barrier crossing. He could still see the man’s stare, cold and deadly, weighing them all and finding nothing.

It was Redshaw’s turn to stare. He turned to face the bow of the barge as it slowly broke up, parts of the bulkhead calving off to spin gracefully beneath his stare. He ran towards the bow. Moore shouted at him but he didn’t even turn. As he ran he pointed at the bow and shouted

- The tendril cables, Moore, look at the tendril cables. They have not been destroyed yet and look where they lead.

Moore frowned. He got up and ran after him. As he stood on the side rail and peered over. He saw what Redshaw was pointing frantically at. The patches of what looked like black smole from the the burning engines were moving, turning themselves insiude and out. Moore turned and said

- Hesu Redshaw are we that belling desperate? If we miss…

- If we miss we are no worse off than we will be in half an hour or so when the barge will disintegrate totally. We do not have many other options. Or indeed any other options expect to die here.

- Fucking good point Reds me old tres, he grinned, let’s jump and die. Or jump and live. How do you want to do it? Actually to fuck with it, let’s just go.

He swung one leg over the rail and jumped out into space. Redshaw shook his head, disapproving as always.

- Aim for the nearest cable on the left, I’ll try and take the one on the right. If we time it we should push into the middle of those dark matter clouds split seconds behind one another.

- We could land anywhere this time so if we do get separated head for Northern Bovar OK? Sally’s bar at the mining post closest to the NML frontier. From there we can decide what to do next.

- Got it. Fuck the cunts, let’s go!

Moore launched himself off the side rail, pushing as far out into space as he could. Redshaw ran to do the same, the arc on the left being tighter so he had even less to go. He jumped out and fell. As he did so his mind froze for only a fraction of a second. And then he was amongst the tendrils. He missed the first two although the second one caught him, smashing the visor of his helmet and drawing blood. He felt the third smack into his hand and he held. The momentum from his jump meant he swung around the bow of the barge towards the patches of oily black that lived on the edge of vision. As he did he could see Moore coming towards him from the opposite direction. He had never doubted he would. The ultraviolet tinges to the shifting edges of the dark matter clouds writhed unaffected by the air, dancing to a tune no one else could hear. Moore reached the largest one first with Redshaw not far behind him. As they came hurtling towards one another Moore, all maniacal grin and aching muscle, let go of the tendril cable as he pulled a UTIS grenade from his belt. He threw it into the non-space between them and it detonated just as they collided. Redshaw felt a searing heat wash over him, so hot it felt like being doused in ice water. This time, he thought, in a flash as sudden and intense as the blast-wave, they would not see each other for a long time.