Retired

I retired the day after I buried my partner. Eighteen years we served together. Both of us had been around the block, he on various outposts and me on twelve freighters. Then we both ended up on the Wig.

They called it that because it looked like a giant, out-of-control wig of alloy hair sprouting from a turbine head. Every power hook-up on Compset connected to our grid. The wig was life, and Mowpav and I were the night crew that kept her breathing fire.

On the night we met, he hung from his harness, a blow torch in one hand and a roll of solder in the other. I clanked my own harness to pillar 17, I remember it distinctly. I have this thing about prime numbers. They've always been good luck for me. So to start a new job with a prime gave me confidence.

Mowpav swung down and tapped me on the shoulder with his wire. "Hey, bud. How's about we work together every shift 'til we either kill each other, or find a trust."

I smiled and said, "Done."

We stuck like a weld from that point on. Mow and Hup, the stuck-brothers of the night. We took a lot of ribbing that first contract, mostly from the other welding crews who rotated all over the place. They all had kids, and would trade their own mothers for more nights off. So long as Mow and I shared a shift, we didn't care about the hour.

Neither one of us had anything to go home to. Or to lose, for that matter.

Then I lost Mow. Not to a fall, or a burn, or lung-rot. Damned fluke. He died in his bed, aneurism they said. But it was a load of medical bullshit. My betrayal killed him, plain and simple. His heart broke and his brain split apart and he fell into another place where welds always hold, torches never run out, and he can fly without falling.

I let him down and I can't ever say I'm sorry.