That son of a bitch Lon had stolen her arm last night. Eao woke in a heavy fog, the Epsilon XLV's anthem stuttering down the same vent shaft she'd been climbing for the last month. The right side of her body hummed, completely numb. When she twisted about to untangle herself from the hasty cradle of cables and fuel lines she'd strung up, she found she had less of a grip than she was used to.

"Dammit, Lon, you bastard!" Eao shouted into the shaft as she tumbled through the cable nest, flailing like a broken windmill.

Out of the ruins

Out from the wreckage

Can't make the same mistake this time

The Onward Anthem crooned gustily into the shaft, pausing for fits and sputters. Eao was having some fits and sputters herself. Can't make the same mistake this time? She hadn't! She'd set up all her traps and set Cleopatra on lookout and still that damn Lon had jacked her arm and that stupid anthem was rubbing it in. Like pouring lighter fluid on a wound.

The Epsilon XLV had a knack for unbelievably sour timing. So did Lon. Some days she swore they were in cahoots. Eao hated cahoots. She cahooted with no one but herself. And Cleopatra, of course, but she was just a holofacer and sometimes was forced to abandon Eao when the Epsilon was having a bad day.

"What about me," Eao grumbled, "I'm having a bad day." She wormed her way out of the knot of cables, scraping fuel residue from her shoulder. Her skin had stripped away in poisonous silver peels there. That probably wasn't good. But nothing left in the Epsilon was good, so she shrugged and began to climb again.

It was a lot harder with one arm.

"Lon, I know you're up there, you lousy, thieving trashteroid!" Her arm hurt, but it wasn't really bleeding, just a bit of clear ooze, and she thought maybe that was worrisome, maybe not bleeding meant she'd be dead soon, but she felt okay other than the numbish pain.

"I am up here. I'm wayyy up here. And you're wayyy down there." Lon's laugh echoed back to her, short as sparks and just as bright. "Sounds like you need a hand." There came a ringing volley of barks and Lon said, "No, Laika, for epsilon's sake, it's not a chew toy. Even if Eao's not going to be needing it, imagine how much faster I could go with three arms." Another bark-bark, quite offended. "Okay, look, I know it might've looked like a consolation prize for not playing with you yesterday, but you're a holofacer, you couldn't chew this if you tried and them's the facts, girl."

Eao huffed and snarled, hauling herself up the shaft bodily. The vent huffed and snarled around her, equally put out, it seemed. Cables kept vomiting out of the access hatches and steam clouded what remained of the air. This high up it didn't even seem to be enough to tempt the oxysharks that swarmed the low-to-mid levels. They'd made a frenzied massacre of those not clever enough to realize that the fastest (if not more dangerous) way out of the Epsilon's dead and drifting husk was through the shafts.

We are the children

The last generation

We are the ones they left behind

The anthem continued to wail throatily. It was a sad tale really. The Epsilon XLV was (had been) a globe-freighter, a grand beast of a ship, massively generational, designed to carry essentially a world's worth of people to a new life. It was the last of its kind, built in the orbit of a dying planet after everyone else had already skedaddled before the collapse got too bad. They'd left the Epsilon to burn in an oncoming tide of radiation with a devastating shrug, chalking it up to an acceptable statistic.

But against those odds, the Epsilon got out. Reached the sweet breath of freedom among the stars. And then, well, there was always an "And Then." To sum it up quick and dirty, something had gone terribly wrong. The ship had detonated from the inside out, left to drift on its last trajectory, listless, abandoned, burning. Scores made it out, jettisoned in autopods. Other scores hadn't.

Scores like Eao. A tally in some future history remarking what a tragedy. Eao wasn't going to be anyone's damn tragedy.

And I wonder when we are ever gonna change

Living under the fear 'til nothing else remains

Ha, joke was on them. Eao wasn't afraid of anything. Not the burning death of radiation in the bowels of the Epsilon, not oxysharks, and not that arm-thieving Lon beating her to the summit. Eao reached up for the next support strut and got a handful of cable instead. It swung loose, slinging her out against the shaft wall and knocking her head about.

Her vision fuzzed for a blurry moment and when she shook it off, Cleopatra was there, hovering in the middle of the shaft and looking impatient. Classic Cleopatra.

"Where the hell have you been?" said Eao, inching up her rope of cable with what one might consider absolutely incredible strength. She was exceptional. You kind of had to be in order not to die here.

"Out," said Cleopatra pertly. Her glossy wig shone perfect and so did her scowl. "What nonsense have you let Lon get away with this time?" It wasn't like she didn't know. She was looking pointedly at the absence of arm.

"I didn't let him." Eao had to stop on the ledge of one of the vent hatches. She wasn't out of breath; that didn't happen. She was just angry and it messed with her thinking. "If anyone let him, it was you! You were supposed to warn me."

"Pardon," said Cleopatra without really asking for one. "But I am subject to the volatile whims of the Epsilon XLV, and if you haven't noticed, it's what I believe is professionally called a piece of shit."

We don't need another hero

We don't need to know the way home

No heroes here, that was for sure. Eao gritted her teeth. All the heroes had left the Epsilon XLV to crash and burn. Twice. Bunch of hypocrites. Great big trashteroids. And the irony heaped on top in a flaming shovelful? There actually was an autopod left. Cleopatra had read it in the sysfeeds, everyone's holofacer had. One autopod left, a little bit broken, just a little, easily fixable and none of those fleeing sacks of crap had taken the time to do it. To get more people out.

Now it was too late. Eao put her anger on simmer and started climbing again. She really had to get a handle on that. It made her vision twitch and her mind blank. Cleopatra had also read the real kicker. That the broken autopod only had enough oxygen reserves for one passenger, despite its capacity.

Sure, everyone wanted to be the one to reach it first, but honestly, Eao and the other survivors would salute who ever did. Except for Lon. Eao would never salute Lon. She'd tear off her other arm first before that happened. But whoever it was, whoever got there, could go out, call for help, and though everyone might die before help came, they'd be remembered as more than a damn oh well.

All we want is life beyond

The thunderdome

Eao snorted. Whatever the hell that was. She'd never heard of a ship called the Thunderdome. Sometimes the Onward Anthem was freakishly prescient, and sometimes it made no sense at all.

"You're doing it again," said Cleopatra. She waved her hands in front of Eao's face, the glint of her armbands hypnotic. "It's like you don't even care about preserving my programming. I don't know why I bother to advise you or tell you anything important. It's not like you listen. We'll all die and be smashed into crumbs of pointless code."

Eao growled, but Cleopatra was right. She'd just been hanging on to another cable, swinging in the swirling steam-breath of the vent, condensation beading on her smooth scalp. No one had been this high before. She'd been thrifty and ruthless to get here, until Lon. He'd been dogging her for ages, but she'd been quick, smart, prepared. But he'd been sneaky and he had an...arm up.

"Dammit!" Eao roared.

"Aw, Eao, I've never heard you moved to such passion. Truly, I didn't know you had it in you," Lon hollered down. It was just sick to be that cheerful. "You know what else you don't have in you? Blood. It's a little concerning."

Looking for something

We can rely on

There's gotta be something better out there

Lon fell real quiet then and that, that was concerning. Eao's buzzy numbness on her right side went buzzier. Anticipatory.

"Epsilon's Ashes," said Lon. Eao couldn't see him yet, but his shock was palpable. "Did you know how close you were?" Laika yipped and Lon's fuzzy holofacer was suddenly rocketing by down the shaft in pursuit of something heavier and faster, her harness jingling, pointed face an arrow of glee.

Lon had dropped her arm.

"Hey!" Eao spluttered, pulling herself up the rest of the way to a small platform and leveling herself with Lon's boots. "You idiot. You blundering, clueless, out of orbit—"

She realized then with a chilling evaporation of fury, and just about all sensation, that he hadn't been talking to her.

There was a body on the platform. And the autopod, its diagnostic panel still flickering with life. The body wasn't. They'd been fixing the pod right up until the moment of death. Someone had stayed.

The anthem ground to a halt, garbled a little to itself, ignited again in high-pitched speed, then settled.

So what do we do with our lives

We leave only a mark

"Oh," said Eao.

Lon's mouth formed the same shape but didn't say it. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. His voice was always more expressive than his face. He leaned in and poked the panel. The anthem stuttered again in terrible response.

"Tim's jaded hero playlist," Lon read off the panel. He leaned back, exhaling long and low.

"Cleo," said Eao. "Why didn't you see this?"

The holofacer turned her nose to the air. "This diagnostic panel was cut off from the main system. It was dark, Eao. I can't read in the dark."

"Well you can integrate and read it now, can't you?"

Cleopatra sniffed daintily and placed her hand on the panel. She shivered, her white dress blurring into an aura, and then spoke, though the voice wasn't hers.

"Hey, guys, Tim here. I don't know if you'll remember me, or hell, if you'll remember you. The system crash is wreaking havoc with your programming—I mean really, archives dumping into holofacer modules and all sorts of shit slipping loose and swimming in your brains. God, I'm sorry, I was suppose to take care of you all. You're my family."

Feedback screeched out of Cleopatra's mouth, and then—Epsilon Android Operatives offline. Files corrupted.

Tim coughed. "I'm trying to vent radiation downward, I know you guys won't mind, and I gotta keep breathing if I'm gonna get you all out, 'cause guys, they're leaving. They're leaving you here and they don't plan on coming back. Not even if you make it out. The bastards. You helped us, you were what got us out of orbit when our planet was blowing to chunks and they just wanna offload you like garbage. But I'm gonna do what I can. Look, I got a hero playlist and everything, I'm gonna—"

Cleopatra crackled and then stopped. Her mouth closed. Lon reached out and held Eao's one remaining hand.

The anthem croaked, wavered, and played on.

Will our story shine like a li-li-li-li-light

Or end in the dark.