“The idea that there’s an entire mecha just out of reach won’t go over well,” Hartwell said.

  “You’re welcome to try building a bridge,” Jack said. Hartwell gave him an angry glare.

  “I get that it’s out of reach, but some people in the clan are going to see it as money left on the table,” Hartwell said. “People are going to be upset, is all.”

  “Then they can try building the bridge,” Jack said. Hartwell gave him a second angry glare.

  “At least we’ve got one mech worth of parts to keep people happy,” Hartwell said. The mech Rush had fought earlier was still being picked clean. “We’ll finish stripping the place next shift and get moving. For now, all of you get your rations and rest up.”

  Despite being teenagers in a stellar junkyard, they were still teenagers, and did not need to be told twice to eat and sleep. Giza grabbed the ration bars and handed them out to her friends, waiting to hand Rush his until he had taken off his armor. Rush gnawed through the cube of compressed nutrients with ruthless efficiency.

  “Slow down, Rush,” Giza said. “No one’s going to take it from you.”

  “I know,” Rush said, once he had swallowed the most recent bite. He continued eating at the same pace anyway.

  “Not like you should slow down and savor the flavor or anything,” Jack said, as he eyed his half-eaten bar. Ration bars had the taste and consistency of dirt. It was all they had out in the wastes, though. The commissary only sold four things, and the broth and bread didn’t keep well enough to travel. Outside of Hub Station, it was water and ration bars every day, every meal. Giza gnawed on hers with the same sense of perpetual dissatisfaction as ever.

  “Kind of an early shift end,” Giza said. “You guys want to play a game?”

  “Not really,” Eiffel said. “We almost got a mountain dropped on us. I’m tired.”

  “Come on, play with us,” Giza said. “And hey, I never asked. Rush, what do you do for fun?”

  “I don’t have fun.”

  That was one of the more depressing sentences Giza had ever heard, but Rush went right back to eating his ration bar like nothing had happened.

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  “You don’t play games?”

  “Games don’t pay off debt,” Rush said. “Work does.”

  “Well, what did you do when there wasn’t any work to do?”

  “Look for work,” Rush said. “Travel to where work is. Eat. Or sleep.”

  “You depress me,” Jack said. “I’m going to bed.”

  Jack excused himself, and Eiffel followed. Giza finished off her ration bar and sat on the sidelines, watching Rush. He had long since finished his meal and had settled in to examine the new armor plating of the Scrapper suit. Not much had changed, functionally, but he still wanted to familiarize himself with every detail. Giza wondered if maybe that was his “game”: trying to understand everything he got his hands on, studying it relentlessly until he knew the way it worked.

  “What do you want to do when you go back to Earth, Rush?”

  Rush shrugged and continued picking at the suit.

  “You’ve never thought about it?”

  “I’ve never had more than fifty percent of my debt paid off,” Rush said. “I’ll plan for Earth when I’m closer to actually going there.”

  “Could be coming up fast, thanks to the suit,” Giza said. “You might want to start thinking about it.”

  “I’ll start when I’ve paid off more than fifty percent of my debt,” Rush said. He clearly had a plan, and he was sticking to it. Giza knew better than to press the issue.

  “I haven’t really made up my mind either. Sometimes, I want to be a farmer,” Giza said. “My Mom used to say on Earth there’s fields of food stretching so far you can’t see one end from the other.”

  Rush showed no reaction to that fantastical image. Giza had never seen a green plant in her life, but her mother had told her all about them, in vivid detail. She’d had a garden back home, apparently. Some kind of bright red, goopy fruit called a “tomato” had been her favorite.

  “Dad says it’s mostly drones that do that nowadays, though,” Giza continued.

  “Better farming than punching me,” Rush said. Giza laughed at him, prompting a quizzical expression from Rush. “What?”

  “That was funny,” Giza said. “The way you said it.”

  “I just said it,” Rush said with a shrug.

  “I think that was the most emotion you’ve ever shown,” Giza said. “You don’t like getting punched?”

  “Do you?”

  “Hah! No, I don’t,” Giza said.

  “Most people don’t,” Rush said. He returned his attention to the armor. Giza watched him work for a while, and finally decided to leave him alone to his work. As she left, a tide of silver shifted on Rush’s shoulder.

  “Ms. Giza raises a good question,” Elvis said. “What will we do once your debt is paid off?”

  “I’ll think about it once I’m past fifty percent,” Rush repeated.

  “I see,” Elvis said. “Well, I am attached to you, in a literal sense, so whatever it is you decide, I shall be there to support you, Mr. Rush.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I should confess I also feel some personal impetus to return to Earth,” Elvis admitted. “Call it a...compulsion. I don’t quite have access to those memory files yet, but some core piece of me knows I was supposed to take something or someone back to Earth.”

  “That would make sense. You are an evacuation vehicle, apparently.”

  “Precisely!”

  “Whoever you were supposed to evacuate has probably been dead for three centuries, though,” Rush said.

  “Yes. Quite right.”

  Rush wondered why Elvis got quiet all of a sudden.