The Rest is Rust and Startdust
an excerpt

[i]The streets are packed, thronged, too many people scattering in the darkness, too many sirens, too much input for my disoriented, sleep-addled brain to make sense of. I hold tight to Daniel’s hand, try to keep Dai and Nita in sight.
Who’s got the baby?
I search, frantic eyes not seeing what’s in front of me until I’ve looked everywhere else— He’s there, of course, on Dai’s hip, right where he should be.
Come on, come on, the words go ‘round in my mind, like a hamster on a damn treadmill. Where’s the way out??
But there is no way out. Not here, not now. I can see the storm troopers – Corporate Security or System Police, it doesn’t matter, they’re practically the same thing anyway – striding through the crowd, cudgels swinging. My eyes are already stinging from the tear gas, and I can smell blood in the air.
I hear gunshots, somewhere, and think Dammit, rubber bullets, but they aren’t rubber. I see someone ahead of me – no-one I know, I don’t think – go down, blood spurting from her chest. Oh, no…
Who the hell said they could try to kill us???
I grip Danny’s hand tighter – I know he’ll want to help, might not be totally aware of what’s happening (maybe he is, maybe he’s as lucid as any of us, or maybe the ANDD’s acting up and he can’t quite put it all together, I won’t know until we’re somewhere safe enough to stop and breathe and talk), and we need to get out of here. We need to get somewhere safe.
Somewhere safe. Hah. Yes. Somewhere there’s a ship, a half-empty cargo hold with crates we can hide in until we’re out of the city, off the goddamn planet—[/i]

—Kit’s eyes fly open in the dark of her cabin, her breath loud in the confined space. Slowly, slowly, her hands moving in the dark, she traces the line of the mattress, the low ceiling, the cold metal of the hinges. Her foot nudges the locker at the end of the bed, the slight protrusion of the venting system. She brushes the climate controls with her hand, and remembers where she is, and how she got here.
Slowly, she relaxes, reminds herself that all that happened years ago, back when she was in her twenties, had been married for barely six years.
A life time ago.
It’s over, she tells herself, firmly, though her heart is pounding in her chest, adrenaline already coursing through her system. You can’t go back there, now.
She rolls onto her side, curling around herself, taking slow, deep breaths while her heart calms down. She feels for the climate controls again, finds the button that shows her the time.
The LCD display reads 03.47.
[i]What the hell time is that, anyway?[/i] Kit asks herself, irritated at her own fright and more than ready to find something to vent it at. As if measuring time on a twenty-four hour clock makes any sense when it takes less than two months, on the System calendar, for the innermost planets to circle the sun, or when the sixth ring worlds, way out beyond the Belt, take almost three years to complete a single cycle.
[i]None of the planets have a cycle like Terra’s, she grumbles, inwardly. Why are we using a time system that stopped being relevant hundreds of years ago?[/i]
Kit sighs, aware that she’s grasping for a distraction, laughs bitterly at herself for trying so hard. She knows what she needs right now, or at least what she wants.
A drink, just one, would take the edge off her dream, wall up the memory of a chaotic nightmare too real to escape, and let her sleep again.
But she tries not to drink too much when she’s onboard. Bad example to the crew, plus it makes it hard to think – But isn’t that kind of the point? she asks herself, reasonably, her hand reaching for the cabin’s latch almost of its own accord – But no. Nita’d get on her case about it, and she doesn’t need to wake up with another headache. Not after the one she dealt with this morning.
Kit pulls the blankets around her, further, tells herself to go back to sleep.
She tries not to follow the dream to its finish.
She already knows how it ends.