On that note, here's some spacey dabbling. Didn't have much time tonight. Not sure if either of these are worth pursuing.

~

Stars wheeled. He heard the hull groaning behind the klaxon's wail. A wingmate's fighter snapped past, banking, the barrels of its armaments glowing hot. He felt the jolt as its wing clipped his engine. Out his cockpit the frozen horizon of an alien world whipped in and out of view, in and out, and as g-forces starved his brain of blood he saw a thousand foreign signatures blinking on his radar and the last thing he thought before blacking out was how pretty they all were.

~

She pressed her visor to his and they turned together in the light of a pale sun. A deep shadow washed over them and she looked up (or down, or across). Animal panic seized in her gut as the silhouette drifted across the mirror of her visor. Then she recognised the angles of her own craft, the same deep-space recon craft she'd been living out of for the past three weeks, and a new fear settled in.

She said: 'Are we losing it?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I guess so.'

'How's your oxygen?'

'All to hell. Yours?'

'Yeah. Want to head back?'

'Soon,' he said, and they kept turning. She looked into his visor. Her own stared back at her. But that was okay.

The airlock hissed around them. 'There's a gas giant on the other side of the system,' he was saying as the cycle completed. He unlatched his helmet and the buzz of radio gave way to the warmth of his voice. 'The atmosphere of those things, you know, it's all to . . . it transitions gradually; it's not gas one altitude and then suddenly liquid. Between those states there's a long gradient, not quite either. Something in-between.'

She let out a hoarse chuckle. 'Our hull wouldn't last that long.'

'Someone tried that, you know? Crammed himself into a probe and launched himself down through Jupiter's storm. All to hell.'

Their suits blipped at the same time; a third voice crackled through their radios. 'Marco!' it called, and she recognised it immediately. Familiarity had a way of wearing down protocol. On deep-space patrols, it had to.

'Marco,' she replied.

'Piss off,' the radio blared, but she could hear the grin in his voice. There was an edge to it, though, and she knew it was bad news before he said it. 'All quiet at the buoy, ladies and gents,' he said. 'Looks like they want us out here the full month. How much can they learn from a goddamn white dwarf?'

She laughed, and was a little surprised by the sound. Then she added to it: 'I hear you.' Pulling herself into the lounge she tossed her crewmate a look. He shrugged, tugging open the storage locker. She caught the juice box he threw and, hanging from a rail, felt a smile pulling at her lips. 'This mission,' she heard herself say, 'is all to hell.'