“…and so,” said the HR veep, “management has reluctantly decided to wrap up the Cerean One project.” His remorseful look was about as genuine as his hair, teeth, and skin—which is to say, not very. “Your severance has already been credited to your accounts of record, and the Ceres Corp is grateful for how you blazed the trail for our new-generation pods.”

A long silence reigned over the Multi-Purpose Room. Sure, we had all expected this day for the last couple years. The new Vestal-series pods benefitted from all the lessons learned from the two Cerean missions, but somehow we never got the retrofits that would have let us compete with our co-workers. The Cerean Two incident, eight months ago, did nothing to help our cause (although we did get that retrofit, to prevent a similar disaster).

Caroline broke the silence. “You guys sunk a lot of capital into these mods and implants,” she said. Pointing to the camera, her telescoping arm shot three meters over the heads of the crew in front of her, almost touching the lens. “Why don’t you reassign us to another mission?”

Even with the physical separation, the veep flinched away from his screen. That was satisfying; most of us had come to loathe his plastic face in the last twelve seconds. “You would be amazed at the advances the Prostech department has made in the last ten years,” he said at last. “All of you are highly skilled, but your—ah, configurations—just aren’t suited for the Vesta pods.”

“Well, where the hell are we gonna go, then?” asked DeeCee. “You’re as much as sayin’ we’re obsolete. I haven’t looked at my bank account, but I don’t think there’s any retirement homes outside a gravity well just yet, even if we can afford one.”

Veep’s face, to our collective surprise, got even more plastic. “Your accounts are still active,” he said. This was probably the voice he used to inform the CEO of the Cerean Two incident. “They have been firewalled, but you do have access to an outplacement firm we have hired for your benefit.” His plastic smile returned. “Your skills and experience will certainly be in demand throughout the system.”

“And what happens to the pod?” Kumar asked. “Looking at my feed, I see I’m included in the downsizing.” We should have expected that. Of all of us, our manager might be the most obsolete of all—his implants were geared to monitor and control Cerean One.

“Decommissioned. We’ll be sending shuttles over the next week to pick everyone up. We’ve arranged accommodations here at Occator, while you secure your next opportunity. If you have any further questions, there’s an email address in your feeds. Again, Ceres thanks you for your dedication.”

The screen flipped back to the Ceres Corp logo, then went dark. That was unusual.

“Okay,” said Kumar, sounding distracted the way he did when doing something complicated. “Transmitter’s off… beacon’s off. Recorders… off. That one took a minute.” He gave us a wry shrug. “So let’s hope nothing bad happens in the next couple of minutes, because we’ve gone dark. What do we want to do about this?”

We had gone offline for a few seconds at a time in the past, usually to replace a transmit module, but even then the recorders were going. If Kumar was telling the truth, we had gone dark.

“What can we do?” asked Li. She floated out of her chair and started pacing overhead, using her airjets. None of us have legs; airjets are more efficient in micrograv, and we use less oxygen. Li paced like that when she was agitated. After ten years in the pod, everyone here knew everyone else’s quirks.

“Shoot, why don’t we hijack the pod?” DeeCee grinned. “Corp’s gonna decommission it anyway.”

“They won’t scrap it?” Tatiana asked.

“They didn’t scrap Cerean Two,” said Kumar. “The salvage crew picked up the bodies and the recorders, and left the rest of it behind.”

“Too bad we don’t know where it is, then,” I chimed in. “We could use it for spare parts.”

Kumar grinned. “F&A tried to sell it, but not very hard.” Facilities and Assets had terrible follow-through. “I’ve already plotted an intercept course.”

“In the dark?” Caroline looked at him like he was nutty.

“We’re not leaving yet. First… I’m tasked to set the departure order. If anyone wants off, they can take the first shuttle when it arrives. Anyone want to go job hunting?” He looked around the room. Nobody spoke. A few shook their heads.

“In that case…” We felt the pod move, accelerating us into a new orbit. “I did a full scan this morning,” Kumar reassured us. “We have thirty-eight hours, on this course, before collision probabilities go above one percent. After that, low-power radar scans will keep us under wraps until we reach Cerean Two. We pull the power source and appropriate the shuttles… and then we figure out what to do next.”

Vestal Four was the first to find out what was next. We didn’t kill anyone—not directly, anyway, but we did snatch half their solar panels. Things probably got frosty before rescue crews arrived.

Ten of Vestal Two’s crew joined up with us when we hit them. That might have led to some issues with food and air, except that we re-rigged Cerean Two as a farm. Kumar put the hulk in an orbit that keeps it easy to find and safe from Belt debris. Li and Perry are our farmers; they seem to enjoy the isolation.

Ceres Corp wants us bad, but they’ll never find us. Our hideout is right under their noses, in a small crater not far from Occitor. Cap’n Kumar listens to their comms, so we’re always a step ahead.

The Dread Cereans, they call us out there. Hey, we’re not as dreadful as that veep. At least we’re real. Arrrr.