I N T R O D U C I N G: BROKEN RAIL, a neon-soaked space western set at the edge of the galaxy. someone is killing their way through the last remaining members of a long-defunct vigilante group. the two questions are who and why. of course, those aren’t really the questions worth answering. they’re a good place to start, though. ( psd by @pilipalea )
GENRE: space western with a dash of cyberpunk. POV: third person. THEMES: anti-capitalism, multiple forms of vengeance, different applications of justice and what that actually means, love - though maybe not a happy one, the violence we do to each other now and in the future, and goodbyes by dozens. CONTENT WARNING: violence, gore, lots and lots of crime, terrible people doing terrible things.
Irene rubbed at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lip was already beginning to swell, hot and aching, and she huffed out a breath. “You could’ve shot me,” she said, working her jaw this way and that. It hurt, but not any more than any other bruise. “You probably should’ve shot me. Are you getting soft or something?”
For a long moment, Mesa’s grip stiffened on the gun. Then she set it down next to the boxes of supplies, all stamped with the new logo of the Protectorate, and sat cross-legged down on the dirt tinged purple and blue. “I knew it was you,” she said. Her gloved fingers fumbled for the familiar shape of the notebook, and Irene peered down at it. All the same flowers were pressed into the pages - one for every planet Mesa had gone to since she began wandering across the whole frontier. “Are you here for these?” The side of her boot knocked against one of the boxes.
“I should be.” Irene folded her arms. “They’re not yours.”
“You can take them back if you’re that worried about stealing all of a sudden.”
On instinct, Irene popped the lid off the top one and stared down the empty wrappings of a few rations, a few empty boxes of superheated rounds, and a few boxes of water. Picking one up and shaking it a little revealed only a suspicious kind of silence. “Collecting garbage, then? There’s a lot of money in that now.”
Mesa smiled, small and secret, and said nothing. She had always been good at that.
“Look,” Irene finally managed. “I’m not here because of the supplies. I didn’t even know we were missing supplies in this sector. I’m here because Keiko’s dead.”
The fire crackled. Mesa ran her fingers through her hair for a moment, tucking a few more strands behind her ear. The light threw strange shadows across her face, her head tilted at an angle that made her expression nearly inscrutable. “Right,” she said.
“So’s Rafael. T.J. is too. Zee was drowned in the Nightjar’s bathroom two weeks ago.”
“If you’re going to say that I killed them, Irene, just do it.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Mm. But you’d think it.”
It made sense on one level. But on the next, on the level that they knew each other on, truly and genuinely, Irene knew better. Mesa didn’t drown people. She liked distance and a rifle. She liked an unhurried kind of death. Once, they were laying together on the tile floor of a rest pod’s bathroom, staring up at the fluorescent bulb flickering out in the ceiling, and Irene said, languid and drunk and warm, that sometimes she just wanted to shoot her in the head.
“No. I wouldn’t do that either.”
Mesa’s eyes flicked upwards, the two of them watching each other warily. Then the moment broke. “Guess not,” she murmured, as easily as if she had meant that all along.
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