Max took the news quite well. Which meant that it hadn't actually penetrated, Maiga thought. Hadn't become real yet. After she and Wixa explained, he'd sat in silence for a while, then asked some questions, then silence again. After that he'd stood and said he'd go and fetch his things.

Wixa helped him with his packing, while Maiga secured the rest of the ship, closing down any running systems. She closed off the distress beacon, and then called Wixa on her walkie-talkie.

"Are you two off the ship? Over."

"Just left."

Maiga closed the connection, and then turned off the last switches to shut down main power. The lights above her went out and the hum of the power plant faded. The ship rested at last.

Using her flashlight, she found her way back to the airlock, securing the doors manually behind her. She found Wixa waiting at the bottom of the gangway, beside a few bags, one made of skins.

"Where is he?"

Wixa nodded over to the small burial ground. Max stood there among the cairns, his head bowed.

"I'm bringing some of his food rations," Wixa said. "Since there's three of us and we're a couple of days behind schedule. Otherwise we'd be getting hungry by the time we got back."

"Good idea."

As they watched, Max walked back towards the ship, with a slow tread, looking around the landscape. Would he miss it? Maiga wondered. This planet had taken so much from him, but had it given back too? Had he found out what he could achieve relying on his own wits and ingenuity? And had it saved his life? Might he have died in the war with so many of his fellow humans, if he hadn't been stranded here?

"I wonder if he likes older women."

"Wixa!" Maiga hissed.

"What? He's tasty. You think I don't notice?"

"Oh I noticed you noticing."

Max reached them, but looked not at Maiga and Wixa, but at the ship, a haunted expression in his eyes. Perhaps he was saying goodbye to it. After a few moments, Maiga took his arm, gently.

"Come on, Max. Let's take you home."

~o~

"How long has he been in the shower?"

Maiga looked up from reading on her Snapper. She sat at the small table in the living area, while Wixa stood by the food prep area clearing up from the meal the three of them had shared. After the meal, Max had gone into the miniscule bathroom behind the sleeping quarters.

"About half an hour I think," Maiga said.

"I suppose if you haven't had a shower in eighteen months you're entitled to linger."

Maiga nodded. Max seemed clean enough, he must have been bathing in a river or something, but a proper shower, well that was different.

"Hot water," Wixa said. "I imagine a person could dream about hot water after a while."

Maiga certainly had sometimes on the long treks in the wilderness with Ilyan and his followers.

"Water is the benchmark of civilisation you know." Wixa sat at the table opposite Maiga, with a glass of water in one hand and a small bowl in the other.

"Okay," Maiga said, putting her Snapper down. "I'll bite. What are you talking about this time?"

"Well, first, people discovered that hot water was great for bathing and for washing things. So hot water is the first step."

"Ah, those great advances in human evolution. The bath and the laundry."

"You can mock, but that's the important stuff! Anyway the next step is this." She held up the glass. "Clean water. First working out that you need clean drinking water and then figuring out how to get that to as many people as possible. Everything changed then."

"Really?"

"Yes. People stopped drinking beer for breakfast for one thing."

Maiga rolled her eyes, but kept on playing the game. "Okay, go on. What next?"

"This." Wixa tipped the small bowl over the glass and ice cubes splashed and clinked. She smiled and held up the glass as condensation started to form on it. "Ice for your drink. Sophistication." She put the glass of iced water down in front of Maiga. "And that is why Max has been in that shower for thirty five minutes now."

Maiga took a sip of the water, the ice cubes bobbing against her lips, then said, "Well, thanks for that potted history of humanity's relationship with water."

"You're welcome. Actually, he'd better get out of there soon. I need to use the facilities."

Maiga gave him another ten minutes then she went into the sleeping quarters, Wixa following her, and knocked on the door. She could still hear the shower. The water recycling system must be running at full pelt.

"Max? Are you okay?"

The shower noise stopped and a moment later the door slid open. Maiga stepped back as Max emerged, a towel around his waist. Water droplets glistened like beads on his dark skin and his hair hung damp and heavy, pulled straight by the water's weight.

"'scuse me." Wixa hurried past the two of them and closed the bathroom door.

"I'm sorry," Max said, moving over to the bunks, standing awkwardly, and hanging on to the towel. "It was just nice in there."

Nice was a word Maiga wouldn't have thought to apply to the tiny shower, which made her claustrophobic if she lingered more than five minutes. But then, she took it for granted. Max looked at his wrinkled fingertips, then he opened his bag, which lay on the bed, and took some clothes out. They looked less ragged than the ones he'd changed out of.

"I kept these aside," he said. "Something decent to wear the day rescue came."

His voice was still subdued. He'd been quiet all through the journey so far. He's still processing it all, Maiga thought. It's still not real to him.

"Max," she started, and then stopped as Wixa came out of the bathroom.

"Ah, I'll go keep watch in the cockpit," Wixa said.

"Thanks, Wixa." Maiga nodded. "Okay, I'll let you get dressed. Come out and see me when you're ready. I have something I want to show you."

She left the room, closing the door behind her. The ship felt crowded with the three of them. Not enough chairs, not enough bunks. They would have to sleep in shifts. Strange for that extra person on board to be a man as well. He wasn't a big guy, but somehow men just took up more space. Longer reach, longer stride. She felt as if she had to keep squeezing past him, bodies brushing by each other, the warmth of that momentary contact must be welcome to him after so long alone.

She didn't mind it herself. In fact she didn't mind his presence on the ship and once or twice she'd wished Wixa wasn't here... That's quite enough of that, she chided herself. Don't forget about Chervaz. Who she'd made no promises to...

Trying to shake those thoughts from her mind, she pulled a chair in front of a console on the wall, picked up the keyboard and started to trawl through the database to put together a list of items. News broadcasts, pictures, video clips, reports. Max needed this to be more than just a story told to him by his rescuers. He needed it to be real.

When he emerged from the sleeping quarters about ten minutes later, he wore the clothes he'd shown her, black trousers and a simple white shirt. His hair was dry now and once again tied back. He had no shoes on and he saw her glance down at his bare feet.

"I only have the boots now. I think I had shoes, but I must have left them behind."

"That's okay. Just mind what you stand on. Grab that chair and sit by me." Perhaps she should have added 'please', as he had told them now that the crash had happened when he'd been on his way to take up a posting with his new rank of Lieutenant Commander, and that meant that technically he outranked Maiga. Well not on this ship he didn't. He didn't object to the order though, just grabbed the chair and sat beside her.

She started to play the various clips and bring up the reports, talking him through them. How it all unfolded. How High Command had been too slow to see what was coming, had ignored Ilyan's prediction. She didn't mention anything about her own involvement with Ilyan of course.

"How did they disable Earth defence grid?" Max asked, as he read over reports of the final attack on Earth. "It says the satellite weapons platforms went offline. That can only be done from inside High Command."

Maiga shrugged. "They hacked the system apparently. They boast about it in fact. That they took control of our own defences."

"Bastards!" Max hissed the word. "After everything we did for them!"

"Ah," had he not taken in the first part of the story. "You, erm, you did understand the part about how we stirred up trouble between them? So we could profit from fighting their wars?"

"Like we needed to stir any trouble!" He snorted. "I suppose now they've eliminated Earth they all live in peace and harmony?"

"That's not really the point. We should never have interfered in the first place."

He sat leaning forward, head hanging for a while, and then spoke again, voice quiet.

"All the ships I ever served on, they're all listed destroyed or missing. Everyone I knew, everyone I called a friend is gone."

"I'm sorry." She rested a hand on his back. "It's like that for, well, almost everyone you'll meet on Hollow Jimmy. We just have to start over, make new lives. You'll find new friends."

He turned to smile up at her. "Like you and Wixa." He sighed, nodded. "I... I guess that's the way it has to be. What else can we do? We're powerless. They've taken everything."

His tone sounded so low, so despairing, that she rubbed his back to try to comfort him, unable to think of words to say.

"Has anyone been back there?" Max asked. "Back to Earth? Since it..." They'd looked at pictures together, grainy distant stills from the aliens' own scanning systems. The familiar blue and green, turned black, grey and red. Like a cinder.

"I've heard of ships going back there, to look for survivors. Some rumours say people were rescued from the moon colonies, a few from crippled ships. But none from Earth."

Aside from the possibility of rescuing survivors, Maiga couldn't imagine why anyone would want to go there and look into that abyss.

"I don't know what to feel." Max shook his head. "I can mourn my friends, but how do I mourn a whole planet?"

What could she tell him, when she hadn't figured that out either? Sometimes she thought about places she'd loved back home, the place she'd grown up, and imagined it gone. But it didn't help. She'd never expected to go back to those places anyway. Max would join the rest of the survivors in trying to work out how to mourn a home world that had not been home.

His body started to shake under her hand, his face buried in his own hands. She expected to feel awkward as he released the shock and pain, but no, she felt glad to be here to help him. It felt right to persuade him to straighten up so she could put her arms around him and hold him. And as his choking sobs died away it still felt right to let him bury his face against her neck.

His voice came in a soft whisper. "You smell so good. You're so beautiful. So good..."

Eighteen months alone, she reminded herself. He's desperate and hungry and he smells so good too, and he is beautiful. And I've made no promises to anyone. But...

"Max." He kissed her neck lightly, and his hands slid around her waist and pulled her closer. "Max, you're not ready for this."

He's vulnerable. It would be irresponsible to give in to the response she felt. Had felt and denied from the moment she saw him. Pure desire that she hadn't felt for anyone in a long time. That desire, that urge thrilled her. It proved that Tesla hadn't left her so broken she could only be with a man like Chervaz, who treated her like spun glass.

"I am ready," he said, moving back a little, so he could look into her face. "I think you are too."

Cocky. He was handsome, and he'd probably always been able to get any woman he wanted. She wasn't doing anything to make him think any different. But he just had it. He made her body sing. When he bent his head to kiss her, she responded without another thought. She barely even noticed moving from the chairs through into the sleeping quarters.

All she saw and heard and felt was him.