Nobody's gone to the trouble of cutting the grass here in the outskirts for a very long time.
Vanessa is sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, quietly and systematically flattening the waist-high grass down all around her, smoothing out a little person-sized crop circle. Two feet away, Carolina is lying flat on her back, digging her armored fingers into the grass and pulling it out in short, quick bursts. Vanessa watches. Vanessa wishes she'd stop.
"This is sort of neat," Carolina says, her voice distant and gratingly brittle. "The tall grass, like a fort. Hidden away. I bet they can't even see us down here."
"I used to hide out here all the time," Vanessa says. Presses her hand flat against the grass, feels the roots of it crack and bend under her palm. "Won a game of hide-and-seek so successfully that everyone had gone home. Took my parents four hours to find me, and in that time I'd managed to create my own little waist-high labyrinth in the grass."
"I didn't know you grew up in Armonia," Carolina says. She tugs out a handful of grass—Vanessa flinches—and sprinkles it over her own helmet. "Sorry."
Vanessa snorts. "Why the apology?"
"It's something I should've picked up on, probably. Being personable and all."
Vanessa stops pushing so hard on the grass, starts smoothing her fingers through it instead, but the stalks just keep poking back up. She remembers what it felt like, in civvies, each blade of grass a little needle-point of irritation without the armor. Maybe Carolina's got the right idea after all. "Still. No need to apologize. You've had, ah. You've had a lot on your mind."
Carolina's hand stills for a moment, then resumes tugging up tufts of grass with renewed vigor. "Yeah," she says. "You could say that."
"Anyway," says Vanessa, "I don't know a damn thing about you."
"You know I'm personable."
"About where you grew up," Vanessa says, in her very best you're-not-as-cute-as-you-think voice. She's getting a lot of practice with it these days. "Not a clue."
Carolina thinks about that for a moment. "Well, now you also know I'm enigmatic."
Vanessa laughs. The sound of it startles both of them. "Okay," she says. "We're just full of revelations today."
In the same short, sharp motions she was using to pull up the grass, Carolina darts a hand out to capture Vanessa's. The squeeze is just this side of painful, with both of them in armor. "Vanessa," she says. There's an ellipsis in her voice, a silence waiting to be filled.
Vanessa says, "Wasn't space, right?"
Carolina squeezes her hand again, releases it, then props herself up on her elbows. "What?"
"Where you grew up." Vanessa's neck is getting sore from looking down at the ground. "No way you were a spacer. Grew up running in real-gee. Probably some rich colony. Wait, no. Earth?"
Carolina shrugs. "Enigmatic," she says.
"Hah," Vanessa says, quietly satisfied, and stretches her legs out in front of her.
Carolina sits up, reaches out, and awkwardly pats Vanessa on the left shin. "Hey," she says. Another pause.
"I know," says Vanessa. Carefully, delicately, she pulls a single blade of grass out of the ground, stares at the greenness of it against her armor. "I... know."
Carolina looks up at the sky. Vanessa nearly slips up and follows suit, but Carolina's sharp inhale is bad enough. The skin is crawling at the back of Vanessa's neck, like prickles of grass on a sunny summer day.
It takes Carolina a few seconds to get her breathing back under control. When she does, she says, "Vanessa," and this time she fills the silence herself. "It's time to go home."
"I know." A shadow ripples across the grass. Vanessa tells herself it's just Carolina standing up, blocking out the sun. "I just..."
Carolina reaches out a hand, and Vanessa uncurls just enough to look at it. "Can't leave you up here to build another labyrinth. Hide-and-seek's over. We need you."
"I didn't think they'd—" Vanessa's voice breaks. She swallows. "Didn't think they'd go through with it, somehow. Didn't expect this."
She reaches out to grab Carolina's hand, but doesn't use it to pull herself up just yet. For a second, it's enough to feel the warm, reassuring presence against the chill of her armor.
Carolina waits for her, standing awkwardly bent over with one arm extended. She waits.
Vanessa squares her jaw. Vanessa pulls herself to her feet.
"Don't forget your radiation meter," Vanessa says. "You took some hits in the fight. Armor might be compromised."
"Got it," says Carolina. "Orders?"
Vanessa finally looks up at the billowing, unnaturally smooth remains of cloud, at the thick smoke choking out the sky. "Don't waste time looking for survivors," she says. "Redistribute the search-and-rescue teams to the scavenging parties. In and out for supplies. We've lost our home base. This is officially a guerilla war."
"Understood," says Carolina, and touches her arm, briefly. "Take a moment." When Vanessa turns to look at her, she's already jogging back to relay the orders to the rest of the stunned, devastated remains of their army.
Vanessa takes a moment. Vanessa stands in the flattened-out circle of grass and stares at the shelled, smoking remains of Armonia, at the glass-smooth craters of exploded munitions stockpiles, at the husks of landmarks still standing against all odds.
Vanessa tilts her head slowly to watch the cloud of ash slowly encroaching on the last of the blue sky. Pictures the ship still in orbit. Pictures the people aboard.
"Ready or not," she says, softly, "here I come."