When Mickey was seven years old, his father taught him how to fly.

Mickey can remember it vividly, even now when fifteen years and counting have passed. It had been early evening, because he remembers the exact position of the sun on the horizon, and his knuckles were bruised where he'd punched some kid at school for talking shit about his sister, and his arms were so short that he could barely reach the control panel. The shuttle they had back then was already bordering on obsolete, with foot pedals and manual controls, and Mickey can remember perching on the very edge of his father's knees, giving him just enough height to reach the stick, and the way he jiggled from side to side as his dad manoeuvred the pedals. He can remember the tight hold of his father's hands over his own as he showed him how the controls worked, the way his father's clothes smelled like chemicals from the power plant mixed in with the smell of cheap liquor and chewing tobacco that lingered on his breath. He can remember the grinding sound of the engine when he hadn't pulled the lever quite far enough, the jolt as the shuttle shot forward, the wobble when it first left the ground.

What he remembers most though, is the way it felt—the way it seemed like as they left the ground they left everything else behind too. That first time he was only off the ground for a couple of minutes before his hands slipped on the control stick and they went careening back down, his father grabbing at it just in time to make sure they landed properly. It didn't matter though, that it had only been two minutes. It had been enough to get Mickey hooked.

He practised every day after that, racing towards their house—a barely put together shack in the back-end of nowhere that his mother cared for as if it were the biggest, most beautiful house ever built—over the uneven ground from where the battered old school bus dropped them off. They'd been living on that particular moon for about six months, because the terraforming on the planet where Mickey and his brother and sister had been born had broken down suddenly and disastrously. They'd been rescued by soldiers—Mickey doesn't remember much about that besides being woken up in the middle of the night by figures dressed in black with their faces were hidden behind helmets; Iggy still teases him sometimes about the fact that Mickey had had nightmares about it for years—and they'd been bumped around refugee ships for a while before they'd ended up on that tiny moon, which spoke volumes about how many people from Mickey's planet that the Alliance hadn't saved. His mother had been pragmatic about it, grateful that at least they had got out, had been given somewhere to go, but all it had done where Terry was concerned was nurture the seed of hate he already held for the Alliance, for people telling him what to do and where to live and how to run his family. "Murderers, is what they are," Mickey had heard him say, voice slurred by anger and drink and tiredness. "Left those people to burn. Don't see their planets crumbling, do we? Just us fuckers out here."

Mickey knows now that so much of what his father taught them in those following years was not so much parental involvement and far more like a pre-emptive strike, Terry lining everything up like a game of chess while he got deeper and deeper into actively fighting the Alliance, but to eight year old Mickey, the pride in his father's voice as he finally left the atmosphere for the first time, steering the shuttle all by himself, had been all he could have wished for, all he needed for his stomach to burn with excitement as he carefully orbited the moon, trying to get the neatest circle he could just so he could hear it again. "That's my boy," Terry had said, and Mickey had smiled, not even caring when it cracked open the cut on his lip from yet another fight at school. ("Show those fuckers, you don't mess with a Milkovich," was what his dad always told them, so that's what Mickey did.)

His father had settled back against the chair by the third orbit, content to let Mickey handle the ship, and closed his eyes, his whole body relaxing in a way that Mickey had never seen before. "Can't nothin' touch us up here, son," his dad had said, and Mickey had stared out into the black, fascinated by how big and vast it seemed, how far he could fly if he wanted to. "Up here, we're as free as birds. Can't no-one touch us."

When Mickey looks back now it's like those words are smoke, dark tendrils snaking into his ears and then taking root in his brain and growing like cancer. He's not sure why they take on such an sinister image when he recalls them—although Mandy would probably have something to say about it if he told her, which he has no intention of doing ever—because really, despite all that he knows about his father now and everything that's happened between them, those words have stayed with him ever since he heard them, have shaped his entire existence, are pretty much what he lives his life by. That's some character-building shit right there, as Iggy would put it. But then, things with his dad have never been simple.


They've done pretty well for themselves, all things considered. They've got a ship, and mostly they keep her in the air, and that's a lot more than most people manage. They pick up work where they can, sometimes legal but mostly less so, and they've built a reasonable reputation over the years, enough that they can pick and choose their jobs a lot of the time which Mickey takes advantage of wherever possible. He's got no desire to raise flags, remind the Alliance that the Milkovich kids are still out there somewhere with the potential to carry on their father's mission. All he wants, all he can ever really hope for, is they get left alone to live their lives in peace, to work enough to get by. He's not one for positive thinking, but it's been three years and he's starting to feel like maybe it's permanent this time.

They're in a good spell right now, their last couple of jobs having left them with enough fuel and supplies to last a good few weeks, maybe longer if they're careful, and they're all well overdue a break. Mickey's itching to get out of the confines of the solar system, to get out into open space and just fly, and he knows that as long as they make a stop or two along the way, Iggy and Mandy are happy enough to let him have it. They don't understand it, that overwhelming sense he has sometimes of needing to be out there and flying, to be untethered from everything except the ship and the controls in his hands, but they don't mind indulging it from time to time either, given all they've been through. They've all got needs, and this one is Mickey's.

He's on his way down to his bunk, tired from the that last security job but with a renewed sense of excitement at the upcoming down time, when he's nearly knocked off his feet by Mandy wheeling out from under one of the bulkheads. She grins up at him, a screwdriver between her teeth and a streak of grease on her forehead.

"What the fuck, Mandy?" he exclaims as he regains his footing. She rolls off her creeper, grabbing the screwdriver out of her mouth and sliding it back into her utility belt with a frown.

"Environmentals are on the fritz," she says, by way of an explanation.

His eyebrows shoot up. "And that gives you free range to break my fucking legs?"

She reaches out and shoves his shoulder, and then the frown deepens. "I'm serious, asshole. The environmentals go and we're space dust."

"Me too, you nearly fucking killed me." He takes a breath before he speaks again, because he knows he's not going to like the answer. At all. "How bad is it?"

"Bad," she says. "I think I've patched it for now but one of the air pumps is totally dead and the other one's not got a whole lot of time left either. We need to replace them, soon."

He knows better than to question her on this; Mandy knows her shit and if Mandy says it's fucked, then that means it's well and truly fucked. "Shit," is all he says, and she shrugs.

"Had to happen sometime. She's an old lady." He snorts, and she glares at him through narrowed eyes. "Hey, don't ridicule me. I'm the one keeping us in the air right now. She's a lady and she needs treating right."

He doesn't miss the pointedness of her comment, and he sighs resignedly. "How much, Mandy?"

"Maybe nothing?" she says, and then she grins and his heart sinks. Of course she totally had a plan already. "Well, a salvage job came up a couple of hours ago, a pretty decent one too. The ship's bigger than this but it's from the same production line, the pumps should fit. Do it right, and we could kill two birds. It's just…" She trails off, fidgeting a little.

He gives her a moment, just long enough for it to become clear she's waiting for him to ask. "Just what?"

"It's right on the edge of the controlled territory. Not in it, but—"

Close enough, Mickey adds silently. Close enough to put their hard-fought for freedom in serious jeopardy. "Great," he says. "That's just totally fucking excellent." He knows Mandy's right though, that if anything they've been lucky to get this far without anything serious breaking down, and if the pumps break for real then that's it, game over and sayonara. Besides, if this ship's as similar to theirs as Mandy thinks then there's probably a bunch of other parts that they can salvage at the same time and that could save them a hell of a lot of trouble in the long run. The downtime can wait a couple of days if it means they get some insurance like that.

"We can totally pull it off, though," she says. "And it'll be way cheaper than buying the parts, if we can even find them anywhere else. The commission's really good too, should cover a couple of refuels, and it'd look really good for us if—" He holds his hand up, and she cuts herself off mid-sentence and grins at him.

"Fine," he says. "You sold me at free parts. Go put in a claim for the job and then show me where we need to fucking go."


Ten minutes later and they're crowded around the table in the middle of the control room. Mickey's got the map loaded, planets and moons projected up from the centre of the console in bright orange light, and Mandy's pointing out where the derelict ship they need to salvage is positioned. She's right, it's dangerously close to controlled territory, close enough that even Iggy's kind of wary about it.

"There's bases here and here," Mickey says, sliding his hands into the light and then pulling them apart to zoom in. "This one," he says, and he twists his hand to focus in on it, pulling the image of the station up and out until it's centred and big enough for them all to see. "Is small, and far enough out that it shouldn't be an issue. Just need to keep an eye on it."

"Yeah," Iggy says impatiently, as he sticks his hand in from his side and shifts the projected image until there's a different planet in focus. "But this one is gonna be an issue."

"It's still pretty far," Mandy says with a shrug. "We can be in and out before they notice anything."

"Maybe," Iggy says. "But if they do, they can be there in less than fifteen minutes. I don't like that window, bro," he adds, turning to Mickey and waiting for the agreement that Mickey knows he's expecting. Mickey looks at the map again, twists the image of the moon that the Alliance base is orbiting around and back again as he mulls it over.

"We can pull it off," he says finally, decisively. Iggy opens his mouth to protest, and Mickey waves him off. "The ship isn't that big; Mandy can get the parts while I get the shit for the job." Mandy grins and punches the air. "Ig, you monitor the base from here, and if you see traffic heading our way then we bounce. Fifteen minutes is plenty of time for us to be gone before they get anywhere near."

"I don't like it," Iggy says, testily. "What if they come up faster than we expect? This is why we need actual fucking weapons on this wreck."

"Yeah, because shooting at Alliance ships is gonna do great for our reputation," Mandy scoffs, rolling her eyes. "We'd never get work again. Not the kind we want anyway."

Iggy flips her off, stalking towards the flight controls. "Whatever. When those soldiers come down on us, you're gonna be wishing you let me keep that fucking cannon."

"I'd rather keep my clean record, thanks all the same," she shoots back. "With my fucking skillset, I'd be wasted in a prison camp."

"That's what you think," Iggy quips, eyes on the screen as he starts plotting the course. "They'd never let you fucking leave."

"All the more reason I want to stay on the outside then, shithead," she throws at him as she heads towards the door to get the pod prepped.

Mickey pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling loudly. "Jesus, could you two give this shit a rest long enough to get the job done? Mandy's right, Iggy. We start shooting up the Alliance and the only people who'll suffer for it is us. We just gotta accept they own that half of the sky, and stick to ours as best we can."

Mandy turns and grins triumphantly, hands on her hips. "Told you. I like my freedom, thanks." She's gone before Iggy can get another retort in, and Mickey listens to her footsteps echoing away and then sighs, leaning forward to rest his head on the console. Freedom is exactly what he's longing for, had been right within his grasp until all of fifteen minutes ago. He breathes in and out slowly, and then pushes himself up and out of his seat.

"Don't worry," Iggy says unexpectedly, still focused on the screen. "We'll be out there soon enough, bro."

Mickey sure hopes so.


They make good time to the salvage site, even with Mandy's insistence that they turn off non-essential functions to ease pressure on the pumps, and Mickey manually manoeuvres their ship in behind the larger abandoned one, putting it between them and that damned base in the hopes of taking advantage of the cover just in case anyone does come looking. It's not really a failsafe, but Mickey's determined to take all the precautions he can get when they're so close to the Alliance, closer than they've been in years, since that last job with their dad.

The junker might be off the same production line as theirs, but it's hard to believe it when they get up close, see how tiny their heap is in comparison. Mandy's face lights up in excitement though, reels off a list of compatible parts she's hoping to scavenge, and Mickey's gotta say the prospect of picking this thing clean is almost worth the risk. Almost.

The two of them squeezed into the transport pod is probably closer than Mickey would prefer, Mandy's elbow jabbing into his sternum as she slides her fingers over her handheld, scanning the ship to map out its access points, and he gets her back by making sure his shoulder pushes back against hers every time he turns the control stick, moving them into dock.

"Watch it, assface," she says, but there's no heat in it, and she returns her focus to the plans in front of her. "You need to go up here," she shows him, after they're docked. "According to the job specs, the haul should be in this section, right off the control deck. I'll head down here," she indicates another location on her screen, "and get the parts we need. Hit up the galley on your way back, if there's time. Might be stuff worth taking."

"Yes, sir," he says mockingly, and she scowls at him.

"Fuck you," she says, and then her face softens. "Be careful."

"You too," he says. "Back here in thirty minutes, we take what we got and don't stay for more."

"Agreed," she says with a nod, and then they move off in their separate directions.


It doesn't take Mickey long to find what he's looking for—two data sticks, an entertainment cube and a bag of loose coin—which he finds somehow hilarious and concerning at the same time. He's done run-of-the-mill security details that took more effort than this, which kind of begs the question as to why somebody would bother to pay someone to find it rather than just coming to get it themselves. The answer is obvious; the Alliance presence is enough to make it too risky for someone with the means to pay other people to take the risk instead, and that realisation has him moving back towards the docking bay without bothering to look much further around the control deck. He doesn't like the implicit implication here, that this job is somehow riskier than their initial assessment, and he's not keen to stick around to prove himself right. He stops off at the galley and calls Mandy as he's raking through the storage compartments, throwing any food that's not likely to have spoiled into his bag.

"Hey," she answers, voice muffled as if she's holding her screwdriver in her mouth again.

"Where we at?" he says, throwing another couple of packs of dried rations in with the rest.

"Almost there," she says, and then there's a grunt and then a clang. "I've got the pumps, and some other bits."

"I think it's time to go," he says. "I've got a bad feeling."

"Right," she says. "One more part and I'll meet you in—" She's cut off by feedback as Iggy dials in.

"Patrol," he says. "We gotta bounce. Now, we don't have much time."

"What?" Mickey backs up, moves towards the door. "That base is fifteen minutes away, and there's no way they'll—"

"It's not from the base," Iggy says impatiently. "It's coming at us from the other side, twenty single guns. We got five minutes, tops."

"Shit," Mickey curses, and he shoves the comm device back into the pocket of his trousers as he breaks out into a run. He skids into the docking bay, almost colliding with Mandy whose own bag is bulging. She's got more parts in her hand, and they have to pause for breath to actually get inside the pod without crushing together in the entrance port.

"I don't get it," Mandy says, breathless as Mickey starts the pod. "We checked everywhere."

"Not well enough," Mickey says shortly, pulling the pod up and out. "Wherever they came from, we need to get the fuck outta here."

The journey back to their own ship seems to take far too long, time stretching out as Mickey mentally counts down Iggy's five minutes. There's bile rising in his throat, sheer panic setting into his gut as he remembers the last time they had a call this close, and he grips the controls hard enough that his knuckles turn white. Mandy leans over, rests her hands over his.

"Breathe," she says, and all he can do is nod soundlessly as the panic rises, fills his throat until he can breathe, until the darkness dances at the edge of his vision. "Breathe," she repeats to him, and her other hand is on his back, rubbing and rubbing until the lump in his throat burst like a bubble, lets the panic seep out so he can breathe again. He sucks in oxygen like he'd been drowning, big gasping breaths until he can see again, until he can relax his grip on the controls. "Bring us in," Mandy says, voice soft and deceptively calm. "You can do it."

He knows she's freaking out as much as he is, is as desperate to put space between them and here as he is, but he leans on her faith on him anyway, guides them in, leaps out of the pod when it's barely stopped moving.

He grabs his comm back out of his pocket as he begins his dash towards the front of the ship. "Iggy," he yells into it. "Iggy, go."

He waits for the familiar rumble of the engine, waits for them to get into motion, but instead all he hears is his brother's voice. "They see us," Iggy says, voice panicked. "They're right on us, Mick, I can't—"

"You can," he says, breathing heavy. "Just get us moving and I'll do the rest, ok? Just do it, Ig—"

The engines do rumble then, but it's not in the usual way, not in the way Mickey's expecting. Instead they creak, and then screech, and then Mickey feels the floor start to vibrate.

"No," he shouts, into the ship rather than into the comm at Iggy. He knows that at least is pointless—if Iggy's set the ship to jump then there's no going back, and he's pretty sure his brother isn't thinking straight enough to listen to Mickey's protestations anyway.

Mickey can count on one hand the number of times he's done a space jump, and that handful of times is far too many for his liking. It's a last resort tactic—and maybe this is a last resort type of situation—the kind where you're out of options and you need to be anywhere but here, right the fuck now. It's a wholly uncomfortable experience, jumbling up your insides and scrambling your brain up, and the last time they had used it had taken days for Mickey to feel right again.

Even with all that in mind though, the biggest issue is navigational—there's no telling where you might end up, how far it might take you. You plot a rough course, but the damn thing overshoots more than it ever lands on target and more than anything Mickey hates not planning where they end up. All things considered, you could find yourself in even more dire straits than you're already in, and Mickey's never willing to take that chance.

Not that he's getting much choice in the matter this time, the walls are vibrating now where he's leaning against it, and the screeching is getting louder, and then it's inside his head and the screeching is coming from him, screaming with his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.

It's over as quick as it started, juddering to a halt and then silence falling like a blanket. Mickey's shaking, curled in on himself, his stomach churning. When he open his eyes, everything looks wrong, like he's drunk too much liquor and not in the fun way. It's like he's separated from the world, disjointed somehow, and it takes pretty much all he has not to vomit.

"Iggy," he croaks into his still open comm. "What the fuck?"

"Sorry man," Iggy mumbles, his disembodied voice floating out of the device like Mickey's almost imagining it. He grips at the metal grid of the floor until the edges dig hard into his fingers, desperate to ground himself somehow. "Needed to get the fuck out quick."

"Fuck," Mickey breathes out, leaning his face into the floor alongside his fingers. "I'd take the prison camp over this."

Iggy's voice is sterner when it comes through again, like he's regaining his composure. "You don't mean that. You've seen that shit Mick and you ain't never going back there again."

"Whatever," Mickey sighs, feeling some of his own composure return. "Where the fuck are we?"

"Not sure. But we're not where we were and that's all I give a shit about right—fuck." The curse comes through loud and harsh, and Mickey pulls the comm away from his still-ringing ears.

"What now?"

"We brought a friend with us," Iggy mutters, and Mickey sits upright so fast that the disorientation seems to settle and then immediately flow in the other direction just to mess him up further. "Just one," his brother adds. "I'm pulling it in."

"What?" Mickey shouts, and then winces at the loudness of his own voice. "Why the fuck would you—"

"He has guns," Iggy reminds him pointedly. "No fucking way am I leaving it out there for him to shoot them at us. It's in the docking bay. I'd get down there and disarm that fucker."

Mickey hangs up on him without another word, and then calls Mandy.

"I heard," she says. She sounds better than either Mickey or Iggy do, and Mickey wonders if all that time she spends with the engines has already scrambled her brain enough that space jumps just roll right off her. He's kinda jealous, if he's honest. He's probably not gonna sleep for a week.

"I'm heading back down to the bay," he says. "You ok?"

"Fine," she says. "That shit doesn't bother me," she adds, and he hears the creak of machinery behind her and takes it as proof of his theory. "We're gonna need to take a stop for a while, need to let the engine cool down. Give me chance to fit these pumps, anyway."

"How long," he asks. Jump or not, that was a close call and he doesn't want to take the chance of staying in one place too long, especially if they've taken an Alliance gunner along for the ride.

"Couple of hours," she says. "I promise, no longer than necessary."

"Make sure of it," he says tersely, and then hangs up just as he reaches the docking bay.

The gunship is lurching dangerously to one side, the shiny Alliance decals scorched from the jump and then scraped over from where Iggy had pulled it in through their probably almost-too-small docking window. It's smaller than Mickey expected though, smaller than they look when they're coming at you all at once. He almost wants to laugh.

The door of the ship starts to open with a hiss, and Mickey grabs his gun out of its holster at his hip, aiming it towards the widening entrance. A pair of legs appears first, clad in shiny black boots and the tight black trousers he's seen on Alliance soldiers before, two red stripes up either side.

"Don't move," Mickey shouts, taking a step forward. The soldier freezes, although the door continues its slow opening. His torso starts to come into vision as Mickey takes another step forward, and then his arms raised in obvious surrender. He's still wearing his helmet, facial features entirely obscured by the black visor, and Mickey has to push down those nightmarish childhood memories. "Jump down," he says, and then adds, "slowly," as the soldier braces to jump down. He lowers himself down carefully instead, hanging off the edge of his ship and then hitting the floor gracefully, before slowly raising into a standing position, hands still held high. Mickey keeps his gun raised, moves forward and quickly removes the soldier's own gun which had remained holstered at his waist. Mickey has to wonder what this guy was thinking, heading into unknown and probably hostile territory with his gun hanging useless at his hip, but he's certainly not complaining.

"On your knees," he growls harshly from his position at the soldier's back, and then he nudges the small of the guy's back with the barrel of his gun for good measure. The soldier's got a good few inches on him, but he does as he's told, carefully crouching and then shifting onto his knees. "Helmet off," Mickey orders, and the soldier freezes, and it's only then that Mickey registers that the guy had been trembling before. "Helmet off, asshole," he repeats, and the soldier obeys this time, reaching up and pressing the release button on the side before lifting it off his head and place it on the floor in front of him. He doesn't linger, lifting his hands back up and then linking them together over the back of his head, where his ginger hair is buzzed short.

"Right," Mickey says, hoping he sounds far more authoritative than he feels. "You and I have got some shit to discuss."