They weren't supposed to light fires.
Polis Massan domes were strictly regulated—oxygen carefully measured, heat vented through structured dissipation layers, all nonessential combustion strictly forbidden. But in the ruins of Dome B9, where the ceiling had cracked six years ago and never been repaired, where atmosphere no longer hummed but wheezed, like an old man trying to remember how to breathe, they lit one anyway.
The fire flickered in a hollowed-out heat sink, fed by processed wood pellets from the hydroponics refuse pile. It gave off little smoke, little scent, just heat. Enough to pretend, at least, that warmth could still exist in this part of the asteroid.
There were four of them tonight.
Doros Vel sat closest, his boots pressed against the rusted lip of the sink, arms folded, his face unreadable but his presence unmistakably there. Across from him, Myrren Thass crouched with her back against a crate of broken filtration parts. Beside her, quiet as ever, was Neth Sol, one of the surface scouts—pale from years without real sunlight, his skin as thin as paper. And to the left, half-hidden in shadow, rested the man with the double viol.
His name was Halek Jorn. Older than the others, though not by much. His face had the lean, drawn look of someone who'd made a habit of losing sleep and never once complained about it. The viol, longer than a rifle and just as scarred, rested against his knee. He held it like a relic—part instrument, part extension of himself.
No one had spoken in ten minutes.
The fire crackled softly.
Myrren broke the silence. "Another team suffocated in E Tunnel. Backup system failed. VesperWorks blames solar interference."
"They were on the schedule," Doros murmured. "Three I knew."
Neth said nothing. Just shifted closer to the fire, pulling his sleeves tighter around his thin wrists.
"They'll strip the bodies," Myrren continued, her tone as steady as it was hollow. "Harvest whatever parts can be recovered. Teeth. Retinal tissue. Scrap for diagnostics."
"Standard practice," Doros said.
"Doesn't mean it's not obscene."
"No," Doros replied. "But it means it's predictable."
The silence returned, longer this time. Only the fire spoke, sputtering every now and then like it was remembering it wasn't supposed to exist here.
Eventually, Neth said, "I had a brother. On Lujo. I think he's dead."
None of them asked why.
"He used to write. Fiction, mostly. One time, he wrote about a garden that only bloomed under the stars. You could walk through it barefoot and the flowers would hum when you touched them."
"That's not how flowers work," Myrren said.
Neth shrugged. "He was always an optimist."
The word hung in the air like a curse.
Doros reached down and threw another pellet onto the fire. "I used to know a man who thought he could map every failure point in the entire asteroid belt. Thought if he could predict enough collapses, he could prevent the next one."
"Did he?"
"No. He predicted his own death to within two days. Dome imploded. He was wrong about the sealant depth."
"Poetic," Myrren muttered. "In a practical kind of way."
There was something strangely reverent in their bleakness—not bitter, not cruel, just real. Like they were preserving some shard of meaning by not looking away. No ceremony. No illusions. Just the facts, carried like stones in the pockets of those who knew they were sinking.
Halek hadn't said anything yet. He just listened, eyes fixed on the fire, his fingers occasionally tapping along the neck of the viol.
Finally, Doros looked over. "Play something."
It wasn't a request. Not really.
Halek nodded once, slowly. He shifted the instrument in his lap, set the bow across the strings, and tested them with a slow pull. The sound it made was low, like a lament drawn through gravel. Ancient and aching.
He adjusted the tension, and then, after a breathless moment, began to play.
It was a song most of them had heard before, though none admitted to knowing who first brought it to Polis Massa. Passed down on corrupted data-chips and humming wire signals. It had no name in their records, no official listing in the VesperWorks files. But the melody—that they remembered.
Dark. Crawling. Beautiful in its surrender.
Halek's voice joined it—hoarse, but not unskilled. A half-whispered growl, like stone dragged through dust. It was not a song of resistance. It was not a song of hope. It was a song for those who had already buried both, and continued walking anyway.
"Don't tell my mother I mine in the dark,
Say I'm on some moonlight rig, far from harm.
That I live where flowers bloom, not beneath stone—
Don't tell her the truth, let her dream I'm home.
Say the air is sweet and the walls are whole,
Not cracked and bleeding from gravity's pull.
Say I laugh with friends in the hydro-fields,
Not counting corpses behind the seals.
Don't tell her my hands haven't felt the sun,
That I dream of silence, not of anyone.
Say I serve in some far diplomatic post,
Don't tell her I'm dust. Don't tell her I'm ghost."
The viol wept under his bow, filling the dome with aching harmonics that rang off the metal walls like the last breath of a dying station. The fire danced like it was shivering.
No one interrupted. No one spoke.
Because there were no lies between them. No illusions to comfort with.
And still, somehow, this bleakness—this honesty—bound them together more tightly than any anthem of hope.
The song ended with a drawn final note that faded into the quiet hum of the dome's backup generator.
Halek rested the viol beside him.
Doros stared into the fire. "That one's for the data."
"Not for the dead?" Myrren asked softly.
"We're all dead. We just haven't reached the timestamp yet."
Neth wiped something from his face. No one commented. It might've been dust.
The fire flickered lower.
Tomorrow, they'd return to their shifts. Myrren to her sensor grids, Neth back to surface recon, Doros to core scheduling, and Halek to silence.
There would be no memorials. No flags. No prayers.
Just another day on Polis Massa, where survival was the closest thing to triumph—and silence, the sincerest form of grace.
And in Dome B9, the fire would burn out on its own, leaving nothing behind but ashes and memory.
That was enough.
