(1)
Down On Your Luck
Darren Grien stared up at the glowing viewscreen before him. The great void of the unknown filled the static-scarred monitor. It looked out through the aft camera of his starship, the Meran, and into the far reaches of space.
He let loose a short, stiff sigh. Damn it all. He wished he could go back to better days of old.
Planet side had been rough growing up, and was all the worse now. But life had seemed a whole lot simpler back then. Darren’s mind drifted back to those muggy Alabama summers he’d once held so dear. He would lie on the grass and find his eyes wandering across the stars as the cicadas thrummed their tune to the wet air. Those great, impossibly far-off blinking balls of light had filled his every waking moment. They had appeared alive to his young mind. Back when the universe still held promise. Back when the stars were more than just cold, distant ghosts.
For hours and hours, he would watch them dance about the sky in never-ending radiance. Then he’d gone and grown up. His sixteen-year-old self had signed up for the Tera Prima Star Academy, and shortly afterward, he had blasted off to join his childhood friends in their waltz across the great beyond. What a fool I was. Thirty-five years later, the romance of it all was stone dead. He had long since left behind the false glamour of war and exploration for the easy life of a frigate driver.
The Meran creaked and groaned with age as Darren sat in his favorite chair. It was an old, torn brown leather Rocket Boy model. He’d installed it for Kelsey during the years with her, after resigning his New Alliance command. Kelsey. The memory of the girl’s daisy-touched hair, twirling through the air as he spun her round and round in the seat, was too painful to linger on.
Besides stirring up memories, all the chair gave him now was a slightly better range of motion. A whole 360-degree spin as opposed to the 180 of the ship’s original design. A real marvel of engineering, that. Truly living the dream…
The small metal room of the bridge—as Darren liked to call it—held three thin-padded chairs and dozens of flashing monitors. Green numbers flew by on the screens as computers checked and rechecked the small craft’s support and primary systems. The constant hum of the ship’s engines and the occasional rattling of the hull were his only company now.
It was a lonely sound, but a familiar one—like the ticking of a long-broken clock that no one had the heart to throw away.
Darren scanned the code flying past the largest of the displays, which took up the entire front wall of the room, and swiveled his chair around toward the door hatch behind him. The air solidified with each breath he took, and his muscles moved sore from his prolonged time in space.
“How much further, Thirty-Six?” Darren yawned the question and scratched at his wildly grown and graying beard.
Time for a shave perhaps, he thought. Maybe when I arrive at Axion Theta-3.
Several long moments of silence answered his query. A monotonous male voice sliced through the quiet of the bridge. Every word fell punctuated with a blink of blue from the speaker hanging above the door.
Holding steady at present speed, the Meran will arrive at destination in 38 days, Captain Grien.” The cool voice of the ship’s computer, dubbed Thirty-Six, had a slight mechanical tone at the end of each word, like the shimmer of feedback on an old-style radio.
“Support systems?”
“43 days of life support remain, Captain Grien. Food stores are running low at 41 days.” Thirty-Six paused, and new numbers flew past one of the monitors nearby. “Recommend a two-degree rise in ship temperature. Current levels are not recommended under SyCorp health policies.”
“Leave it be, a little cold won’t hurt.” A wry smirk pulling at him, Darren continued, “Hell, might help the food last a bit longer.”
“All foodstuffs are nonperishable, as you ordered, Captain Grien.”
“Never mind,” Darren sighed and exited the bridge into the main corridor of the ship. The walls were steel-plated, and the heavy bolts holding it all together proved a visible reminder of the Meran’s now-antiquated construction. There were two doors on the left, and two on the right. Darren paused at the first to his right—Kelsey’s old room—and continued on to the next. A soft, golden glow emanated from the circular window pane on the door. Darren cranked the lever on the outside of the room to open the door and walked into the light.
Flecks of green aged the metal within, but the room still held some of the warmth of better days. Once, the entire ship had felt like a home to Darren, but after what had happened to Kelsey, he had slowly retreated away until only this one refuge remained. A smooth-sanded, beechwood desk sat against the wall to his right. He walked over to a bronze lamp sitting atop it and flicked the setting to low. His twin-sized bed waited for him against the far wall, and various old Terran curios filled the many shelves across the room.
Stray papers, worn maps, and cigarettes coated the desk, whereas soft pillows and thick blankets called to him on the bed. Darren kicked off his steel-toed boots and flopped into the covers. He then reached for a pair of oval reading glasses resting on the nightstand nearby and settled in for the night. Tapping a small button on the side of the left lens, Darren picked up reading where he had left off in The Aquarian’s Guide to Sector X. Words ghosted across the glass’ surface, and he tapped again to change pages.
Darren knew he was dreaming. He was afloat in an ocean of color. He had been there many times before, and this time was no different. Stars streamed out to either side of him, flowing away from the path forming ahead. The deep dark of space was all around, but he felt himself grounded to the path of lights guiding him forward.
Alone in the wide universe, Darren took the path one step at a time. Each step blurred as light years folded under him. He was as a god making his way across the cosmos. Light and color swirled out from his passage, and the stars flashed strange and foreign as he sped closer toward the center of all things
Thought came slow and disjointed. He knew, instinctively, that the lights fallen away from the path would eventually form the various galaxies and nebulas of the universe. Night after night the path called to him, and night after night his dream ended the same. Twice he had found its end. He hoped against hope that this night would not be the third.
Regardless of the fear flooding through him, he was bound to go on. The fear was primal. It needed no thought or explanation. It was a fear all creatures knew when gazing onto the face of purest truth. The end loomed in sight. Something lurking in the back of his mind, in a place free from the terror of conscious thought, forced him onward. He knew what was waiting for him at the end. He had to take hold of it. To take hold of that magnificent and terrible mechanism of creation and endings. To take hold of the devourer ahead. The power, which had taken all those dearest to him, would be the instrument of their return. It had to be; he would make it be.
Darren made his last steps forward on the path, to the edge of darkness. A writhing mass pulsed before him. It was a great void of nothingness, a black hole through reality. Its heart beat to the tune of the cosmos, as it had for all existent time before and would for all time after. Power emanated from the mass, pushing back at Darren. Luminous beams of light and gravity erupted out of its depths. Each wave of its power sliced through the universe, realigning the many galaxies, far and wide, back to their perfect spiraled forms.
Darren was so close he could feel power thrum through him. He was but one small step from dipping into that well of endless might. Hand reaching out, Darren fell back, once more ripped away from his salvation and doom.
“Thrice claimed, thrice denied. The cycle endures,” a deep voice echoed across the void. The last lights faded from Darren’s eyes, and the universe crumbled into oblivion’s embrace.
The Meran’s proximity alarms shrieked Darren back into the waking world. The status light above his door had shifted from a cool, tranquil blue to a glaring, urgent red.
“Report.” His voice was hoarse, thick with the weight of interrupted dreams. His skull pulsed with residual pain, his body burned blood-heavy, still aching from the absence of the power he had nearly grasped.
“Three unknown objects on approach, Captain Grien.” Thirty-Six, as indifferent as ever, reported without inflection.
Darren groaned. “Make adjustments and turn off that damned alarm.” He rolled over, half-conscious, grasping at the fading echoes of his dream. He had been close this time. Too close.
A beat of silence. Then—
“Apologies, Captain Grien. Course correction attempt four has failed. Objects are moving to match.”
It took Darren a moment to register the words. When he did, he was on his feet. The weight of cold metal pressed against his soles as he flapped his bare feet across the icy deck toward the bridge. Within the bridge, the main monitor hummed to life. A stark, empty field of space greeted him—empty save for three small, pulsing dots, inching ever closer. Each new scan brought them forward in slow, methodical steps.
Darren’s voice was clipped and in command, sleep banished from his mind as military training took over. “Switch to visual and enhance image.”
The radar’s monotonous tone plunked through the silence. Plunk . . . plunk . . . plunk.
The screen shifted a dozen times in rapid succession, zooming further out into space. Darren tapped his fingers impatiently as possibilities echoed through his mind.
Pirates? No, not this far out. Rebels? Maybe. Spacers? More likely. Either way, not good. Rebels at least won’t open fire right away—hopefully.
His gut twisted, that old, familiar feeling creeping in. The kind that spelled trouble. Space was vast beyond measure. Running into another vessel on the trade lanes was unlikely. Running into three was impossible.
“Thirty-Six, how much power can we lose without sacrificing sub-systems?”
The silence that followed felt heavier than it should. Like something unseen was pressing in, just beyond the light of his monitors.
“Point-zero-five percent power loss until primary destination becomes unreachable, Captain Grien.” Thirty-Six’s tone chimed, indifferent as always.
Darren exhaled slowly. It won’t be worth winning if I just end up freezing to death with no power. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Best play it safe. Conserve as much as possible. I’ll need it if things go badly. And they would, his thoughts nagged at home.
“Drop ship temp and deregulate systems for all but the bridge.”
The ship hissed in response as automated vents cut off the heat to the rest of the vessel. Darren rose from his chair, slamming the door hatch shut behind him. The pressure seal clicked into place, locking in what little warmth remained. He placed a hand against the metal frame and felt it grow colder by the second.
_“_Will that buy us the power margin for an engine burnout if we need it,” Darren queried the air.
“Undetermined, Captain Grien, but with all other systems deactivated – the Meran is running at 54% of average energy usage.”
Darren’s eyes flicked back to the glowing red alerts on his console. “And how much will a full burn cost us?”
A pause. “Simulation shows the Meran within acceptable loss ratios, Captain Grien.”
“Good. Prep the engines to run program Helios-7 in case we need it.”
A monitor to Darren’s left beeped and whirred as a warning sign splayed across its screen. While the temperature plummeted throughout the rest of the Meran, the reading gauge showed engine output jump into the red. Shields were at maximum, and power levels secure for the time being.
“Captain Grien, engine levels are far above SyCorp recommended operating procedures. Recommend immediate—”
“Denied.”
The vent above Darren rattled, releasing a thick plume of synthetic-smelling exhaust into the room. The scent clung to the air—hot metal and scorched lubricant, the perfume of a ship long past her prime. Beneath his feet, the deck vibrated with barely-contained energy. Then, just as quickly, the readings stabilized.
“Pre-burn complete, ready to engage Program Helio-7, Captain Grien,” Thirty-Six reported, tossing updated simulation reports onto a side monitor for Darren’s review.
Darren ignored the information as the main monitor pulsed with movement. One of the unidentified objects had locked on, growing clearer as it moved into the ship’s targeting array. A calm settled into Darren’s bones. This, heading into the unknown against the unexpected, this he could do.
“They’re not running, not signaling, just creeping closer. Not pirates, not rebels. What in the void are they?”
Goosebumps rose across Darren’s flash and bile filled his throat as the image on screen resolved to answer his question.
They were of the most alien design the human mind could fathom. The three ships, for ships they were, defied in every way all known natural laws of physics and space travel. They were fully spherical, and completely devoid of any aerodynamic principles familiar to the human mind. They were an unnameable color of blended whites and blacks, but more than that, they shimmered on the monitor as the lights and darks of space bent inward, absorbed by their hulls.
“Varus.”
The name was a curse in the air spawned by Darren’s grinding teeth, his tone low and menacing. His fingers rapped against his old-fashioned mechanical keyboard, a familiar, tangible rhythm to counteract the chaos of his thoughts. Surging panic lapped at the edge of his control. Visions of orange and red tore through his sight, the memory of burning ships clawing out from the depths of his past. The screams of those destined to die filled his ears, and the world around Darren wavered as he sank back into the day he’d last crossed the Varus.
Their ships slithered through the battle like spectral predators. Sirens howled through the choking air of Colony Six, their wailing entwined with the shriek of fighter jets streaking overhead engaged in the aerial acrobatics of a dogfight. An Alliance Dreadnought-Class Behemoth warped into low orbit, its engines tearing the silence of the void as it opened fire on the Varus. Its vast shadow consumed the quarter below, and the ground churned beneath the fury of its descent. It was the Pegasus, Darren’s stunned mind registered. He had served aboard her once, in what felt like another lifetime. One of the oldest, most storied, and most powerful battleships in the navy.
The Pegasus’ railgun whomped, a deafening rupture as the very air split, charged with raw energy. The bolt screamed through the heavens, its passage igniting the sky in a brief, blinding flash. The shockwave tore downward, flattening trees and sending dust avalanches cascading across the surface below. A cascade of smaller explosions marked its passage through the Varus invasion fleet. It was not enough, as shimmering blue energy barriers sprung into being across their alien hulls. Even in the city far below, miles from the battle, the force of the clash laced a shiver of agony through him. It settled deep in his gut, a gnawing ache that bled into his mind and trickled blood from his ears. Too low. The ship was too low. The atmosphere itself recoiled in its presence. The Dreadnought was a space vessel, a being of might and vengeance designed to engage in the void of dark space, not miles above a population center of millions.
Glowing munitions poured from the Pegasus in all directions, its point-defense systems blazing as the Varus swarm closed in. The ship fought, holding the tide at bay—but it was not enough.
The ancient vessel’s hull cracked under the unrelenting force, its armored plating buckling as the Varus bore through it like a river of shimmering silver, unbound by the laws of gravity or matter. They moved as if space itself bent to their will, carving through steel and circuitry with an unholy precision.
The railgun fired once more, a final defiant shot against the inevitable. But the ship was already failing. Structural integrity compromised, its aim wavered—and the space ladder vanished in a blinding flash.
Kelsey screamed beside him, raw and stricken.
Darren could not blame her.
They watched, helpless, as untold lives were erased in the blink of an eye—the great evacuation corridor collapsing, torn from its moorings, its immense weight no longer supported. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, were lost in an instant, reduced to fragments of light against the abyss.
The Behemoth fell, a wounded titan dragged from the heavens, its course set for the city below.
Darren and Kelsey were still at the docks, far on the eastern edge of Colony Six, the metropolis sprawling beneath the encroaching catastrophe. Without hesitation, he pulled Kelsey into his arms and ran—ran for the Meran, his voice raw as he shouted into his comms, ordering the ship’s onboard AI to initiate takeoff procedures.
He risked a glance over his shoulder. One last look.
The Pegasus struck the ground.
The sight was unreal—a scene too vast, too colossal to feel real, like a painting rendered in the distance, a stage prop. The air ignited as the ship’s core went critical, its death a radiant cataclysm. Light erupted, searing the horizon, blinding Darren even as he turned, even as he ran—
Knowing it was too late.
“Scrap the shields—crank everything into power!” Darren shouted, snapping back to the present. His breath came in short, ragged bursts as he fought to center himself, to shake off the ghosts of the past..
A Helios-7 burn might not be enough.
No.
I can do this. I can.
I will survive.
The words became a mantra, a shield against the fear gnawing at the edges of his mind.
Closer to the core, the Varus-Alliance treaties would have held them in check. Out here? No such guarantees. Darren had met a few Varus in person—just enough to know that theirs was not a species bound by the laws and orders of conventional diplomacy. Nomads. Their shifting clan hierarchies followed only the edicts of their ancient matriarch founders. In a sector this far out, with no governing eyes to witness, Darren and his ship were fair game.
The glow of his monitors flickered—then dimmed—before all but one went dark.
“I’m sorry, Captain Grien. Such an action could be considered an act of hostility. SyCorp cannot condone any conceivably aggressive maneuvers against the Varus System Commonwealth at this time.”
Darren’s jaw clenched. Aggressive?
“SyCorp won’t even allow small-caliber turrets on this bucket, let alone anything that could scratch a Varus Orb!”
Soft clicks echoed through the cockpit as various electrical systems powered down, the hum of life support the only constant.
“As SyCorp property, I will not allow this action,” Thirty-Six cooly responded.
A short burst of data buzzed through the Meran’s communications array.
“Surrender code 47 has been sent, as per New Alliance regulation. I will inform you when the required response has been acknowledged by the Varus System vessels.”
And with that, Thirty-Six fell silent— as silent as the ship, now dead in the water around Darren.
A short text message floated across the screen in front of Darren.
—START MESSAGE—
Greetings, respectable delegates of the Varus System Commonwealth,
This vessel and all occupants are registered to a New Alliance citizen—Darren Grien: ID#873G1—with the exception of SyCorp A.I. Module 3336-R1.
In accordance with current Varus System and SyCorp treaties, this module must be returned untampered to SyCorp space in the event the current registrant is no longer able to do so.
We thank you for the continued cooperation between our peoples.
—Signed, Garius Velkern, CEO, RND Services.
—END MESSAGE—
Fuck SyCorp.
And fuck this A.I.
Darren’s fingers flew across the keyboard, punching in the override command:
CMD END FUNCTION, 3336-R1: CMD RN GH MACHINA
The sterile monotony of Thirty-Six vanished in an instant, replaced by the bubbly, unmistakable voice of a young girl.
“Hi! Hi!” The speakers crackled as every monitor and system hummed back to life.
“Good mornin’, Pops! Whatcha doin’?”
Darren barely had time to react.
“Quick, power—”
“Where are we? It’s so dark in here.”
“Later. Power u—”
“It’s like what, nine or ten at night? We AST or GST?”
A breath of laughter broke through Darren’s panic. His shoulders slackened, tension unraveling in an exhale.
“Kelsey,” he said, his voice strained but lighter than it had been in hours.
“Yesss?” The computerized voice dropped into the worst Old British accent Darren had ever heard.
He let out a rough chuckle, rubbing a hand over his face. “I wasn’t sure you were real. Thought maybe last time was just… in my head.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Start up command program Helios-7.”
Before Darren could even finish the request, the screen to his left beeped, and power levels spiked—far beyond what should have been possible. The deck shuddered beneath him, the vibrations rattling through his bones. A wave of heat rolled from the vents, carrying the thick, acrid scent of burning oil.
“Varus again… I hate them,” Kelsey’s voice emerged in a muffled groan, a flicker of anger beneath the static.
The tone yanked Darren backward in time.
A memory. Kelsey, sitting beside him in the pilot’s chair, her shoulders tight, her lips pressed into a hard line. She had just inverted into a barrel roll for the fourth damn time. Darren had yelled, frustration spilling over. She had turned to face him, her eyes gleaming with defiance.
He swallowed, forcing the past back where it belonged.
“Don’t we all.” The words came out bitter. Regret soured the edges of his mind, but he shoved it down. Later.
“Repeat surrender code 47, and get ready to haul ass at my command.”
“Righto, Da! Good to go!”
There was no propulsion fire, no visible thrusters as the Varus ships glided forward. They moved like whispers of light, impossible to track but for the erratic blips on the radar. In a single breath, they closed the impossible distance, coming to a halt three hundred meters from the Meran.
And then they began to circle.
A hiss shivered through the comms. Vapor vented from each ship, curling outward, bleeding into space.
And then—movement.
Dozens of small, writhing silver threads spilled from their sleek hulls, twisting and slithering as though each strand possessed a mind of its own. The cables drifted, independent of the ships that had spawned them, swimming through the void like liquid serpents.
The threads converged.
Each ship wove its own thick, roiling cable—three in total—sliding and sloshing through space as though unbound by gravity or inertia. And they were coming for the Meran.
200 meters and closing.
Darren’s eyes flicked between the distance gauge spiraling down and the monitor tracking the Varus approach. Sweat prickled along his brow, his muscles knotted tight at the base of his neck.
His index finger hovered over the enter key, poised—ready for the moment to come.
Every fiber of his being screamed to burn the engines now, to launch before it was too late. But the Helios-7 program on his display lagged at 80 percent readiness. Too early, and he’d blow the engines entirely.
100 meters. Come on—nearly there.
Kelsey hummed an Old Earth tune through the ship’s speakers. Her voice warbled with barely restrained tension, but Darren recognized the melody still. Sinatra. A song about the moon—something he’d dug up for her ages ago.
The wait clawed at him.
Red warning lights pulsed, the bridge bathed in an ominous glow. Collision alarms screamed silently through the vacuum-sealed hallways of his ship.
50 meters. Not yet—not yet.
Kelsey’s song broke apart into mumbles.
Darren’s eyes bulged.
The silver cords burst to life.
They split apart, unraveling into dozens of droplets, each twisting, darting, aiming straight for the Meran’s bridge.
Darren’s blood sang. A pressure built within his mind, thick, suffocating—a force pressing against the inside of his skull, baying to be released. Stars shone in his vision and it was as if he was on the star road of his dreams again, for but only a moment, reality shattering like glass to instantly become whole and mundane once more.
With a single, decisive motion, Darren tapped the enter key—and freed the force inside him.
The Meran’s rockets ignited in a furious burn, rattling the metal of the old ship, causing stacks of paper to fall off a nearby console.
—Error: Helios-7 Offline—
The words barely registered.
A shocking silence descended.
All the violence of the world strangled out in an instant, devoured by a moment of purest nothingness. The stillness was so sudden, so deep, that the air itself was charged with sound’s absence.
And then—
The charge grew.
Air roiled and roared as the nothingness broke.
Darren’s reality fractured.
A jagged rip of light tore through the cold abyss ahead of the Meran, and the universe folded inward. For a breath—a fleeting, impossible breath—Darren gazed into the widening tear. And there, in the depths of unreality, he saw it.
The Star Road, the Astral Sea.
It reached for him—expanded toward him—a mass of unknowable force stretching beyond its prison, clawing its way into real space.
Power vibrated deep within him. The Meran warped to its will.
And so, too, did the Varus.
Their orb-like forms elongated, stretching, twisting—pulled down into the tearing void. One by one, they were swallowed whole, devoured by the abyss now bleeding into existence.
Darren had seen the phenomena twice before, thrice now. It was still horrifying. Still sickening. A wonder so far beyond understanding that it felt like madness itself. Tendrils of purple and blue lightning crackled at the edges of the rupture, curling hungrily around the Meran, weaving through its hull with an energy that hummed and pulsed like a living thing.
A scream tore from Darren’s throat as power gorged on his blood, chewed through his mind. His skin burned. His veins sizzled, pressure mounting, threatening to burst him from the inside out.
He was back on the Path; At the edge of oblivion.
The darkness undulated below him, vast and endless. His hand dipped into its pools—
And the power he had long sought sank its teeth into his consciousness.
He had never been this far. Not in the dream. Not in waking life.
A scream, a little girl’s—no, his own, raw and animal-like in purest agony. A woman’s soothing presence, cradling his head, tears falling from her eyes even as she comforted him.
Death
Light
Destruction
The Dark
The Darkness claimed him.
“Captain Grien?”
The plain, sterile voice of Thirty-Six had returned, exiling Kelsey back to her data folder, or his mind. Darren knew not which, it was insanity either way.
Logically, Darren knew it hadn’t really been his daughter speaking to him. He had coded her program himself, after all. And yet… it had still been her voice.
For a moment—just a moment—he had let himself believe.
A foolish hope, but a hope nonetheless.
He hadn’t even finished writing the program. And yet, there she had been. A fully realized A.I., speaking with knowledge and awareness he had never given her.
Darren had seen—and survived—many strange things in his years wandering the stars. He was well past trying to define what was or wasn’t possible in the depths of space. Rationalization is a powerful tool, able to excuse the worst evils and trap the best of intentions, Darren mused.
“Captain Grien,” Thirty-Six droned on, unbothered by his silence. “I must report a critical malfunction in ship systems.”
Darren groaned. “Urmghgh.” That was all he could manage.
He blinked up at the bridge ceiling from where he had fallen. His body felt spent, used up, wrung dry. Each pump of his heart hurt, skin ached at the slightest touch, and his head throbbed with raw, lingering agony. He pawed weakly at his Rocket Boy chair, his limbs slow, sluggish.
“Report?” His voice came out hoarse, barely more than a rasp.
“Error 1304B. This unit has experienced a terminal error and requires immediate maintenance: current location and internal clock malfunction.” The bridge screens flickered, numbers and error messages streaming across the monitors at dizzying speed.
“Running current astrogation chart references and checking time via local system rotations, Captain Grien.”
“Re-vent the ship and get some air in here. Start up all secondary systems while you’re at it.”
Darren rubbed his temples, exhaustion pressing against his skull.
“Assume correct nav coordinates when you’re finished, then calculate distance to primary destination,” he added.
I can only hope we’re within range of something. After taking out the Varus like that, I can’t rely on the Alliance for rescue. And if that rift dropped me too far out, I’m done for.
The thought nagged at him, but he’d have to wait for Thirty-Six to report back before he could know just how bad off he really was.
“Of course, Captain Grien,” Thirty-Six responded, the lights on his hub blinking as the AI processed the new calculations.
The bridge hatch hissed as fresh air rushed into the halls beyond. The room depressurized, sending a sharp pop through Darren’s ears. He grimaced at the sensation, then stepped through the opening to survey the damage.
The main corridor was intact. Darren stopped at Kelsey’s door. He hesitated only a moment before cranking it open.
Just as she had left it. Nearly three years ago.
The bed was made, prim and proper—a soldier’s precision. But her possessions were scattered, haphazard heaps of forgotten life. A room frozen in time.
Nothing was out of place. No damage.
He pulled the door shut and moved on.
“Captain Grien?”
Darren exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes pulsing with a coming migraine. “Report.”
By the time Thirty-Six’s voice came through the ship’s speakers, Darren had made his way through most of the vessel, checking for hull fractures, ruptured conduits—any sign of failure.
His stomach clenched as he rounded the last corridor, eyes locking on the final door to the left.
The engine room.
Assuming correct navigational coordinates… the Meran is currently within the Zelic quadrant of Khan’in Space, Sector 42-Alpha.”
Darren stilled.
Dammit.
Halfway across the entire sector. 42-Alpha of all places. Could it be a coincidence? The vision of the woman cradling his head flashed through his mind.
No, only a coincidence. She’d have moved on by now.
A faint echo whispered in his mind, familiar yet impossible.
“It could have been worse, you know.”
His breath hitched. The voice bounced around his skull, clear as day.
He jumped, instinct slamming his palm against the wall—stymying the curse rising in his throat.
“Kel?” His voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
His mind reeled, disoriented, exhausted. He had been tired before. But he had never heard voices. With a rough shake of his head, Darren shrugged off the moment and continued toward the engine room.
Great, that’s just what I need now, because going space crazy is always good for business, isn’t it?
The engine room was a wreck.
The Dual Core I-85 barely chugged along, its once-mighty form reduced to a smoking hulk. Most of the damage hadn’t been to the engine itself—the ship had taken the worst of it. Across the room, small pockets of space shimmered mint green, the eerie glow marking where the Meran’s shields struggled to hold back the dozens of ruptures torn through its hull.
And then, there was the icing on the cake.
Warped, misshapen structures littered the bay—metal bent into impossible forms, steel pulled and wrung as though space itself had twisted it.
A wrench drifted past Darren. Or at least, what used to be a wrench—its frame contorted into a razor-thin, needle-like point. Whatever the rift had done, it had apparently rewritten physics along the way.
“Thirty-Six, gravity’s off in the engine room. See what you can do about it.”
“All ship gravity generation is running as intended, Captain Grien. There are several anomalies in the engine bay. Recommend maintenance when the Meran is next in port.”
Darren sighed and turned to the engine. Fix what can be fixed. That was all he could do. Not much, as it turned out. Still, the work let his mind slip from worry. He had always liked working with his hands. It let him focus—on the moment, on the task in front of him. Not on the rest of it.
“Captain Grien?”
Darren wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Soot streaked his hands, his brow, his sleeves. He wiped his face with the back of his wrist and made his way toward the bridge.
“Yeah? Report.”
“Distance to primary destination calculated. At current speeds, it will take 23 years, 4 months, and 18 days to travel the distance of 6.3 arcminutes to Axion Theta-3. Due to current engine failures, the Meran is proceeding at sub-light five.”
Darren plopped down into his Rocket Boy, the musty scent of aged leather nearly lulling him to sleep. He rolled his shoulders, pulled up the local astrogation charts.
“Show me the nearest Alliance station.”
The map spun, settling on a small sector of space near the Meran.
“Estimate three yea—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
Darren drummed his fingers against the console, nervous energy bleeding through the motion.
“We need to pull in soon. I can’t risk these holes widening on us.” His eyes flicked to the hull integrity readout, the stress fractures already more extensive than he liked. “Not a ton of power left either, right?”
“Correct. Energy hull shielding will last an estimated 15 days.”
Not long enough.
“Show me the nearest stations—all of them. No matter their faction.”
The list appeared, scrolling across the main screen in a dull cascade of names and coordinates.
Unpromising. At best.
Darren had been to the Zelic quadrant before, back during his soldiering days. The region was not exactly known for its many hospitable ports and planets—unless, of course, you were with the Zaft National Defense Force.
He scanned the list, fingers twitching as he spotted a name he recognized.
A coincidence, it has to be.
Darren pulled up the station’s details.
“I know I’m going to regret this, but take us to Sircies Station.”