She took comfort in the feel of his body against hers. Insanity, yes, but it was the only comfort left. She could not speak to him. Even if she trusted her voice, even if she could talk without revealing the medallion hidden in her mouth, there was nothing to say.
Like a rabbit caught in headlights, she remained perfectly still, staring at nothing. The men leered and whispered terrible things, but acknowledging them would only make it worse.
It would be bad enough as it was. They had already taken almost everything from her. Her ship. Her crew. Her family, past and present. Soon they would take her dignity, and then they would take Kyle away and kill him.
Of all of these losses, Kyle seemed the greatest. She had not had time to be with him. Their life, the hopes and dreams it promised, was not just cut short. It had never begun.
She had never even kissed him.
All the sacrifices she had made had been in vain. All the time she had spent dismantling her defenses to let Kyle in had been wasted. All her efforts had been futile. Jandi had been right. But to think on that was to surrender to self-recrimination. And there was no room for that. Grief squeezed out all other emotion, and spilled over her body, coating every sensation with a glaze of unreality.
With nothing else to do, she watched the main vid screen. They were approaching another ship. She could judge its immense scale by the tiny fighters buzzing around it. An opening appeared in the squat, tubular behemoth. A carrier, then: a ship that bore other ships as cargo, like a chinchilla fish carries its babies in its mouth. The fusion boat that had captured them did not seem equipped for node travel, nor could those little fighters manage a node on their own. They lacked the mass necessary to create a stable bubble in the node.
Before they had captured her ship, the gravitics display had told her of the existence of this one massive vessel, and of dozens of other smaller ships, probably a screen of destroyers. In a fair fight, Altair might stand a chance.
But of course they had their secret weapon. The carrier would paralyze her prey and release the swarm to feed. Altair Fleet would be rendered helpless for hours, while the spiders bled them with sprays of steel needles at near-relativistic speeds. Even the idiotic robotic fighter pilots would be capable of total victory in such a one-sided battle.
A warning from Prudence, and Altair could crush this monster under its heel. But in silence, its poison would destroy a foe ten times its size. The remnant of Altair Fleet would be loyal to Dejae and afraid to move. While it did nothing the clones would build more ships, extending their web across the sector until they could defeat planetary fleets without cheating. In a hundred years Altair would be a sea of Dejaes, and the sky would be blotted out with their ships. Then they would be unstoppable. The entire galaxy would be wiped clean of humanity and replaced with Dejae.
It might be an improvement. Presumably the Dejaes treated each other better than ordinary people did. Under the rule of clones, there might not be any more Strattenburgs.
Remembering the frightened young monk on Monterey, she knew it was a false hope. The clones were not better people than people.
The boat shuddered as clamps seized it. Its gravitics whined and died, and she could feel the lock cycling as the air pressure subtly changed.
“Take them to holding. In one piece.” The Dejae spoke the order to his men, and swept out.
The spider remained, watching them impassively.
Glaring, the men pulled her and Kyle to their feet. They were not gentle or modest.
One leered at her, his hand slapping her buttock. “Don’t worry, pretty little thing. The monks won’t touch you. But they’ll let us show you a good time, before they space you as a waste of mass.”
“Fuck you,” Kyle said, earning a beating. The soldier punched him in the face several times while others held his arms.
“Knock it off,” their leader said. “He has to be able to talk.”
Dragged through the corridors, they came to an elevator. The ship was built on the vertical, instead of the normal horizontal. Like an old rocket ship instead of a surface vessel. Prudence wondered why. Passive grav-plating didn’t care which way you laid it. Maybe the monks had not trusted their opaque sky, and had built their ships in deep holes in the ground, like missile silos, easier to conceal than shallow pits. Or maybe they were just crazy. Not every action had a reason. Not everything made sense.
The brig was small, with only two guards. The clones obviously didn’t intend to take a lot of prisoners. Kyle and Prudence were forced into a bare room, with solid steel walls. Chains hung from the ceiling, and there were bloodstains on the floor. Their bound hands were held high above their heads while a chain was looped between them and locked. Now they stood, naked and helpless, but after enough hours their legs would give out. Then they would dangle. After enough hours of that, their lungs would collapse, and they would die.
The leader of the guards explained the bloodstains with a grisly smile. “The monks believe in corporal punishment. They say it improves discipline, but I think they just like flogging. The chain is so you have to choose to stand and take it. If you do something stupid like turn around, they’ll flog your front side, including the naughty bits.” He leered at Prudence’s nakedness. “Not so much a problem for you, missy. But that’s good news. Maybe there’ll be something left for us to play with when they’re done.”
“Fuck you,” Kyle said, through his bloody mouth.
They didn’t even bother to beat him this time. Laughing, they walked outside, and sealed the door.
“Prudence.” Kyle sounded so lost and alone.
She shook her head. They still had to wait.
But not for long. Five minutes and one of the guards from the brig came in, the huge steel door whining as it opened and closed.
He walked around them, leering. Trying to intimidate her. Futilely, given the circumstances.
“Jobson and I talked about it, and we decided not to wait on the tender mercies of our employers. I won the throw, so I get to go first.”
He took his jacket off and hung it over a camera on the back wall.
“No point in letting that pervert Jobson watch.” Prudence marveled at the sensibilities of rapists. “You think about how you want to play this. It’ll likely be the most fun you’ll have for the rest of your life.” He advanced on her warily, his hands open and in front of him.
She didn’t react. He grinned, and spoke to Kyle. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn too. The monks are like that. Fine for them, eh, a planet full of men. But Earth if an ordinary man don’t get to missing a woman something fierce.”
Kyle didn’t speak. He must know he couldn’t prevent this. He must understand that not provoking the guard had to be the best thing he could do for Prudence.
Yet she could guess how much it cost him to remain silent. To look away in shame and helplessness. She could guess to the billionth of a credit what the cost was, because she had looked away helplessly while they beat Jorgun.
“You can scream or cry if you want.” He seemed disturbed by their silence. “I turned the audio off. I didn’t want to gag you. You wouldn’t be able to tell me how much you enjoyed it.”
He stepped in, close, the stench of his sweat overwhelming. She heard cloth rustle and metal clink as he undid his trousers.
Turning her face back to his, to stare him in the eyes, she put one leg up over his hip.
“Eager to get started.” His leer was vile, up close. “I like that. It won’t make me hurt you any less, but it’s a good try. Don’t forget to tell me how much you like it.”
She pulled him in close and put her other leg over his hip. Now she rested her weight on him, so she could reach up and grasp the chain, instead of hanging from it.
The guard grinned and tugged at his trousers, trying to pull them down without dislodging her legs.
Twisting, she pulled him around, turning in a circle. Focused on the heat of the moment, he did not realize which direction she was leading him.
When his pants fell to his ankles, the belt buckle clanking dully on the steel floor, he grinned at her and leaned in close.
“A kiss, first, then.”
She squeezed him tight and stared into his eyes. She let herself hate this man, with all the years of righteous wrath she had carried since a sixteen-year-old girl had traded her family for jars of ashes. Using him as a platform, she swung one leg out and over his shoulder.
Annoyed, he reached up to grab her leg. She flipped the other one up to join it. Locking her left foot behind her right knee, she squeezed.
Stupidly, he spent the first fifteen seconds fighting her, pitting the strength of his arms against the strength of her legs. Only when the lack of air began to weaken him did he think to start hitting her. She struggled with him, twisting and cranking at his neck, trying to avoid his blows while keeping the pressure up. He started pulling away, and now she was fighting just to keep her hold.
They staggered around in a circle, bound by the chain, and she realized she was losing. He kept getting loose enough to catch a breath. Soon his attacks would hurt her enough that she couldn’t hold on.
There was a sharp crack. She felt the force of the blow even through the guard’s heavy body. He stiffened momentarily, his eyes suddenly focused on some distant point, and then sagged limply in her grip.
They swung together, for an instant, until she let him fall. Lying on the ground at an unnatural angle, he feebly twitched his arms, trying to reach his broken back, while drool spilled from his mouth.
Kyle grinned savagely. “I might have broken a toe.” He had kicked the guard in the spine. The guard’s attempts to retreat had only brought him within range of Kyle.
Kyle stretched out and put a foot on the guard’s throat. She shook her head.
“I know,” he said. “They almost certainly have him on a sensor. If we kill him, they’ll come. I’ll wait until the door opens. I’ll give you as much time as I can. But please, Prudence. Say something.”
She couldn’t speak yet. Instead she released the chain and stood on the ground again, staring up. She would only have one chance. Carefully, her hands opened wide, fingers spread in a net, she spat the medallion out of her mouth.
Wet and slick, it slipped through her fingers, fell to the floor, and began to roll away.
Kyle stepped on it, quick as a snake.
“What the…”
Shame at her failure, at muffing the one chance they had to live, washed over her, released by the gift of Kyle’s second chance. She sobbed uncontrollably, tears spilling from a breached dam.
“What is this?” Kyle asked wonderingly. Gently prodding it with his toes, he tried to pick it up.
Prudence’s heart thudded. If he activated the device unknowingly, the blade would spring out at some random direction and cut off half his foot. She had thought it was impossible, but she remembered Jandi’s easy release of the blade.
She tried to warn him, and failed. Now that her mouth was free of the secret it had borne, the medallion that it had hidden while she stood by and let Jorgun’s heroics save her life, she found her voice was silenced by grief.
“I don’t think I’m flexible enough,” Kyle said. Gently he pushed the medallion over to her, avoiding the flopping guard.
She reached out with her foot, her toe brushing his. The contact was electrifying, the promise of hope burning like a branding iron.
Carefully, methodically, she maneuvered the medallion under her foot, until her toes could grip it. Experimentally, she sagged on the chain, letting her taped wrists take all of her weight.
It wouldn’t work. The pressure rendered her hands nerveless. She could not hang upside down and transfer the medallion from foot to hand. She couldn’t leave one foot on the ground and still reach her hands.
Standing on her other foot, she raised her leg and pointed it at Kyle. Straining at the limit of her strength, she flexed at the waist and brought her foot to his face.
He smiled at her, absurd in these terrible circumstances, but it made her heart light and feathery. Bending his head to her foot, he took the medallion in his mouth, his breath hot on her sole, his lips soft and wet.
She put her foot down, and they leaned toward each other, straining against their bonds to share their first kiss.
Their lips could not reach. But he pushed his tongue the last few centimeters, and she took the medallion from him, savoring the taste of his mouth on it.
Standing straight again, she flexed her wrists, bringing the blood back into her fingers. Paradoxically calmed by the galvanizing physical contact with Kyle, she took aim and tried again.
Her fingers wrapped around the medallion, snatching it from the air.
No tears this time. She was done with tears.
Flicking the knife alive, she sheared through the chain without effort. Her arms fell, weak from exhaustion and weighted by the loop of metal. She caught herself before the metal clanked on the floor. Or before the knife, still extended, wounded her.
She didn’t have room for any more mistakes.
Kneeling to the ground, holding her hands at floor level and twisting them around, she still could not reach the tape. At least she could cut the chain lower down, opening the loop so the metal links could slide quietly into a pile.
Standing, she stepped over to Kyle. Before she cut him free there was one thing that was more important, one thing that was more necessary than saving their lives or the entire galaxy. One thing that had already waited too long.
She kissed him, their lips finally meeting, the heat of their bodies shared, their tongues touching without restraint.
Afterward he stared at her, amazed.
Carefully she reached above his head, extending the blade again. She would have to operate by sight alone, since the knife gave no feedback. Touch would not tell her the difference between tape and flesh.
He stood perfectly still, trusting her. Even after she moved the knife away, his hands did not move. They stayed, locked in place, until she stepped back and nodded.
Released, they flew into action. Kyle knelt over the guard, rifling under his clothes, until he found the sensor patch. It was held on by staples instead of tape. As painful as it must have been going in, taking it out would be twice as bad. Not that Prudence cared about that. Now that Kyle knew where the sensor was, he could safely begin stripping the guard. He got no further than tugging on the trousers before the guard moaned in pain and voided his bowels.
Kyle stood up in defeat. “If we move him, he’ll die.” Prudence didn’t care about that, either, in the long run. But for the next few minutes it was important.
Lying in his own filth, gurgling, the guard wasn’t intimidating anymore, merely pathetic. Prudence looked down and allowed herself to pity him. This would be her last memory of the man, and she chose pity over hate.
Kyle was already planning the next move. “Sooner or later, the other guy is going to get worried. He should call for backup, but that means admitting he broke protocol in the first place. So instead, he’ll open the door to see what’s taking so long. Try not to kill him, Pru. You can cripple him, but try not to kill him.” While he spoke, he cut the tape from her hands with a knife from the crippled guard’s boot.
He hugged her and kissed her ear. She wanted to melt into his arms and stay there, forever. Instead, she stood against the wall, on one side of the door. Kyle took his post on the other, the knife reversed in his hand so he could club with the hilt. And they waited.
Long, long minutes, but so much easier to bear. The memory of Kyle’s embrace clothed her, resting on her bare skin like armor.
The door whined.
“Fucking fuck, Holbing, what the fuck are you…” Jobson’s voice trailed off into silence as the empty room came into view. Like the idiot he was, he leaned forward to get a better view, his head coming through the doorway.
“Hey,” Kyle said.
Jobson turned to look at Kyle. Realizing it wasn’t Holbing, he pointed his splattergun at him. Finally realizing the naked man was not a danger, he whipped his head around, just in time for Prudence to reach up and touch his face.
She slid the knife in between his eyes. Just a few centimeters and out again, straight and neat, like she had seen the operation done on old medical vids.
Jobson stood there, staring at her.
“Give me that,” Kyle said gently, taking the gun from him. “And that,” unbuckling the man’s utility belt with its little pockets of ammunition and key cards. “That’s a good boy,” he said, unclipping Jobson’s microphone from his shirt pocket. Methodically he stripped the man down to his underclothes, claiming his trousers and boots for himself. “Now just sit down here and be quiet for a while, okay?” Kyle guided the passive guard into the room, and pushed him to the floor. Jobson, his brain no longer fully functional, stared in amazement at the dull metal floor.
Touchingly, Kyle draped the guard’s shirt around her, where it hung like a badly fitting mini-dress. Prudence shrugged her arms into it and fastened three buttons. It was romantic, or would have been, if it had been his shirt. And less sweat-stained.
Kyle had already stepped out of the cell and swept the control room with his gaze and the barrel of the splattergun. Prudence followed him, unconcerned. The room was obviously empty. If it weren’t, they would have already died in a hail of gunfire.
Kyle found a leather jacket hanging off a chair. He put it on, but had to zipper it closed to hide his bare chest. Wearing a jacket inside a spaceship looked ridiculous. She almost gave him the shirt back, but she didn’t. Not that she cared; but she did not want to expose what he had chosen to keep private.
He fumbled at his new belt, made a selection, and touched a key to the cell door. It whined shut.
“Their shift has to end soon.” She let his voice wash over her, grateful that it spared her the effort of trying to speak. “Otherwise they would have spent longer talking themselves into trouble. I can kill the next shift as they come in, but after that, I don’t have any more plans.”
She walked to the main door.
“No,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “The guards suck, but the ship designers don’t. That door won’t open from the inside. Only from the outside. Those idiots were as much imprisoned in here as we were.”
How could he be so sure? She looked at him in wonder.
Grinning, he guessed her question. “I recognized the brand name on the cell key. The brig locks were made on Altair. I’ll give them that much: Dejae knows quality when he sees it.”
So it was up to her expertise now. Pacing around the room, she tried to guess how the ship would be laid out. She picked a corner of the room, out of direct sight from the main door. Opening the knife again, she cut a hole in the floor itself.
The plating dropped a dozen centimeters, clanking on the grav-plating underneath. Carefully she cut through that, trying to avoid any wires or data feeds.
When she pulled the knife away, Kyle hauled the junk out of the hole. Reaching in, he grabbed the bottom layer of mesh by the steel spine that ran along it.
Carefully she cut around his hands, releasing the ceiling mesh from the deck below them. He pulled it out of the way, glanced down briefly, readied his splattergun, and stepped through the hole.
Watching him fall out of sight was wrenching. The soft thud from below was reassuring only because it was not accompanied by gunfire. She had to force herself to wait three seconds before following him.
She couldn’t hang from the edges and let herself down gracefully, because they would be too sharp. She had to step into freefall.
He caught her at the bottom, his hands strong and hard. They were in a storeroom, crowded with half-open boxes of machine parts.
“We’re going to the engine room, aren’t we,” he whispered, his eyes alive with delight. “To cause a right piece of trouble, no doubt.” Striding to the door, he opened it, and walked through it like he owned the place.
She followed him as they wandered through the corridors, tapping his shoulder to steer him. They went down three more levels before they encountered resistance. Two soldiers stepped out of a doorway. The older one looked over Kyle and frowned. Kyle’s disguise had failed, no doubt compromised by his concern for Prudence’s modesty.
“Who the hell are you?” the older one demanded. The younger one raked Prudence’s body with a feral gaze, his eyes trapped by her exposed legs.
“R and R delivery. Boss thought you might like to have some fun.” Kyle grinned and jerked his thumb in Prudence’s direction.
The older soldier glanced at Prudence, and she arched her shoulders back, exposing an immodest amount of cleavage. Surprised, the guard hesitated. Kyle took advantage of his distraction, stepping in close and bringing the butt of his splattergun swinging up in a vicious arc into the soldier’s jaw. The man fell against the wall and slid to the floor.
The young one finally stopped staring and started to move. Prudence stepped forward and held the knife at his throat, threatening him. But she had forgotten it had no pressure. The soldier brushed against it, unknowing, and his throat opened under the invisible edge of the knife. Blood sprayed over her and him and the corridor and he stumbled and fell.
Lying on the ground, clutching his throat and losing consciousness, he stared up at her. She remembered the look in his eyes when he had heard Kyle’s words, and felt nothing.
“Come on.” Kyle pulled at her arm and they ran. Behind them a door opened and voices shouted.
Another elevator. It had a red flashing light and did not open to Kyle’s touch. He fumbled through the utility belt, trying card after card until one opened the doors. Inside she found the symbol they had been searching for.
Next stop: Engineering.
The elevator doors opened on a short hall with thick blast doors at the end of it. She knew Kyle’s cards would not open this. With the knife she cut a circle in the door itself, ignoring the latch. Kyle kicked the circle and the slab fell into the room. Without hesitation he dived through the hole, rolling on the other side. She heard the splattergun fire once.
Carefully, avoiding the hole’s razored edges with her exposed flesh, she stepped through. Kyle chased the engineers into a storage locker, shouting and swearing and waving the splattergun like a cattle prod. There were no bodies on the floor. He must have fired over their heads.
While she threw levers on the main consoles, she wondered on his choice of actions. In a battle for their lives, for the lives of all humanity, he had fired a warning shot. Because he could. Because for this minute he could accomplish his goals without killing. Even if thirty seconds from now he would have to slaughter them like sheep, for this instant he could spare them.
The subtle vibration of the ship, the living deck beneath her feet, stilled and quieted as she killed the main engine.
With the engineers locked away, Kyle went to the ruined door and took up a firing position. Buying her time.
She studied the vast engine room. The heart of all gravitics systems was its inertial mass, a colossal lump of heavy metal surrounded by circuitry. The electronics twisted the atoms, turning their inertia into motion. Gravity and acceleration were the same thing to mathematicians and metal. The heavy core would fall upward with the force of a hundred Gs.
A honeycomb of steel pillars radiated out from the mass. The skeleton of the ship. All of the decking, the hull, the outer skin and armor, rested on these pillars. The mass pushed on the pillars and moved the ship. This was the simple design that had carried man through space for hundreds of years. It was practically foolproof.
In this monstrous ship the inertial mass was at least a thousand tons of dense metal, a dull barrel shape welded into the center of the room. Nothing she, or heavy artillery, could do to it would appreciably matter. The acres of circuitry were independently wired. The controls were double and triple backed up.
Practically foolproof.
She stepped off the platform surrounding the inertial mass. There was no grav-plating here. It would only complicate the thrust calculations. Pushing off from the deck, fighting to control the turmoil in her stomach, she sailed up to one of the great pillars that held up the rest of the ship.
It was huge, a meter around. With the knife blade she cut a small hole in the side of the gleaming metal. As she had expected, the tube was hollow. Ten-centimeter-thick walls, but hollow. And why not? Steel was stronger in that shape. These columns could easily support the hundred thousand tons of vessel above them.
She traced a circle around the pillar. All the way around, meeting up at the other side. Kicking off to the next pillar, she did the same, carefully choosing the angle of the cut.
Kyle fired from the doorway. Time was running short.
From pillar to pillar she went, deftly touching them with her atomic edge. Kyle fired again, and she heard return fire from down the corridor.
A dull thump and the screech of a thousand nails on steel. They had thrown a grenade. It must have missed the hole in the door and bounced back at them, because Kyle was still alive. She knew because she could hear his gun firing rapidly.
She finished the last pillar. The mass still rested on its base, anchored in place by power lines and control circuitry and simple inertia. The pillars hung stately, unmoved. From five meters away it was impossible to see the hairline cracks.
Kicking to the floor, she crawled out on the deck, and gravity claimed her again. She ran to a service hatch, cut off the sealing lock, and threw it open.
Kyle sprinted to join her, tossing aside the empty gun, but before he jumped pell-mell down this hole she grabbed his arm. Steering him away, to the other side of the engine, to a different service hatch. This time she cut through the metal of the door, leaving the latch in place. No door-lock sensor would give them away here.
Kyle leapt and she followed. The hatchway was shallow, only a meter. Somehow he had lost his jacket. Squatting, cramped, bundled together, she felt the warmth of his body through the fabric of her shirt. And resented that millimeter of separation.
Voices from above. The soldiers had freed their engineers.
Muffled shouting. The soldiers yelled at them to surrender, but they were at the wrong service hatch. The ruse would buy her and Kyle at most thirty seconds. She spent those precious seconds kissing him. Vibrant, fiery life burned through the fatigue and fear and pain, making her head swim with elation. She had never really felt alive, before. She could not bear to think of losing it now.
Dejae’s voice—there was no way of telling which one it was, or any point in trying—barked orders.
“Full thrust! We have a node entrance to make, and your foolish cowardice has cost us velocity.”
“Hey.” A voice from above. Instinctively she and Kyle looked up. A soldier stood at the lip of the hatch, pointing a gun down at them.
Outside, the whine of the generators as they were brought back on line.
“Hey,” the soldier shouted to his fellow mercenaries. “Over here!”
The ship … trembled.
Metal screamed. The soldier looked up in shock, but that was all he had time for. A thousand tons of metal fell upward with the force of a hundred Earths. The inertial mass pushed on the pillars of the ship. And the pillars, cut to the bone, buckled, slipped, and tore.
The heavy metal core fell through the dainty tubes like a stone through moss. Shot through the center of the ship, smashing everything in its path. Debris and shrapnel whirled in its wake, and the soldier above them disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame.
Alarms shrieked and died. The lights went out. The only sound left was the whoosh of air rushing out into space.
Prudence cut beneath her feet, heedless of disabled alarms and dead power lines now, like a vicious parasitic worm eating its way through the dying ship. They dropped another level into networks of tubes and feeder lines sporadically lit by flickering emergency lights. Prudence led Kyle outward, toward the skin of the ship, trusting to her instincts in the darkness. He followed, trusting her.
At the escape pod hatch, they met another soldier banging on the door, trying to hurry it open.
“This cab’s ours,” Kyle said, grinning like a lunatic. “Go find another one.”
Looking at them in horror, the soldier fled. Prudence and Kyle tumbled into the pod and she pushed the release button. It shuddered, knocking them to the floor, and blew itself free of the ship.
Through the thick glass of the porthole they could see the great ship budding spores as pods evacuated it.
Prudence sat in the pilot’s chair and overrode the automatic controls. The node parameters were burned into her brain from hours spent trying to fly the Ulysses through them in the optimal path, shaving hours and then minutes from each successive approximation.
The pod wasn’t supposed to be flown. It had life support for a week, long enough that if you had to abandon ship while already in a node you’d still be alive when you came out the other side. Dirty, cramped, and possibly homicidal after spending all that time in a tiny room with twenty people, but still alive.
But it couldn’t enter the node on its own. It didn’t have enough mass for that. And its limited gas propulsion system would never undo all the velocity that was hurling them into deep space. A glance at the vector readings and she knew that nothing could. They were closer than she had thought, already past the turnaround point even for the fusion boats. And they were still on course.
The dead hulk of the carrier was going to go through the node anyway. And the spider fleet would follow it. There were no other choices left. For anyone.
Least of all for Kyle and Prudence. She pushed the pod into maximum thrust, rocketing up the side of the ship. If they hit debris or another pod, they would die. If they attracted the attention of the fusion boats that were trying to rescue the other pods, they would die. If she miscalculated a velocity or a mass number, they would die. If she twitched her hand at the wrong time …
Kyle stood behind her, stroking her hair. Waiting for her to be done. Waiting for her, like he had done since he had met her.
She looked at the ship’s hull streaking past her and made a guess. Slowed their velocity. Nudged the pod to start drifting toward the giant corpse.
They floated past the prow of the ship. A used-up party popper, shredded and dark. She pushed the pod in front of the ship, and hit the brakes, adjusting. Watching the solar vector readout like a hawk, waiting for the right instant. When it came, she accelerated again.
And now she was done. They would enter the node just ahead of the corpse behind them, riding in its mass envelope, but with enough velocity to not be sucked back into it, where the resulting chaos would convert them to cosmic radiation. Unless she had calculated wrong, in which case they would hit the node too soon, like a water balloon on concrete and thus becoming a slightly different kind of cosmic radiation.
Kyle did his part now. Leaning forward, he tapped at the pod’s comm console, recording a message.
“Virus attack. Shut down all external comm. Validation is Captain William Stanton, service number ZFX86332.”
He put it on auto-repeat, and turned the broadcast power to full. Then he set it on a timer, to start in four days.
“I memorized his number when I was trapped on his ship. Yes, I hated him that much.”
And then he was done.
They had done everything they could, for the fate of the galaxy.
Kyle opened the supplies cabinet and broke out the drinking water. Wetting a soft cloth bandage from the medical kit, he dabbed at her gently, sponging the blood off. It ran in watery red lines to the drain in the floor. The water from the sponge mixed with her tears, as she wept for all of the things she had lost. Jorgun. The Ulysses. Garcia. Jandi, who would be dead by now, by the League’s hand or the indifference of heartless nature. Her family, on Strattenburg. Who would always be dead.
Whose ashes were now scattered irretrievably to the void. Whose voices had faded with every year, with every hop. The memory of them had protected her at first, kept her whole and sound while she ran and ran, but each new face she interacted with, only to abandon and never see again, had stolen a piece of that memory, until she had only tatters left. Tatters that could not keep out the cold. And nothing new to sew into a vibrant, living whole.
She looked up at Kyle’s face. Battered and bruised, swollen with red and black lumps. When he grinned at her there was a tooth missing.
She reached out and touched his jaw, stroking it lightly with her fingers, trying to convince herself he was real.
“I’ll live,” he said.
Through the portholes she could see the stars turn into rainbow streaks. They would live.
“I love you,” she said.
Then they found they had not done everything they could. There were still things they could do, for each other.
Very good things.