Prologue
Derelict
Why was it so hard to breathe?
The red beacon lights were the first thing he noticed. The dim interior of the hall was repeatedly illuminated as they made their turn, making shadows dance on the hard metal surfaces.
He began shaking immediately. No matter how many times he went through this, it never got any easier. First coming to in a state of panic, and then slowly picking up the scattered pieces of your mind to make sense of your surroundings.
He hadn’t had much time for planning. Perhaps he should’ve been more grateful for the fact that he was even alive now. Alive, he thought, not quite believing it. Still alive.
A huge boom echoed in the corridor beyond, the room finally pressurizing to let him out. He took a deep breath, counting the moments until the red lights turned green. Though with all that had gone wrong by that point, he didn’t dare take off his helmet as he stepped out of the cryo chamber.
He approached the room’s control panel. The computer was malfunctioning, bits and pieces of wire fuzzing with current, flickering to and out of life. The explosion had done a thorough job of marooning them here. Right, he thought, I should be looking for survivors.
But he knew. Even before moving away from the broken piece of hardware, he knew that there would be no survivors.
Through his actions, he’d made sure of that.
Stranded in the deep emptiness of space, tens of millions of miles away from a safe haven, he wondered if it could get any worse. The only chance now was to make for the escape shuttles, and hope that one of them was in a good enough condition to take him back to Headquarters. That is, if he could somehow circumvent the Coalition sentries placed throughout this sector.
Could he really abandon this ship, though, knowing that if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous for the colonies?
He had already decided that going back to HQ with the ship, even if he could get it past the sentries, would be suicide. That they’d just court martial and execute him, find another crew for the mission, and make another attempt at ending the war.
No, he thought as he made his way through the dim, damaged corridors of the massive cruiser. No one will be able to recover this ship or its cargo now.
The solution was well worth the cost.
Maybe he should’ve ended it right here and now. He looked to his side, at the pistol hanging there, at the clip gauge that showed there were still two bullets in it. If only he could just take it up now, and do what he knew needed to be done.
It was mostly her memory that stopped him. Despite turning into a monster, despite having done what he had, he wanted to see her one last time. Even if it meant postponing the inevitable. Even if it meant braving the eternal darkness that lay a few inches beyond the smooth titanium alloy of the corridor walls.
He might have even opted to go outside with a safety tether, take one last look at the planet before cutting the cord and leaving himself to float off into nothingness. But the past week he’d spent in cryosleep would have taken him millions of miles off-course.
Rounding a corner, he suddenly found himself eye-to-eye with the bloated corpse of Winthrop, leaning against the wall with a clean-cut big hole through where his entrails should’ve been. He steeled himself and took the last turn to the emergency stairs, descending into the underbelly of their giant ship.
The door to the shuttle bay would not budge, no matter how he fiddled with the controls. Maybe he could squeeze in through the vents, find his way from there…
The darkness came upon him again. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to clear his head. Why go through all of this? What was the point? He should’ve died after setting the course for the Kuiper Belt. He deserved to die after what he’d done. And yet—yet…
An hour later, he was checking the second shuttle to see if the photonic propulsors still worked. The roof of the floor above had collapsed on the first craft, and even if the damage seemed minimal, he wasn’t going to risk breaking off from the ship on a vehicle whose structural integrity might be compromised.
It was quick work to lift off from the landing pad and slowly move towards the double doors. The controls were malfunctioning all over the place, so there was nothing for it but to shoot his way out. He braced himself for any debris that might put an end to his short-lived escape attempt in these close quarters, and fired the main forward torpedoes.
The deafening sound of the explosion was suddenly cut off in the vacuum of the space beyond, but the flash still blinded him for a few moments. Still in one piece, he said over and over again inside his head, and then took the shuttle outside, moving at a brisk pace away from the cruiser.
Looking at the ship from this distance, he wondered if he should’ve blown the cargo up, even if the reverberations would’ve been felt across the sector. He finally managed to steal his gaze away, from the mission that had upended his life, from the comrades he’d left behind, from the magnificent, terrifying spacecraft that could’ve changed the fate of the human race for all time.
He engaged the photonic propulsors and set the coordinates for HQ. He wouldn’t be able to just waltz in the front door after what he’d done, but maybe he could go unnoticed just long enough to reunite with her one last time. And then, perhaps, he could finally bring himself to do what he knew needed to be done.
He would finally kill himself.