Chapter 9 #2
I held my breath, straining to hear past the omnipresent groan of dying infrastructure. There, a rhythmic hissing sound. Air escaping. Hull breach nearby.
"This way," he said, changing direction. "Away from the breach."
We turned down a side corridor. More darkness, more debris. My shin connected with something solid and I bit back a curse, kept moving. No time to stop. No time for pain.
The evacuation station appeared in Zorn's scanner light—a recessed alcove with two escape pod hatches. One hung open, empty. Already launched.
But the second one showed green status indicators. Functional. Waiting.
"Inside," Zorn ordered, already working the manual release. The hatch opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure, revealing the cramped interior of a single-occupant escape pod. Maybe six feet in diameter. Barely enough room for one Zandovian.
Definitely not enough for two.
"You first," I said.
"Bea—"
"You're the Chief Medical Officer. Mothership needs you more than—"
"We're both getting in." His voice carried absolute certainty. No room for argument. "Now."
He was right. Standing here debating while the ship collapsed around us was suicide.
I climbed into the pod, pressed myself against the far curve of the hull.
Zorn followed, his larger frame filling the remaining space entirely.
We were pressed together, no room for modesty or personal space, his forest-green skin warm against mine.
He sealed the hatch. Initiated the launch sequence. The pod's systems came online, status indicators, life support, minimal propulsion.
"Brace yourself," he said.
The pod ejected with bone-jarring force, explosive bolts firing us away from the dying ship. Through the small viewport, I watched the refugee vessel crumble with sections breaking apart, atmosphere venting in frozen clouds, the whole structure folding in on itself like a paper sculpture on fire.
We'd made it out with maybe thirty seconds to spare.
The pod tumbled through space, its stabilization systems fighting to correct our trajectory. Debris fields surrounded us with twisted metal, frozen atmosphere, the wreckage of both the refugee ship and the raiders who'd attacked it.
Zorn worked the minimal controls, trying to establish communications. Static answered him. The same harsh interference that had cut us off before.
"Mothership knows we're missing," he said. "They'll be searching."
"In a debris field spanning dozens of kilometers, with radiation interference making scanning difficult." I stated the reality we both understood. "They might not find us in time."
The pod's life support indicators glowed steady green. For now. But escape pods weren't designed for extended occupancy. We had maybe twelve hours of air if we were lucky. Less if the systems were damaged.
We were alone in the dark, drifting through debris, hoping Mothership's sensors could distinguish our tiny pod from the thousands of other metal fragments spinning through the void.
Not exactly promising odds.
I should have been terrified. Should have been spiraling into panic about suffocation and slow death in the vacuum of space. But pressed against Zorn in the cramped darkness, feeling his warmth and solid presence, I felt something else entirely.
Clarity.
The kind that comes when you think you might die. When all the noise and distraction and carefully maintained walls suddenly seem pointless. When you realize that some truths are too important to leave unspoken.
"Zorn."
"Don't." His voice was tight. "Don't say goodbye. We're not dead yet."
"I know." I shifted slightly, trying to see his face in the dim console light. "That's not what I wanted to say."
"Then what?"
I took a breath. Let it out. Felt my heart hammering against my ribs for reasons that had nothing to do with our desperate situation.
"I'm in love with you," I said. Simple. Direct.
True. "I think I have been for months. I was just too afraid to admit it.
Too afraid that caring about someone again meant I'd lose them.
That letting myself be happy meant I was betraying everyone who died.
" The words came faster now, years of suppressed emotion finally breaking free.
"But if these are my last moments, I don't want to die with that unsaid.
I love you. However much time we have left, I want you to know that. "
Silence. Just the hum of life support and the faint sounds of debris pinging off our hull.
Then Zorn shifted, his large hands finding my face in the darkness. Gentle despite their size, cradling my jaw with infinite care.
"I know," he said softly. "I feel it too."
His golden-brown eyes reflected the console lights, warm and certain and completely focused on me.
"I love you too," he continued. "From the moment you collapsed in my arms during that outbreak response and trusted me to care for you.
From watching you work yourself to exhaustion because saving others matters more to you than your own wellbeing.
From every session where you fought your way toward healing even though it terrified you.
" His thumb brushed across my cheekbone.
"You're brilliant and dedicated and so goddamn stubborn, and I would face any disaster, any danger, as long as I could face it with you. "
I kissed him.
Fierce and desperate, believing it might be our last. Pouring months of suppressed feeling into that contact, all the longing and fear and need I'd been too controlled to express. His arms came around me, pulling me closer in the cramped space, and I felt him respond with equal intensity.
We parted, breathing hard, foreheads pressed together in the darkness.
"We're not dead yet," I whispered against his lips.
"No," he agreed. "We're not."
His hands were already moving, pulling up the pod's diagnostic interface. My hands joined his, checking life support parameters, running system diagnostics. Neither of us gave up. Neither of us accepted defeat.
Because maybe we'd die out here, drifting through debris until our air ran out. But maybe we wouldn't. Maybe Mothership would find us. Maybe this wasn't our ending.
And even if it was, even if these were our last hours, at least we'd face them together.
At least I'd said what mattered most.
The pod's distress beacon blinked steadily in the darkness. Sending out its automated signal, hoping someone was listening. Hoping rescue would come.
"Life support stable," Zorn said, reviewing the readings. "Twelve hours at current consumption rates. More if we reduce activity and enter minimal-function mode."
"Minimal-function means reduced consciousness. Medically induced near-hibernation." I checked the pod's medical systems. "The protocols are there, but it's designed for single occupancy. Splitting resources between two people—"
"Six hours each instead of twelve hours together." His expression was grim. "Not ideal, but it extends our window for rescue."
Math was simple. Cruel, but simple. If we stayed conscious, we had twelve hours before the air ran out. If we used the hibernation protocols, we could stretch that to maybe eighteen hours total, but only six hours where both of us were functional.
Which strategy gave Mothership the best chance of finding us?
Before I could voice the question, the pod lurched violently. Something massive passed close by, close enough that I felt the gravitational tug through the hull. Debris. A large piece of the refugee ship's superstructure, tumbling past us.
Too close. If that had hit us—
"We're still in the dense part of the debris field," Zorn said, checking our position. "High collision risk. The pod's maneuvering thrusters have minimal fuel, but I can try to navigate us toward clearer space."
"Use the fuel. Getting pulverized by debris doesn't help anyone."
He worked the controls, firing thrusters in carefully calculated bursts. Each one precious, each one bringing us incrementally closer to safety or further from rescue, impossible to know which.
I watched the debris field through the viewport—twisted metal catching starlight, the frozen corpse of a vessel that had carried hundreds of refugees toward what they'd hoped would be a sanctuary. All those lives, all those stories, reduced to wreckage spinning through the void.
Would have been their tomb. Nearly was ours.
"I was going to wait," Zorn said suddenly.
"Before telling you. Give you more time to heal, to process.
Make sure it was real and not just trauma bonding or crisis-induced attachment.
" He glanced at me, his expression vulnerable in a way I'd never seen.
"But facing death puts things in perspective. "
"Yeah." I leaned against him, letting myself accept the comfort of his presence. "It really does."
"No regrets?"
I thought about that. About the life I'd left behind on Earth, the career I'd built, the person I'd been before the Liberty disaster. About the trauma and displacement and impossible adjustments I'd faced on Mothership.
About finding connection with someone who saw past my walls, who understood that healing was work and not weakness, who loved me anyway.
"No," I said. "No regrets."
The pod continued its slow tumble through space. The distress beacon continued its automated signal. And we held each other in the cramped darkness, waiting for rescue or death, uncertain which would come first.
But no longer uncertain about what mattered most.
The life support console beeped. Warning notification. Something had changed in our status.
Zorn checked the readings, his markings flickering with sudden tension. "Hull micro-fracture. Port side. Not critical yet, but it's spreading. Probably impact damage from debris."
"How long?"
"Four hours until it compromises seal integrity. Six hours until catastrophic failure." He pulled up repair protocols. "I can seal it from the inside if we have the right materials—"