Chapter 1 #2
I tried to remember. Yesterday? The day before? Time had gotten fuzzy somewhere between Bea's bonding ceremony and watching Dana and Er'dox dance together with the kind of easy joy that made my chest ache, and Jalina curled against Zor'go's side like she'd found her exact place in the universe.
"Recently enough," I said.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer you're getting." I sidestepped him, or tried to. He moved with predatory grace, staying exactly in my way without touching me. "Vaxon. Please."
The word came out smaller than I'd intended. Vulnerable. A crack in the armor I kept so carefully maintained.
His expression softened microscopically. "Your quarters. Four hours of sleep. Medical-monitored if necessary."
"I'm not going to Medical. Bea's probably there and I can't—" I stopped, horrified that I'd said that out loud. "I have work."
"Work will still exist after you sleep." He stepped aside finally, but his eyes stayed locked on mine. "I'm assigning an engineering team to handle Section Nine diagnostics. You're off duty until 0800 hours."
"You can't do that."
"I can, and I am. Captain Tor'van approved emergency override authority for crew health after the Veridian outbreak. You're exhibiting signs of chronic exhaustion that constitute a safety risk." His jaw tightened again. "Don't make me enforce this officially."
The threat hung between us. Official enforcement would mean medical review, mandatory rest periods, possibly suspension from active duty. I couldn't afford that. Work was the only thing keeping me functional right now.
"Four hours," I agreed, hating how defeated I sounded. "Then I'm back on schedule."
"We'll discuss your schedule at 0800 hours." He turned slightly, giving me space to pass. "Sleep, Elena. Please."
The use of my first name, delivered in that impossibly deep voice with something that sounded almost like concern, made my throat tight.
I nodded once and walked past him, maintaining careful distance, trying not to notice how much space he took up or how his presence made me feel simultaneously monitored and protected.
I made it to my quarters in fifteen minutes, keyed the door open, and stopped dead just inside the threshold.
Empty. The space was completely, absolutely empty.
Of course it was. Dana had moved into Er'dox's quarters three months ago.
Jalina had moved in with Zor'go last month.
Bea had officially relocated to Zorn's space just last week.
The quarters I'd shared with my three best friends for the past year, the space where we'd laughed and cried and planned futures we barely believed in, now contained exactly one human.
Me.
The last one standing. The only one unbonded. The friend who was too damaged, too scattered, too fundamentally broken to find what the others had found.
I stripped off my grease-stained jumpsuit, showered in the cramped bathroom, and pulled on sleep clothes that had been clean three days ago.
The quarters felt massive without Dana's engineering equipment scattered across every surface, without Jalina's architectural sketches covering the walls, without Bea's medical texts stacked in precise towers.
Just me and the silence and the crushing weight of being functional enough to maintain Mothership's power systems but too fucked up to maintain basic human connections.
I should sleep. Vaxon was right about that, at least. I was running on fumes and borrowed time, and sooner or later my body would fail in ways that couldn't be fixed with stimulants and determination.
But sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant memories, and memories meant the wormhole tearing Liberty apart while I screamed into the comm system trying to coordinate evacuation procedures nobody could hear.
Meant Will Peters shoving me toward an escape pod while alarms shrieked and the ship buckled around us.
Meant watching the pod seals engage and feeling simultaneously grateful and guilty for surviving.
I crossed to my desk instead. Pulled up my personal terminal. Keyed in access codes that technically violated about fifteen different security protocols.
The scanning program I'd built three months ago opened smoothly.
Illegal as hell, but elegant in its simplicity.
I'd modified Mothership's long-range sensors to filter for specific energy signatures with the unique electromagnetic pattern Liberty's engines produced, the distinctive power output of their emergency systems.
For three months, the program had found nothing. Just cosmic background noise and the usual debris field signatures that littered this sector of space.
Tonight, the screen showed something different.
A blip. Faint, barely distinguishable from background radiation, but unmistakable if you knew what you were looking for. The exact energy signature of Liberty's emergency beacon systems, distorted by distance but definitely present.
My hands shook as I pulled up the coordinates. Not far, relatively speaking, in astronomical terms. Two days at warp speed, maybe three. In a debris field the Mothership had skirted last week during routine patrol, classified as contested space due to raider activity.
I ran the analysis three times, checking my calculations, verifying the signature against Liberty's technical specifications I'd memorized during my engineering training. Each test came back positive.
Liberty wreckage. Possibly a derelict section. Maybe—
My mind refused to complete the thought because hoping was more dangerous than any power conduit I'd crawled through tonight.
I should report this. Should take my findings to Captain Tor'van immediately, request official investigation, do everything by the book because that's what responsible crew members did.
But my fingers hovered over the comm controls without pressing anything.
What if it was nothing? What if I'd spent three months building an illegal scanning program for a false positive? What if I dragged the Captain and a team into contested space for wreckage that contained only ghosts?
What if there were survivors and I'd waited three months to find them? What if people had been drifting in that debris field, trapped in failing life support, while I'd been eating in Mothership's dining hall and pretending I had the right to be happy?
The guilt was familiar, comfortable in its way. I'd worn it for so long it felt like part of my personality now with the weight of surviving when others didn't, of building a new life while people I'd worked beside might still be dying in the dark.
I stared at the coordinates. The energy signature pulsed weakly on my display, a heartbeat from across the void.
I needed to see it first. Needed to verify what was there before bringing others into it. Needed to know if anyone else made it out, if I wasn't the only failure from Section Seven.
The thought crystallized into a decision. I'd gather more data over the next few days. Run deeper scans. Build an irrefutable case for investigation. Then I'd present everything to Captain Tor'van and deal with the consequences of my illegal sensor modifications.
But first, I needed to know. I needed to see for myself what remained of Liberty. I needed to face whatever answers waited in that debris field, even if those answers broke what little was left of me.
I saved the coordinates to an encrypted file, locked my terminal, and finally collapsed into bed.
Sleep came eventually, bringing dreams of wreckage and guilt and Will Peters's voice saying the last words I'd heard from him before the pod sealed: "Elena, go. That's an order."
I'd followed orders that day. Survived when maybe I shouldn't have. And now, a year later, I was still following orders with Vaxon's order to sleep, Captain Tor'van's order to work, Bea's unspoken order to stay functional despite slowly destroying myself from the inside out.
But the coordinates burned in my mind, a secret I couldn't share, a hope I couldn't admit, a mission I couldn't abandon.
I need to know if anyone else made it. If I'm not the only failure.
The thought followed me down into restless sleep, where alarms screamed and Will pushed me toward safety and I survived while others didn't, again and again and again.