Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The remaining droids on the station, a near skeleton crew compared to when I arrived, have somehow managed to remove Quldo's body before we even leave Mekkra's bedroom.
"Where do you think they put him?" I watch Starcroft scrubbing the trail of slime and guts from the floor where I shot the asshole dead.
"Probably jettisoned out the waste chute with the rest of the trash," Mekkra says with a snarl.
"As he deserves," I mutter as Mekkra grabs my hand and leads me down the hall. "Where are we going?"
"I wanted to show you this before—" he says as we round the corner into the wing of the station that he's long left abandoned. He frowns as he runs his fingers along the damage from Quldo's attack in the hall, but doesn't stop until we're in the room that used to hold his brother's bones.
The formerly dark and spooky air that overwhelmed this room is gone. It's clean and relatively unscathed from the battle. In the center of the room lies a pod not dissimilar from the one I arrived in.
The transparent capsule cradles his brother's bones, and a living arrangement has grown up all around it. Leaves and tendrils emerge from the long-dead alien's chest, spiraling around his ribs.
It's like his grief allowed them to take root.
The plants don't crush or displace anything but look almost as if they're cradling the bones inside. One larger bloom has opened behind the skull, its wide petals framing it like a halo.
The entire ecosystem exists within the sealed capsule, self-contained and self-sustaining. There's no soil I can see, or a source of water. Just bone and bloom and death becoming something alive again.
"It's beautiful," I breathe. "Beautiful and a little spooky, but in like a Catholic relic way?" I cock my head and wonder what saint Mekkra's dead brother might be most similar to before shaking the thought away. "How did you get those plants to grow so quickly?"
He smiles. "I've been alone, except for the vines and blooms for a long time. We understand each other. Even when I slipped into the dark places of my mind, they were there."
Mekkra, big scary alien, is a proud plant dad.
I catch him from the corner of my eye, looking at the bones of his sibling with a kind of profound grief that I don't think ever really goes away. Like the vines, it just kind of takes root in your soul. Always there, but slowly just becoming part of the scenery.
"Are you okay?" I wrap my arm around his back.
"With you here, always." He pauses, his gaze drifting downward as his expression softens, a quiet heaviness settling in. "But I think now that my mind is clearer, this hurts more than it did before. Just being here and knowing what this station was built on…"
"So let's leave."
Mekkra blinks rapidly, looking between me and his brother’s grave a few times before finally responding.
"Leave?"
"Yeah, let's fucking blow this Popsicle stand." I almost laugh at how hard his face screws up in confusion of the phrase.
"But the trade route…" It's clear that just leaving this place, what feels like a prison he's built for power, has never occurred to him.
"What good has it brought you?"
His expression softens. "It brought me you."
"Okay fair, but like, aren't we both filthy rich? How many more credits could we need? What's keeping us from having our own adventures somewhere out there in the great wide expanse of space just outside the pod bay doors?" My arms fly up in a big gesture.
"I don't think I could leave the station—"
He catches my face dropping.
"—Intact. I wouldn't want to leave a resource for someone even worse than me to control the trade route."
Now I'm the one who is confused.
"So, what do we do with it? Tow it behind my ship like some giant fifth wheel?"
"The station has no wheels, let alone five. What I'm discussing is a bit more destructive."
A slow smile creeps up on his face, and he turns back to the grim terrarium.
"I think Gessik would like the idea," he says conspiratorially.
"What idea?"
"To be exploded into stardust."
Mekkra wants to blow up the damn space station.
"Hell yes," I whisper into his side.
We shuttle Starcroft and the few remaining droids to my ship. Mekkra carried over some of the plants in cloches, especially the more useful and slippery ones. The ship is already loaded with my dowry of weapons and armor and has a fully stocked and droid-attended mess hall.
Mekkra lugs the last of my extensive wardrobe aboard and shoves the oversized gown into the brig, the only spot large enough to hold my silly dresses.
"We really don't need all those, seems like a waste of space," I grumble as I struggle to keep the fabric out of the way of the cell door.
"Nothing for you is ever a waste of space," he tells me simply. Like it doesn't heal something long broken inside me to hear.
I'm not given much time to soak in the feeling though, as Mekkra's got other plans. He grabs my hand and leads me back to the brig.
"Starcroft's almost done laying the charges, I've said my goodbye to Gessik, and there's nothing left to pack." He lingers, his voice catching the edges of the room like he's searching for one final thing to do.
I step into the silence and reach for him.
"It's okay for this to be bittersweet." I take his hand, my fingers slipping neatly between his claws.
His grip tightens in my own, jaw flexing. "It's…long overdue."
He sighs, the station a weight that's seemingly been lifted off him.
"What do you think will happen with the trade route after we leave?" I ask.
Mekkra doesn't answer me right away. Instead, he gently guides me into one of the twin captain’s chairs facing the windshield and the station in front of us. Tiny bits of stars swirl in the view not obscured by our former home’s rusted metal exterior.
“I don’t care,” he says at last, voice low, certain. “We’ll be long gone.” He leans in, pressing a kiss to my forehead—soft, almost reverent. “My home is you, Mae. Wherever you go, I follow.”
There’s a beat. Then, quieter—darker: “And I’ll destroy anyone who gets in your way.”
Ah, yes there's some of that warlord I first met.
Before I can respond, Starcroft glides in, utterly unconcerned with the gravity of the moment, and docks himself neatly between us.
“Explosives have been laid per your instructions,” he announces. “I would advise putting approximately seven clicks between us and the station to avoid catastrophic damage.”
He swivels his head toward me, optics bright—unmistakable robotic joy. “This is so exciting!”
Mekkra exhales through his nose and turns back to the controls. The ship hums to life under his hands, thrusters whispering as we ease backward into the void. The station shrinks in the viewport—once imposing, now just a drifting carcass of metal and memory.
Farther.
Reversing the ship into space.
Too far, it almost feels like.
Mekkra’s finger hovers over the trigger.
For a moment—just one—it trembles. Like he might stop it. Like he might turn us around.
Then he inhales, slow and steady, and presses the button.
Silence answers first.
Then—
Light.
A blinding, blooming flare rips through the station’s spine, splitting it open from the inside out.
Fire doesn’t burn in space, but the explosion glows—a violent, radiant blossom of gold and white, shards of debris scattering like dying stars.
The shockwave rolls outward in a silent scream, shaking our ship as it hits us.
The station fractures—collapses—becomes nothing.
Just a memory. A blip.
Mekkra doesn’t look away.
Neither do I.
"Stardust," I say in awe.
The empty space in front of us is a deep and inky pool of possibilities.
"Where to, mate?"
And then, my mind is just as empty as our view. I have no answer.
"I…I don't know, any suggestions, mate?" I turn my head toward him.
He smiles like he already knows I'll like what he suggests, like it's something he's been holding in his pocket, waiting to show me.
“I’ve been thinking…” He eases back in his chair, eyes flicking once to the stars, then back to me. “About your horse.”
My breath catches, sharp and sudden.
“There’s a planet not far from here. The animals aren’t exactly what I think horses are—but they run, they herd, they almost even look the same.” A pause. Softer, now. “The overseer of the herd sector owes me a favor. I could persuade him to grant me a parcel of land. A small claim. A few animals.”
Space horses.
"Yes, immediately, yes." I feel like I'm about to explode.
He turns back to the console, fingers moving with quiet precision as he feeds in the coordinates to what I can only assume is the space ranch of my dreams. The ship hums, reorienting, choosing a direction out of infinity.
“Thank you,” he says, so soft it barely exists. Not quite meant for me. Not quite not.
I don’t touch it. Don’t question it. I understand it too well.
Outside, the last dust of the station drifts and disappears into the dark. Behind us—everything we lost. Everything we survived.
Ahead—open space, horses, and a life neither of us was ever meant to have.