Chapter 23
Carmen rubbed her shoulder, trying to assuage the dull, insistent throb, despite the pain providing a grounding counterpoint to the numb horror spreading through her chest. The emergency lights in the mess hall cast long, skeletal shadows across the faces of the crew, painting them in stark relief: Sark, hunched over, his orange skin ashen, webbed fingers twisting together; Norvik, unnervingly still, his blue face impassive but his black eyes fixed on a point beyond the table, calculating odds only he could see; Letitia, leaning against the bulkhead near the hatch, arms crossed, her dark eyes burning with a fury that seemed directed inward as much as outward.
Zed’s boxy chassis stood nearby, one of his telescopic arms hanging loose, sparking intermittently from a damaged joint.
On the comm screen mounted on the bulkhead, Mila’s image was a study in calm focus, her green eyes watchful, her furred ears pricked forward.
The silence wasn’t quiet. Outside, the void roared, swallowing the groans of the wounded Antilles. A thousand light-years. Nowhere. Nothing. The words echoed in the hollow space between her ears, a death sentence whispered with lips of guilt.
Sark broke first. A choked sound escaped him, halfway between a gasp and a sob.
He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
The raw, unvarnished terror of it set fire to Carmen’s nerves.
She understood it. Felt it clawing at the edges of her own control.
But she couldn’t afford it. Not now. Not ever.
“Enough, Sark,” Carmen said, her voice slicing through the heavy quiet. She forced her tone to stay low, flat. “Panic gets us spaced faster. Save it.”
He lifted his head, tears glistening on his orange cheeks.
“Save it for what, Captain?” His voice trembled. “The drive’s scrap. We’ve got, what? Weeks of air? Months? Just floating here until we …” He trailed off, unable to voice the slow, suffocating end.
“Until we starve. Or freeze. Or the microfractures finally give way and we get to experience vacuum up close and personal,” Letitia finished for him, her voice tight with a brittle anger. She pushed off the bulkhead, pacing a tight circle. “Great options. Real inspiring pep talk, Captain.”
“Pep talks are for winners, Letitia,” Carmen replied, leaning forward, resting her forearms on the cold metal table. The throb in her shoulder intensified. “We’re not winning. We’re surviving. So, let’s figure out how the hell we do that for longer than next week.”
She turned her focus to the impassive blue face across the table.
“Norvik, options. Real ones. What have we got?”
“Survival probability under current conditions is negligible, Captain,” he stated, his voice devoid of inflection.
“Without propulsion, we cannot seek resources. Life support is stable, but finite. Food and water reserves: approximately sixty-three standard days at rationed levels. Air recycling: optimal for now, but contingent on power stability, which is currently fluctuating at dangerous levels due to the drive-core breach.”
He paused, his black eyes meeting Carmen’s.
“The most probable outcome is gradual systems failure leading to catastrophic environmental collapse. Timeframe: weeks to months. Suffocation or freezing would be the terminal events.”
A fresh wave of despair threatened to swamp Carmen. Weeks. Months. Trapped in this dying tin can, watching the lights flicker, the air grow thin, the cold seep in. Listening to each other go mad. Sark made another small, wounded noise.
“So that’s it?” Letitia demanded, stopping her pacing to glare at Norvik. “We just sit here and wait to die? You’re just gonna lay out the fucking autopsy report?”
“I am presenting the available data, Letitia,” Norvik replied calmly. “Emotional outbursts do not alter the parameters of our situation.”
“Emotional outbursts?” Letitia’s voice rose. “You cold-blooded bastard! We’re talking about dying! Slowly! Horribly!”
“Yes,” he said. “The process will be unpleasant.”
Carmen slammed her good hand down on the table. The sharp thud silenced the brewing argument.
“Shut it! Both of you!” She took a deep breath. “We need data. Zed, damage assessment. Specifically, the jump-drive. Is it total scrap? Or is there anything left we can salvage? Any chance of a local-space jump? Even a short hop? Anything?”
Zed’s damaged arm sparked again. His voice, when it came, was its usual flat monotone, but the flickering lights on his chassis suggested strain.
“Analysis of the jump-drive core indicates catastrophic cascade failure. Primary initiator matrix survived the incident but sustained cracks over 63.07% of its surface. Secondary containment coils are fused beyond repair. The theta-wave emitter assembly is fractured. Probability of restoring FTL capability with available resources and current shipboard facilities: 0.0007%.”
Carmen closed her eyes for a second, the finality hitting her with the force of a plasma cannon. No escape. No running. Just the slow, inevitable drift into darkness.
“However,” Zed continued, “sub-light propulsion remains operational. While the hyperspace transition was forcibly terminated, the sub-light engines themselves sustained only secondary damage from the energy backwash. Initial diagnostics suggest repairable faults in the primary plasma conduits and the navigational thrusters’ control relays to restore reliability. ”
“Zed,” Letitia said, her voice barely controlled, “the sub-light thrusters don’t mean shit. We’re a thousand lightyears from anywhere. Even if we get moving again, we’ll all be dead for centuries before Antilles gets some place. Even you can’t live long that long.”
“Affirmative,” he replied. “I was providing the data Captain Díaz requested. Your assessment of our demise long before reaching any destination at sub-light speeds is accurate.”
Carmen swallowed hard. She needed to give her people some sense of hope, something to keep them all from melting down like the jump-drive had into useless slag.
“How long to repair if we had the parts?” she asked.
“Repair timeframe is contingent on resource availability and workforce allocation,” Zed stated.
“Estimated minimum repair duration for FTL capability restoration to 30% nominal efficiency: 117.3 standard hours. Required components include high-temp superconducting cabling, redundant plasma-flow regulators, and sealant for the cracks across the primary initiator matrix and the theta-wave emitter.”
“We should have those spares,” Carmen said.
“Negative,” Zed said. “Present inventory of plasma-flow regulators is only sufficient to replace 75% of the damaged ones. Available cabling is incompatible with the jump-drive. It would require specialized wiring that can withstand temperatures 154oC higher than available spares.”
“Mierda!”
The curse ripped from Carmen, harsh and raw. She shot up from her seat like she’d been launched. She paced away, running her good hand through her hair, the kinks tangling around her fingers.
No spares. No way to fix the jump-drive. Back to waiting for the air to run out.
“So … we can’t fix it for sure, then,” Sark whispered.
“Not without parts we don’t have,” Letitia confirmed.
Carmen leaned heavily against the bulkhead. The cold metal seeped through her thin shirt. She felt drained. Hollow. The weight of their doom pressed down, crushing. She looked at Norvik, a last, desperate gambit.
“Collective databases?” she prodded. “Any chance there’s an uncharted rock, a rogue planetoid, anything within sub-light range we could limp towards? Even if it takes years?”
Norvik didn’t need to consult his pad. He shook his head, a minute movement.
“Collective long-range survey data for this specific vector is absent. Probability of encountering a resource-bearing celestial body within feasible sub-light travel time, even assuming engines remain operational is less than point-oh-one percent.”
The final nail. Carmen closed her eyes. The silence returned, heavier than before, thick with the taste of despair.
Sark slumped forward, resting his forehead on the table. Letitia stopped pacing, leaning her head back against the bulkhead, staring at the ceiling as if it could offer answers. Norvik simply waited, his expression unreadable. Zed’s damaged arm sparked again, a small, futile protest in the gloom.
“Captain,” Mila said, her voice, still soft, cutting through the suffocating quiet like a laser.
Carmen opened her eyes. Mila was looking directly at the camera, her gaze steady, focused. That intense, analytical look was back. The one Carmen had seen in Engineering when she diagnosed the thruster failure. The one that had saved them from the pirates.
“Yes, Mila?”
Carmen kept her voice level, wary. Hope was a dangerous thing out here.
“The parts Zed listed,” Mila said, her clawed fingers tracing invisible schematics on the surface before her. “The high-temp superconducting cabling and the additional plasma-flow regulators are not entirely absent from the ship.”
Carmen straightened, pushing off the bulkhead.
“Where? Spares locker Gamma is empty. We checked Beta and Delta after the thruster job. Nothing.”
Mila’s green eyes met Carmen’s through the screen. There was no triumph in them, only calm certainty, and perhaps a flicker of reluctance.
“They are not in the spares lockers, Captain. They are installed in active systems.”
Carmen frowned.
“Active systems?” she asked. “Which systems?”
A cold prickle of dread started down her spine. She knew. Some part of her knew before Mila even spoke the words.
Mila took a breath, her chest rising slightly. Her gaze didn’t waver.