Holo>>StarJumper 2612:Yes, ma’am.
He sounds reluctant.
“Say it like you mean it.” I’m panicking as the edges of a ship close in. “Holo! I need to hear you say it!”
Holo>>StarJumper 2612:I won’t! I won’t give up. Be safe. Watch your back.
Holo>>StarJumper 2612: Disconnected.
I close my eyes and sob once out of fear of what’s ahead. I’ve never interacted so closely with the enemy. They might find me right away. I might not make it off the ship. I don’t know. But I do as Holo said and think of what I want.
Kill Solcrue. Save Thruster. Get off this ship.
First things first…Kill Solcrue.
As the ship sets down, a map of the berserker loads in my helmet. A sealscreen ignites between us and space. I look past the red-hot engines to the floor, then demagnetize my gloves and boots to ease out and look around. Most of the hangar's occupants are at the far end, working on other ships. Sliding to the edge of the tail, I cautiously peer under it and find my pilot speaking with an officer near the hangar's exit.
“Are there any Titans aboard?” I ask the suit’s AI.
A dot appears in a distant room.
“Can you plot a path, avoiding high-traffic areas?”
It gives me a zigzag in green through the map.
Slinging myself over the edge, I ease my body down with surprising control. Holo wasn’t kidding about the suit’s assists. I just hope I don’t have to pee, or I’ll be pissing in my suit. There’s no way I’m getting out of this in time without help.
That’s what that funky smell is in here. I guess when you’re stuck in space for hours, there’s no other way to go.
I grimace as I collect the rifle from my back.Gross.
The navigation takes me through a side door and into a dark maintenance room, where I climb up a ladder to a narrow walkway around the perimeter. I follow it through two cargo bays, up another ladder, and to a security-coded door in an adjoining corridor. Thruster is supposedly in a cell on the other side, but I have no way in.
“I need another path.”
The program charts a route that circles through half of the ship and comes in behind where Thruster is likely at.
She was all that mattered. If everyone is gone, my only purpose is to destroy what I can.
I pause. “Can you identify the voice?”
A program lifts, code running in swirling layers that pulse with the recording.
Voice Type: Titan…Identification Processing.
This is my purpose now. My purpose. Kill them all.Every sentence is broken up like the thoughts are said through pain.Without her I— What’s the point? Nothing is worth anything. Except this. Come on! Why won’t you overheat? Damn Engines.
Voice ID: Thruster, Cosmic Piercer.
The idea that he’s trying to overheat himself and die, whatever the reason, cuts into me.Stop!
Thruster>>Local: Identify yourself, StarJumper.
Starjumper 2612>>Thruster: Why are you so hellbent on sacrificing yourself? Is it guilt? Over what? Being alive when the others aren’t? Because I think they’d want you to fight, to give these slithery bastards hell!
Thruster>>StarJumper 2612: You don’t understand. They have taken everything from me.
Starjumper 2612>>Thruster: Don’t I?
