I looked at him then—finally. “I need her,” I said. “I need her to be okay. I need her with me.”
He shook his head once, like he could physically dislodge the idea from my head. “You’re not authorized for descent. They’re looking for you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll get yourself killed.”
“So be it.”
An alarm bellowed—urgent and attached to a full system lockdown. Red lights strobed around us like a closing fist. He looked past me again, at the shuttle I’d drifted toward, at the path I’d already decided on. Then he swore under his breath, reached into his suit, and pulled out his own badge.
He shoved it into my hand, hard enough that I almost dropped it. “Take this,” he said. “Go get her.”
I stared at it. Then at him. “You’re just—letting me go?”
“I’m not letting you do anything. I’m trying not to lose you.”
The alarm shrieked higher.
He grabbed me then—awkward in the arksuits with their rigid plating and seals—but it was still a hug. Even if it was clumsy and desperate. When he pulled back, his hand stayed on my shoulder a second longer than it should’ve.
“I love you,” he said.
I didn’t respond right away, neither of us really knew how. But I could feel the truth of it.
“You’re a better man than I ever was.”
The station lights went on full alarm as he helped me climb the ship he had been loading for his own mission.
“You’ll have to reroute the autopilot, it’s on course for Eden-9. It will automate your flight back, but Jude—you should know…”
I glanced back at him through the open hatch.
“If you come back—if you make it back, you’ll be arrested.”
“At least Solace will be alive,” I responded, my words echoing inside my own suit.
The station alarms were screaming by the time I pulled the shuttle free from its berth into the open, black of space, and the void waiting beyond the docking rails. I eased the ship forward, the thrusters kicking softly as the shuttle drifted toward the exit.
Behind me, the inner hatch burst open. Commander Garcia shot through the doorway on a tether line, boots barely touching the deck as the artificial gravity struggledto keep up with the decompression alarms. An ensign burst out from behind the Commander to grab my dad.
Garcia’s voice cut through the comm system a second later. “Captain Ransom, return to the bay immediately.”
I glanced through the shuttle’s side window where station lights strobed red across the hull. The ship drifted another meter closer to open space. He looked pissed.
“Captain Ransom,” Garcia’s voice snapped again through the comm. “Return to the bay. That is a direct order.”
I pushed the throttle forward as I gave him a salute through the dark glass. The shuttle slipped free of the station’s ring and dropped into the open dark.
“Captain, you will be stripped of your rank—“ His voice cut out as the craft slipped beyond the communication range of the bay. Though I had no doubt he’d already be running for the control room to scream at me some more.
They could strip my rank and title. Remove my privileges. Lock my lab. Take SOL from my custody and shove me into the most menial job in the Order. Hell, they could line me up against a wall and end it themselves. I didn’t give a fuck. Nothing—and I mean nothing—would change the fact that I was not leaving her down there.
Space was as terrifying as it was breathtaking. Endless obsidian stretched before me, and I’d found it to be a constant reminder of how small my life really was in the grand scheme of things.
I would never forget the first time I broke through the stratosphere, almost a decade ago. The short mission to the International Space Station felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If I’d known then that I’d spend the rest of my life up here, I probably would have said no thanks, quit the military altogether, and become a farmer or something I’d found equally boring. Anything that kept my feet on the ground.
Unfortunately, the ground was coming up a lot faster than I would have liked. Earth filled the viewport now, swollen and scarred beneath a blanket of dark clouds. Even from orbit the damage was visible—smears of soot drifting across the atmosphere like bruises that had never quite healed. The shuttle rattled as the autopilot adjusted our trajectory.
