Location: Unknown

Date: Unknown

The last thing Gudmunder Singh remembered was the instruction to take deep, deliberate breaths as the bleach-smelling gasses filled the small pod. For the flash of an instant, he felt like everything was going wrong. His heart raced in a panic as the strong, poisonous smell grew more potent. He wanted to scream, but nothing worked.

The first thing he noticed was the silent flashing of red lights from outside of his stasis pod. Heart still pounding from his flash of fear a moment earlier, he twisted frantically trying to get away from the cloying, acrid fumes as the pod hissed open and found himself flying through the eery darkness beyond.

Where’s the gravity? He thought, panicked. The flashing alarm lights were not helping, throwing strange contrasting shadows over the walls while the cacophony of alarm was hammering at his frontal lobes. In the pauses between sirens, the ship’s automated system repeated a warning in a low, calm voice.

“Warning, critical systems failure,” siren, “Warning, critical systems failure.”

Naked and floating half a meter off the ground Singh groaned. The ship was dying.

He looked around to get his bearings. The rest of the cryo-pods stood in two rows, stacked on top of each other against the wall. The opaque steel doors of the pods remained ominously closed. Pushing himself towards the nearest one he examined it’s stasis panel. The small light stared back at him, slowly pulsing red.

They all were.

Singh’s mind was racing with the numbers. One in twenty had opened in this room and the alarm continued to echo mournfully throughout the ship. He could hear no movement in the hallways outside. That meant one in two hundred had opened on this deck, a survival rate of 0.5 percent. As that figure floated across his mind, Singh gave up trying to apply the multiplier to the fleet. The Valkyrie was a military ship, but even their flagship Deyga’s numbers paled in comparison to the habitation ships.

The fleet had departed with ten million souls. If Singh’s reasoning was correct, the survivors were simply a rounding error.

“We need to get to the bridge,” Singh said, shoving his arm through his olive green navy jacket. He strapped on a pair of magboots and was finally fixed to the deck. “How many pods are alive?”

A small group, a mixture of marines and a few other hands had gathered around him. A slight woman with close-cropped hair, whom he recognised as Lieutenant Furia of the engineers, spoke up.

“I don’t know, sir,” she said, quietly. “I’ve got two of my people going through the ship’s systems. The critical warning is not specific, but so far we’ve identified complete decompression in decks twelve through fifteen as well as two through five.” Singh’s stomach dropped. They were on deck six. “My men haven’t been able to get to the drives yet, but with the structural damage to the rest of the ship, I would estimate they have also sustained heavy damage.”

“We will need to contact the rest of the fleet,” Singh said. “For that we need the bridge.” He turned to the marines who were all dressed in pressurised combat gear. “Sergeant, I need you to take your men and recon the ship. I need to know if there are other survivors in the lower decks.”

“Sir,” the marine sergeant snapped a salute and began issuing orders to his troops. All three of them.

The bridge was only a short walk, but the ship had been transformed in the time between going to sleep and waking. It suddenly occurred to him, as his eyes tracked the debris floating peacefully throughout the hallways, that he didn’t know how much time had actually passed. It could have been five days. It could easily have been five thousand years. The ship’s network was down, and where the date and time would normally be displayed on his hand terminal there were only two dashed lines.

The walls were scarred and marked where the debris had hit, and Singh was worried about what it meant for the environmental systems. The winged-helmet emblem of the ship followed throughout the halls, but had been scratched and worn by debris scraping through the ship.

They arrived to find the bridge deserted, as Singh had expected. The red light accentuated the shadows between the terminals that lined the walls of the small, rectangular room. He ticked them off in his head, navigation, comms, engineering. The captain’s chair was easily identifiable, a high-backed electronic throne with its own terminals folded away into the arms and with a commanding view from its own platform raised slightly above the others.

The forward wall was dominated by the main viewscreen, dark and ominous in the gloom.

Singh clomped over to the captain’s chair and pulled one of the terminals from its housing. The small pad whirred slowly to life and he breathed a sigh of relief. His relief turned to something approximating joy when the tablet connected the ship’s bridge network. He still had no idea how long they had been asleep, but he now had access to the bridge’s systems.

“Lieutenant, staff the Engineering console. I need to get a picture of what’s happening with the ship.” He pressed a few buttons on the interface and re-routed comms to the captain’s chair. He saw that ship-to-ship comms were down, but the intranet was still working. “Sergeant Gryzik, report,” Singh ordered as he found the marine’s name in the ship’s systems.

Pause. Singh was about to repeat himself when the sergeant’s voice came through on the bridge. It was faint and crackling with static, but the connection was there.

“Sir, we have found no survivors, but we have made rendezvous with the engineers. The hull has sustained critical damage in several decks. I’m patching through Crewman Barres.” Another voice joined the crackle with a burst of harsh feedback.

“Sir, Crewman Kishi and I have assessed the damage from images taken by Sergeant Gryzik. We believe it is consistent with a meteorite strike of some kind.”

“Did it hit the pods, or the gas supply?”

“Negative, the pod supply is dispersed with redundancy. We believe we’re looking at a catastrophic pod malfunction that preceded our collision with several stellar objects.” Singh took a moment to digest the new information.

“What’s our drive status?”

“Unknown sir, we would really need to get in there ourselves.”

“Understood, stand-by for orders.” Singh turned to Furia.

“I’ve been chasing down the logs for the stasis pods.” Singh nodded for her to continue. “The pods are all working.”

“Excuse me?” Singh rose out of the captain’s chair and stomped his way over to the terminal; the strange way of walking was already making his calves ache.

“Of all the ship systems, the stasis pods are the only ones showing green. Even those in hard-vacuum have gone into lockdown but are still functioning properly.”

“If the pods are still functioning, then…”

“Then something else has killed the crew.” Furia finished for him.

“Okay,” Singh pushed the pods out of his mind. They had more immediate problems. “The drive is out, and we’re running on battery power.”

“We have four hours left.” Furia pointed out.

“So, unless we get the drive up, we’re dead in here.”

“Engineering is currently in vacuum, but if we can get my people into pressure suits, they can try and assess the damage to the drive, at least.”

“Sergeant,” Singh opened a line to Gryzik when he got back to the chair. “I need you to find a pressure suit for Crewmen Barres and Kishi, there should be some in Engineering. We have four hours to get the drive back online.”

“The main drives are all functional,” Barres reported from the engine room. “They’re in vacuum, but that’s not so much of a problem.” The engineer didn’t sound as happy as Singh would have hoped. “The problem is, without the fusion core we have no way of powering them up.”

“And what’s wrong with the core?” Singh replied.

“We’ve had a complete containment breach. The reactor was powered down while we were all in stasis. I’m not sure we can even start it, but if we did, we’d be dead!”

            Singh wanted to hold his head in despair or pull his non-existant hair from frustration. He suppressed the urge and put his mind to working on solutions.

            “There’s one more problem,” Barres began tentatively.

            “Go ahead, Crewman.” Singh’s voice was sharp.

            “Coolant from the core has been leaking into the life support systems. CO2 for the most part but the Argon is also beginning to exceed safe levels.” Singh looked at the floor in horror as he imagine the invisible killer coiling around his legs, displacing their air.

            “How long until we reach lethal levels?”

            “Our best guess is we might have a few hours before pressure suits are necessary.”

            The ship was lost, that much was clear. They had no power, no life support and no communications. The ship’s cameras were out, what with their battery problem. With a fatalistic half-grunt half-laugh Singh realised that they would be dead before they could pull all that power anyway.

            “Sir,” Furia’s tone was both inquisitive and cautious.  

            “Turn on all external cameras,” Sing ordered suddenly.

            “Sir, that would put real strain on our batteries,” Furia responded.

            Singh could have just told her to do it. He was captain of the ship, after all, and if he yelled, or spoke harshly, he knew the Lieutenant would obey his orders. But he also knew in this situation, in a dead ship, the chain of command was a tenuous concept at best.

            “The ship is dying,” he stated the fact plainly. “The air will be poison before we have a chance to use the rest of the power in those batteries. We have two shuttles that can sustain us for twelve hours in vacuum. Pressure suits might eek that time out by a few more hours,” Furia nodded slowly, uncertainly. “But we would still be dead in less than a day, unless we can find another ship.”

            “The fleet is likely to be in a similar situation,” Furia cautioned. Or we’ve been left behind, but Singh left the thought unsaid. If that were the case the best course of action would be to shoot themselves.

            “True,” Singh conceded, ploughing on despite his morbid thoughts, “but if one has a functioning comms relay, we might be able to find another with a functioning core, and another with a functioning drive. Then we will have a ship that we can survive on. There might even be something out here we can use.”

Furia tensed and Singh could tell he had pushed her in to thinking about the bigger picture. No one could say where they were, presumably drifting in interstellar space. Best case scenario had them in proximity around an asteroid, extracting resources in an increasingly scarce environment, until they lived long enough to succumb to societal or genetic collapse.

“But one step at a time,” Singh softened his tone. “We have no sensors, so we’ll have to look by eye.”

“I’ll programme the cameras to sweep their field of view for any objects that look like ships.”

“How long will it take?” Singh asked.

“A couple of hours…” Furia replied tentatively and shrugged. “Maybe less if we find something.”

“Do it,” Singh ordered and the Lieutenant began typing. “Barres, Gryzik” he pulled up their channels.

“Sir?” Gryzik responded

“I need you to prepare a shuttle, bring two pressure suits to the bridge with as many spare bottles as you can carry.”

“Yes, sir,” the marine replied. Singh sat back in his chair and watched as the main viewscreen subdivided itself into camera sections. The forward section of the bridge was transformed into a field of lonely stars. This was going to take a while.

The flagship Deyga floated in the small viewscreen embedded next to the pilot’s chair. The resolution on the image at this distance was poor, and Singh could only make out the general shape of the ship’s blocky outer hull. She was a technological marvel; a colony fleet unto herself. Her drives and batteries contained enough energy to power a large city, her weapons could level the rest of the fleet combined and her holds contained billions of human gametes, frozen, to repopulate a whole planet singlehandedly. She contained printers, fabricators and the staff to run them. Everything humanity needed.

Her drive was also dead, and as they approached the behemoth their view of the ship narrowed to a small section of the hull, Singh began to see the damage. Deep impact sites cratered the hull from which atmosphere appeared to be venting.

Singh sat in the cramped cockpit, gripping the controls. Sweat was beading on his forehead as he tried to focus on the airlock. The pressure suit was hot and uncomfortable, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. He had a line open to the ship, but so far there had been no reply.

“This is Commander Singh of TNS Valkryrie. We have abandoned ship and require immediate assistance.” He said again into his suit. “We are attempting to dock, please respond.”

The shuttle’s caudal camera was directly aligned with the airlock viewscreen, and Singh was relieved to see light through the viewing portal. The ship had power, at least, and enough of it to be running the lights to the airlock without concern.

Singh gently fired the ship’s aft thrusters in an attempt to burn off speed as he watched their momentum bleed away. Singh’s eyes flicked between the speedometer and the proximity sensor. Six meters per second, fifty meters to go. Five meters per second, forty-four meters to go…

Suddenly there was a huge bang and the metal of the shuttle screamed. For a moment Singh’s stomach flipped up in a moment of sick horror. To come all that way and survive a dying ship, just to crack open onto the hull of another. The shuttle’s hull rang like a bell and Singh braced himself to stop from crushing the instrumentation, while the rest of the crew caught themselves on the bulkhead.

“Fuck,” Singh whispered as he frantically scanned his instruments. As the vibration through the shuttle died, he could hear mechanical sounds and thuds as he realised they had come to a complete stop. “Sorry about,” Singh told his groaning crew, “I’m a little bit rusty at this, but we’re docked.”

“Commander Singh, are you there?” The crackly voice came from instrumentation panel. The quality was poor, and the signal was faint, but Singh felt like crying as a wave of relief washed over him.

“I’m here!” Singh exclaimed. “This is Commander Singh of TNS Valkyrie, permission to come aboard?”

“Granted Commander,” replied the voice, sounding equally happy. “And I just want to say, we’re glad to have you.”

Singh was still puzzling out that remark when the caudal door of the shuttle opened, and he walked out with the six other crewmen he had managed to pull from the Valkyrie. They stepped out into the bright hallways of the Deyga. The walls here were undamaged, their smooth metallic surface almost white in the full-spectrum lights running above their heads. Along one wall was the abstract Pi-like symbol, painted in gunmetal grey, representing continents of Earth. Singh breathed a sigh of relief as he saw a group of officers and marines standing at the other end of the corridor.

Their leader, a nervous looking lieutenant who appeared too small for his uniform, saluted as Singh approached.

“Lieutenant,” Singh returned the salute and then stood at ease, motioning for the young man to do likewise. Everyone relaxed. “What’s the situation here? I’m eager to help out anyway I can.”

“It’s not good, sir,” the Lieutenant replied. He sounded so young, and Singh thought he must have been fresh out of the academy. “We’re completely cut-off from the rest of the fleet. Communications are down, our drives are badly damaged, and our sensors have been compromised. We only noticed you about fifty klicks away.” Singh cursed inwardly. They were essentially blind. The ensign lowered his wavering voice. “We’ve lost about ninety percent of our personnel.”

“What about shuttle craft?”

“Our shuttlebay took a direct hit. There’s a hole clean through it. We’re still waiting on a full assessment, but the engineers aren’t optimistic that we have any shuttles left.”

“If possible, I’d like to speak to the ranking officer,” Singh informed him. “If there’s battery power, we might be able to salvage some of the fleet.”

“Well…” The young lieutenant began, nervously looking at the floor. “I’m the ranking officer on the Deyga. Well, you are now, sir.” Singh paused, recognising the Lieutenant’s voice for the first time. He had been on the comm and now Singh understood his relief.

“Very well, Lieutenant…”

“Lieutenant Capra, sir.”

“Capra. One moment please,” Singh called Barres over. “I want you to take a look at the drive on the ship. I presume you have a team there?” Capra nodded. “Liase with whoever is there and report directly to me with your assessment.” Barres turned back to Capra. “Please, take me to the bridge.”

On the way, Capra filled Singh in on what had happened. A junior science officer had made the compelling case that the stasis pods were all functional, but some part of the preservation process had proven fatal to approximately ninety percent of the fleet.

“How did we survive?” Singh asked.

“We don’t know,” Capra replied. “Reid thinks it might have something to do cell cycles, or something like that.” The Lieutenant shrugged as they entered the bridge.

Much like on the Valkyrie, the bridge was a fairly cramped room at the centre of the ship, though the bridge of the Deyga was much bigger than the cruiser’s had been, and a lot newer. While the Valkyrie’s consoles and instruments were blocky and bolted to the wall, each station here was smoother, more organically part of its surroundings.

The captain’s chair was much the same. It was fancier, with more displays, and even a drinks holder built into the arm, but, raised up on its platform to give a commanding view, it still gave off the aura of quiet authority. Singh thought the surroundings on the Deyga with a functioning bridge suited the chair more than Valkyrie’s had.

“Captain on the bridge!” Capra yelled as they entered.

The assembled bridge officers, mostly Ensigns but a few in civilian fatigues too, stood to attention and Singh realised he needed to say something.

“At ease,” is how he started. “My name is Commander Gudmunder Singh, formerly of the Valkyrie.” There was a pause as Singh began to choose the right words. “I don’t want to mince words with any of you. We are facing death here. We do not know where we are, but there are no stars out there that I recognise. We can’t go back, and we are on our own.” Singh cleared his throat. “These ships are designed for long term habitation, despite the damage we have taken, but if we can bring the fleet together then I believe we can survive.”

“Many of you may be mourning loved ones and the human tragedy of this catastrophe is terrifying, but we must look forwards and keep going, for those we have lost. There will be a time for mourning, but for now we have a job to do, and we have more people out there looking to us for leadership and guidance. Let us give it to them.”

Much to his embarrassment, Singh found himself facing a round of applause even a few cheers. Muttering his thanks, he took to the chair. Settling down onto the plush, synthetic cushions he began to pull up screens from within the armrest. On one screen he had personnel data, and on the other he was displaying ship-critical systems.

“Lieutenant Capra, I came here with a Lieutenant Furia one of our Engineering officers. I need you to liaise with her and get a team to the Comms relay. We need to assess the damage there and begin repairs immediately.”

“Sir, I’m not sure if we have the manpower for this.”

            Singh nodded as he opened up the ship-wide comms.

            “This is Commander Singh, acting Captain of the Deyga and formerly XO on Valkyrie. Most of you do not know me. I came on a shuttle from my own ship to find I am the ranking officer on this ship. My aim is to secure the long term future of everyone left in this fleet. Right now, I need anyone, anyone aboard this ship, who has experience in electrical or communications engineering to report to make yourself known to Lieutenant Capra.” Singh looked to the Lieutenant, who stared back at him ashen faced. “I know this is scary, Lieutenant, but it says here you’re the ranking engineer on this ship and more than anything, even more than the drives, I need the comms relay up.”

            “Yes sir,” Capra nodded and tried to look determined. Singh thought he almost pulled it off, as the Lieutenant’s hand-terminal began to ping with incoming messages. “I’ll go and see to this.”

            “Ensign Santos,” Singh called out to the head systems officer.

            “Sir,” came a voice from a young woman with streaked blonde hair. Like everyone else she looked on the cusp of outright terror.

            “I need you to use the cameras to scan the space around us. I want a good look at our surroundings and to know which ships are in our vicinity. It’s not exactly LADAR and heat signatures, but it’s better than nothing.” He checked the personnel file again. “Ensign Glaser, Lieutenant Alfort, you both have flight experience, I believe?”

            “Yes sir,” Alfort replied from the pilot’s chair.

            “Are there any other pilots on board?” Singh asked.

            “Yes sir, there are two others both civilians.” Alfort was half out of his chair already.

            “Good, find them and meet me by the shuttle. We’re going for a ride.” Singh got up out of the chair and turned to the remaining bridge officer, Ensign Cornwall. “Ensign, you have the bridge. I may be off-ship for a considerable amount of time. If the comms relay is restored, update me directly. Other than that, keep the ship in one piece until I return. If anyone else turns up with a shuttle, they have permission to board.” Singh’s hand-terminal pinged, it was Barres, he had completed his survey of the drives.

            A few hours after arriving, Singh would not have expected to find himself back on the same shuttle going to the Valkyrie again. He had missed the damage the first time, trying to keep the nose of the shuttle pointed at the Deyga, but the ship was in a much worse condition than he had even thought. There was a gaping hole at the rostral section of the ship, littered with slowly spinning debris, the stars themselves visible through it. The ship was completely dead, and Singh could no longer see any of the emergency alarms throwing red light between the gaps, nor any atmosphere venting into space. The batteries had run down, the life support had stopped, leaving just an empty shell where there had once been a proud Terran battlecruiser.

            Unfortunately for the Valkyrie, her service was not over yet.

            Singh was stuffed into the passenger compartment with Barres, Kishi, Glaser and Sergeant Gryzik, his two marines and the two civilian pilots who had survived the stasis pods.  Much to Singh’s relief Lieutenant Alfort was at the helm for this trip. Alfort docked the shuttle right back into the bay from which she came, which was a recessed pocket going through the ship’s hull. The nose of their shuttle stuck out like the head of a torpedo.

            “Only if you think you can make it,” Singh cautioned, when Alfort had shared his intentions. Singh himself would have opted for a more accessible airlock dock.

            “No problem, Captain,” Alfort had replied confidently. “You’re here for the shuttles so why not park close?”

            Singh climbed down out of the shuttle and into the blackness. The only light was directional, from their pressure suits and despite having just escaped from the ship, Singh was surprised how beaten up everything was when a beam from one of their lights passed over a spinning piece of debris or a deep gouge in the wall. Singh had to keep reminding himself that the graveyard feeling up the back of his neck was because they were in a graveyard.

            “Sergeant Gryzik, go with Barres and Kishi and bring back the parts they need for the drive,” Singh started giving orders. “You four,” he addressed the pilots, “begin to prepare shuttles. If there is anything you think could be useful in the remaining shuttles, take it.” He turned to the two remaining marines, strapping a thick bandolier of tools over his shoulder. “You two with me.”

            Navigating the bowels of the ship with some sections exposed to vacuum, was tricky and slow progress. Singh habitually checked his O­2 and CO2 levels, and kept a firm grip on the tools strapped across his torso They passed deck six, the only stasis deck that didn’t open onto hard vacuum, without comment and continued silently down.

            Some of the stasis rooms were simply no longer there, having been pulverised by whatever tragedy had befallen the rest of the fleet. Other rooms were simply like the one that Singh had woken up in; banks of metal sarcophagi, slowly blinking red. It was not until they reached the stasis room on deck four that Singh saw what he was looking for.

            The words of Lieutenant Capra echoed in his mind. We lost about ninety-percent of our personnel. Based on his stasis room, Singh had estimated a casualty rate of ninety-nine-point five percent for the Valkyrie. In that dark room, the walls illuminated with soft glowing red lights, Singh saw a corner that was lit green.

            His breath caught at the sight. There was someone alive in that pod. Furia had said herself that pods in vacuum were programmed not to open and Singh knew that a pod in distress would keep the occupant in stasis rather than open. In case of a problem with the gasflow, the pods would move into stasis mode. Whoever was in there was likely asleep and, apart from a few panicked moments, would have no idea what had happened.

            “Sir, are they alive?” whispered the marine to his left.

            “Yes, private, that one is alive,” Singh replied unable to suppress the smile in his voice. In total they found five more pods in the vacuum with solid green lights, spread across the other rooms and decks.

            “How do we get them out?”

            “Crewman Barres came up with a way,” Singh replied heaving the toolbelt over his shoulder and ran it through his hands to get the clamps he needed. Deactivating his magboots, Singh floated up to the hoses that fed into the pod, screwing clamps over them as tight as he could. He checked the seals were tight, twice and turned to the marine. “Your knife, private?”

            Nonplussed, the marine held the knife out handle first and Singh bent to take it before cutting at the tubes. They were tough, and designed to withstand a lot of punishment, but after a while, using the pod as a counterweight in the null-g, Singh eventually managed to cut through the tube.

            “Much more of this and your knife won’t be any good,” Singh quipped, luckily I bought something a bit sharper.” He dove back towards the floating tool belt and unclipped a gun-shaped tool. Making sure the barrel connected directly with the metal frame housing the pod, Singh scored the metal along the floor and wall. When Barres had described the procedure, Singh had imagined a molten blade of light but instead the barrel just glowed slightly as Singh cut. The space was tight, but eventually the brackets securing the pod were loose enough.

“Take these crowbars,” Singh instructed the marines, going back to the toolbelt “and pry this pod loose. Once it’s free, take it to the shuttlebay carefully, these things can pick up a lot of momentum.” Even working in space, Singh was surprised how often officers and ratings forgot this simple fact. “Come back for the others when you’re done.”

The work was slow, but Singh had freed three other pods by the time the marines returned and was busy working on the final one.

“We stored the pod by the shuttle but there’s not a lot of room to manoeuvre it inside,” one of the marines started.

“We won’t fit all of them and us inside the shuttles,” the other concluded.

“Don’t worry,” Singh replied as he finished with the plasmacutter. “Take the rest to the shuttlebay and gather up the rest of the pressure suits. We can pop the pods inside the shuttle, and get the occupants into a pressure suit, put them outside and get the next one in.”

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“Barres, how’s the drive looking?” Singh turned his attention to the engineers once the marines had taken the second pod.

            “We’re go here. We’ve got what we came for. I’m not sure if it will get the Deyga back online, but there’s a ton of stuff we can use here.” The technician sounded excited.

            “Try and limit yourself to what will be most useful.” Singh reminded him. “If you see anything that could be useful for fixing the Comms relay, bring that too. We’re nearly done here.”

            With all the pods assembled in the shuttlebay, the space was becoming increasingly cramped. The marines had already gotten one of the pods up and into the passenger area of a shuttle and Singh floated up with Sergeant Gryzik. In the cramped space of the shuttle, the stasis pod’s status light illuminated the walls an incandescent green. Singh checked the status on the pod, and the biometric data seemed normal as far as he could tell. Warrant Officer Nilson

            “Be ready Sergeant, they might be panicked in there.” Gryzik shuffled around, ready to launch himself at whoever came out. Singh pressed the manual override on the pod and the door began to move with a hiss. Singh had been prepared for thrashing and screaming, but the young woman who floated out was unconscious, her pale skin almost glowing eerily in the sickly light, her long blonde hair, waving almost imperceptibly in the low gravity added to the other worldly look.

            “Should I stuff her into the suit?” Gryzik asked.

            “Hmm,” Singh thought about it. “No, we don’t want her panicking. Can you dose her?”

            “They don’t cover that in basic,” Gryzik replied holding the medkit.

            The two men looked up at the woman floating above them and the scene reminding Singh of occult ritual. Suddenly the woman coughed and spasmed.

            “Ah,” she called out, trying to twist. Gryzik took a hold of her limbs and braced himself against the seat as she tried to kick free.

            “Warrant Officer!” Singh said, putting some steel into his voice. “Calm down.” The thrashing stopped and the WO took in her surroundings. “You’re safe.”

            “XO?” She asked weakly. “What…”

            “There’s no time to explain, but there has been a problem and we’re relocating to the Deyga. We just have a few people to get out of their pods, so I need you in this pressure suit,” he gestured at the thick, vaguely human shaped lump of material floating new the cockpit, “and we have to make way for another pod.”

            Nilson kicked off from the wall towards the pressure suit and began to pull it on. As she floated, helmeted back out the airlock Gryzik and Singh pushed the pod out behind her and waited for the two marines to push the next pod up.

            “Private Osei,” Singh read. “One of yours, Sergeant.”

            A few seconds after Gryzik gently heaved the last pod out of the shuttle, Singh’s comm activated.

            “Captain, the comm’s back online,” the voice said. Singh recognised the soft, hesitant tones as belonging to Lieutenant Capra.

            “Go ahead Lieutenant.”

            “Er… We’ve got a lot of incoming traffic, sir. A lot of incoming.”

            “Very well Lieutenant. Have Ensign Cornwall and whoever else you can spare, to triage the messages for my return. I want a report filed and in my terminal by the time I’m back. Singh out.”

            Alone in his shuttle, Singh used the momentary calm to take a breath of tangy, warm air from his suit. He savoured it, could feel the oxygen lightening his limbs. He took another. Singh knew it would be the last peaceful breath he drew for a long time. Now that communications with the fleet had opened up, his job was about to become a lot more complex. With a handful of a crew, he just needed to get them off the ship. With only one ship, there had been a list of things to fix; the comms, the drive, the sensors. If it proved impossible, they would have to make do.

            As the shuttles in the bay around him rumbled to life, Singh thought about the balance of complex issues. He might not have the resources to solve the problems. Taking something from one ship might very well deprive another. It had been easy, so far, struggling against the circumstance in which they found themselves. It was only life or death for himself and the people with him. In this time of scarcity, his decisions might truly, knowingly lead to deaths. He basked in the safe choice he had made to save those five people still in their pods, knowing that they had not come at any cost.

            Singh turned to the flight controls and began the launch sequence. No one else had chosen to fly with him, preferring to go with the trained pilots. For the sake of the luxury of the time he had, he indulged in another breath and initiated the launch. He no longer had the luxury of consequence free decisions.

            “At least fifteen ships are dark on comms.” Lieutenant Capra reported from in front of the desk in Singh’s ready room. It was a pleasant, spacious room, though Singh thought the imposing oak desk was at odds with the metallic grey walls. Everything was neat and organised, but it was all Admiral Vogel’s things.

“We have messages from the Harvest and Abundance, both are drifting with minimal battery power. The acting-captain thinks they have only a few hours before he has to cannibalise the hydroponics.”

“They need to turn those hydroponics on. Now.” The speaker was a remarkably tall and thin man. He had a civilian gait, despite the white-highlighted uniform of a scientific officer, and clutched a data pad in a pale brown hand.

            “I’ll pass it on. What else,” Singh asked, making a note to message Harvest and Abundance.

            “Redcar, Neiafu and Harrapa have all logged critical distress calls. Redcar has a reactor leak, contained for now, but acting-captain Manleith is worried about the viability of their… biologicals-”

            “The sperm and eggs,” A tall, thin man stood behind Capra said as Singh frowned in confusion.

            “And estimates that they have two hours before the radiation renders the ship uninhabitable.” Capra continued to flick through his report. The rest of it was much the same. More ships needing heavier repairs than for which he had the shuttle space.

            “Tell me more about Harvest and Abundance.”

            “Sir.” Capra cleared his throat. “Both lack drives, without which their batteries are dying. As Agri-ships they draw a lot of power.”

            “Do we know the nature of their problem?”

            “Not sure on Abundance but the Harvest reports a damaged accelerator.”

            “Good,” Singh smiled. “Have a shuttle loaded with a spare accelerator – I believe we have spares aboard, but I also believe Crewman Barres bought one with him from Valkyrie.”

            “Redcar?” Capra asked as Singh winced.

            “Tell them…” Singh paused. “I’ll tell them.” He finished after he thought better of it and turned to Reid. “Dr Reid, where are we with sensors?”

            The man stepped forwards, with a casual smile on his face.

            “We’re still down on LADAR and telemetry, but I was able to piece this together.” Reid unfolded a laminate sheet and spread it across the desk. It was a starry field, with red lines and circles all over it. To Singh it appeared no more useful than a child’s drawing of a spider’s web.

            “What is this?”

            “It’s data from the cameras,” Reid explained. “I ran that pretty Ensign-“

            “Santos,” Singh cut in harshly with a look.

            “Ensign Santos’s images through a few calculations and made this map.” Singh’s eyes devoured the details as he suddenly realised what Reid had produced. “It’s from our frame of reference, of course, so the distances from us are estimates, but the distances between ships are much more precise.”

            “And you have this data in a form we can use?”

            “Coordinates can be generated, using the references I’ve produced, but…” Reid said with a hint of caution creeping into his voice. “The problem is we won’t know if the distances are correct until our pilots turn up and can actually get their eyeballs on their target.”

            Singh grunted and gave a shrug. He had eyeballed the route to the Deyga and he was only rated for basic flight.

            “Get these into a nav system we can use,” Singh ordered, perhaps too harshly since the scientist’s smile dropped slightly at the edges. “But this is good work, thank you.” Reid folded up his maps and turned to leave. “Oh,” Singh started. “And please send me the positions of all ships sending critical distress signals.” He turned back to Lieutenant Capra. “Time for my close up, then Lieutenant?”

            A moment later a tablet had been propped up on the desk and set to record and Singh found himself preening in the display looking back at him. He had the Captain’s bars on his shoulder now since no one had yet turned up to take them from him. As he waited for Capra to run some last-minute checks, he thought about how he had imagined being Captain of his own ship in orbit around a new world. He had never imagined this.

            “We’re ready to go on your mark, Captain.” Capra said as he dimmed the lights. Singh was now the sole focus in the room. For a moment, Singh wondered if he was doing the right thing, recording a broadcast while the inhabitants of Redcar were drowning in radiation, or while the Harvest slowly died. He reminded himself the fleet needed leadership and needed to feel secure. He was going to have to send some of them to their deaths and he needed them to go willingly.

            “Mark.” The red light flashed. “My name is Captain Gudmunder Singh of the Colony Flagship Deyga.”

Redcar was dead, with all hands an hour after Singh’s speech. Whatever containment Captain Manleith had placed around the drive had failed. However, Harvest had her drives back up and was able to use them to run the batteries. They would need the food, maybe not right now, but soon. And now there were fewer mouths to feed.

Still, the decision to prioritise Harvest weighed on Singh over the next few days. His speech had been full of reassurance. Preservation of life, preservation of mankind in the uncaring void of space had been shot through the broadcast. In quiet moments, which were rare, Singh reminded himself that was true. The Terran Navy destroyer Spartan was burning towards Redcar to see if anything could be salvaged.

In the even quieter moments, the hypocrisy gnawed at him.

Then there were the graveyards; ships in which every single occupant had either succumbed to the stasis pods. They were rare, and only two ships appeared to have suffered such a scenario. More common were the smaller support ships, where his team reported mass casualties from the stasis and then suicides from those who had awoken in darkness, surrounded by red pulsing light alone, with no hope of rescue.

On the other side was the Polly, a small support vessel. The ship had been cored, a hole running right through her, from nose to drive cone, taking out the bridge, fusion drives, life support and every other useful system on the ship. Except the stasis pods. Most were red, but the shuttles from Deyga had pulled twelve pods from the wreckage, containing two complete families making the journey together.

Singh knew all the good and bad were at the uncaring whim of statistics. The ninety-percent casualty rate had ripped through the fleet. Some ships, like Valkyrie had suffered much higher casualties, while Harambe had suffered many fewer. But the sight of the that mother’s tears turning from anguish to unbridled joy helped Singh keep the spectres of the graveyard ships from his mind.

Teams had also been sent to Harrapa, Abundance and Akiva. The prognosis for them looked good and it seemed the fleet was stabilising. Now it was just a matter of time, moving people from ships that were truly dead to ships with a chance of survival. Within a week all remaining ships had functioning drives and life support.

As the immediate threat to life receeded, the horror of, and relief at, surviving their ordeal needed releasing. And Singh knew it was being released. Until the Agri-ships were fully up and running, harder drugs would be difficult to come by, but soldiers on Deyga had reported for duty drunk, and there were likely stills set up all over the ship. Not to mention the fact that the fleet were of a decidedly young and physically fit demographic. At any one time between shifts, walking through the crew quarters sounded like walking through a brothel.

Singh had allowed Gryzik to let it be known that fraternisation rules between crew of different shifts would be relaxed and, so long as people behaved professionally, there would be no punishment for any crew fraternisation. Half his bridge were sleeping with each other, he suspected, and the other half were shagging the ratings; a breach of protocol that he would never have tolerated as XO.

But Singh had always viewed authority as a tenuous thing, especially in deep space. He had served with Captains who would drum people out for any transgression against military law and worshipped at the alter of discipline. They ate iron-willed discipline for breakfast, and shat discipline-shaped iron bricks before bed. Such a Captain would have broken the fleet, before bending the rules.

Not that Singh was opposed to discipline. He knew that if he left it long enough, the rot would set in. Relationships would invariably go sour and acrimonious. People would not work together, and the professionalism of the skeleton crews would simply evaporate. In this matter, however, it would have to be something they all lived with.

In the case of the three raters in front of his desk, he would have to take a more active approach. One marine, an engineering technician and a crewman had been found distilling alcohol. The crewman stole the potatoes, the tech set up the still and the marine distributed it. It wasn’t until the chef had notified Gryzik that his shipments from Cornucopia were light that the conspiracy unravelled.

“Sergeant Gryzik here,” Singh gestured to the man, in full combat gear who stood a little stiffer at the mention of his name, “suggests that I use the powers granted to me by the Foundational Articles and have you summarily thrown out the airlock for all to see.” Singh thought back to Gryzik’s suggestion. Doctor Reid had been all for it too and, like most scientists  he was willing to go beyond his own field of expertise by suggested it was legal too.

The crew seemed to visibly crumple. The marine had tears running down his face.

“Upon examination of the articles, I believe Sergeant Gryzik to be correct.” Singh paused as the men and woman in front of him began to cry, the crewman tried to speak but Singh raised his voice. “Sergeant Gryzik is correct,” he said harshly, daring any of them to meet his eyes, wide with fury. “I do have this power. However, I have chosen not to exercise it in this case.” Singh leaned back in his chair, the que for Gryzik to take over.

“You have endangered the well being of this fleet. There is no crime more serious than this,” the Sergeant continued with disgust. “I would fight every crewman on this fucking ship for the chance to push that button. You are alive right now, because of the mercy of your Captain” There was silence in the room. “It goes without saying, you’re all demoted to OR-1.”

“I’ve placed Lieutenant Furia in charge of the Redcar’s salvage operation,” Singh was gratified to see the tech stiffened at this. He knew the fate that had befallen Redcar. “The Sergeant will escort you to her where she will find work for you there.” Singh began scrolling through his hand terminal, examining messages that had come in. “If you don’t like this work, remember, there is an alternative.” He looked at them again. The crying had stopped, but none of them could meet his eye. “Dismissed.”

The Sergeant lead the crewmen away to two waiting marines. Reid stepped into the office, just as Gryzik disappeared into the hallway.

“Bad time?” The chief scientist said. He was now wearing a Terran Navy uniform.

“How do you like it, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a bit stiff,” Reid commented, tugging at the sleeves on the olive green tunic. “The old science uniforms are a bit looser.” The scientist moved to get more comfortable and grinned, “It looks good though.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Singh replied as Reid took the unoccupied seat across the desk. “How can I help you?”

“If you have any meetings, you might want to cancel them,” Reid said, his voice adopting a rare, serious tone.

“What is it?” Singh asked, worried.

“I suppose I’ll lead with the good news,” Reid started, hesitantly. “I know where we are.” He flipped his hand terminal over so Singh could see the display. “Our nearest star is approximately twelve AU away.” The display showed a star burning brighter than the others in its field. I thought I saw it when we scanned for the fleet, but I wanted to be sure.”

“Any planets?” Singh asked, hopeful.

“Spectrometry is mixed, but there’s one in the habitable zone, and another a little bit further out. One’s slightly bigger than Earth, the other is about Mars-sized. We’re detecting oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, roughly in proportions with Earth.”

Singh felt so giddy he thought he was going to be sick. Only, a twelve AU trip would be a big ask for a fleet in their condition, but it was certainly possible. It was a lot more promising than a life in space.

“That’s not all,” Reid replied with a smile. “This system, the Deigh system we’re calling it, is in orbit around another star we’ve named Ionad.”

“And?” Singh was too distracted with the thought of an Earth-like planet, and realised he was looking forward to breathing clean air without worrying about how many more breaths he had left.

“Again, caveated with the usual uncertainties, we have observed three rocky planets, scattered throughout a wide habitable zone all with similar atmospheric compositions.”

“You’re telling me,” Singh started, “that you have found five Earth-like planets in our vicinity?” Reid nodded and Singh let out a breath he had been holding since he woke up on the Valkyrie. “Did you just prove God exists?”

“The odds are truly astronomical,” Reid said. “My confidence in our make-shift sensors is not high, but even accounting for uncertainty in the measurements, we likely have something we can survive on, possibly two or three somethings.”

Options. Singh finally had options, rather simply balancing the costs and benefits of every decision. Save Harvest, kill Redcar. Kill insubordinates, maintain discipline, allow fraternisation, keep order in the fleet. For the first time, he could choose.

“Do you have a preference?” Singh asked.

“Three planets are better than two, and there’s one that’s as close to Earth-like as we can get; same size and about 1AU from Ionad” Reid shrugged. “It’s a longer trip, though.”

“How long?”

“Twenty AU.”

“Can we make it?”

“I’ll need to run the numbers again, and we’d actually have to start relying on our Agri-ships by the end, but I think so.”

“You mentioned this was the good news?” Singh asked tentatively. Surely there was nothing that could dent such hull-plated good news.

Reid grimaced.

“I’ve had this data for a few days,” the chief scientist explained, slowly. “It’s solid, as far as we can tell, but the odds don’t sit well with me,” he confided, leaning closer. “Five rocky terrestrial planets all with atmosphere we can use? These are biblical probabilities we’re dealing with.”

“Miracles happen,” Singh said noncommittedly. Reid’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes, well, the Martian Journal of Biomechanics doesn’t accept that as a conclusion, trust me, my old PI tried.” Reid shook his head. “Do you remember the Janissary?”

“One of the graveyards?” Singh recalled. The ship had been totally shredded in the meteorite shower. They had never even recovered an intact pod, never mind survivors.

“Yes, their drive plating had been punctured in several places too,” Reid continued. “That gave me an idea.” Reid took the terminal. “The hardest part on a ship isn’t the armour plating, or, contrary to their belief, the dicks of your marines-“ Singh shot the science officer a weary look – “but the magnetic containment field around the fuel cells. Now, you rarely see this demonstrated, because to actually penetrate into the drive, the containment field must be offline.” Reid continued. “On Mars, a friend of mine-“ Singh raised his hand.

“Is this story going somewhere?” Singh asked. “I have a meeting with Capra soon.”

“Only that a ship’s containment field is capable of catching ferrous debris, if the debris penetrates at the right moment before the containment is breached.” Reid waved his hand. “There’s some messing with causality, apparently, but that’s an instrumentation issue rather than…” Reid’s eyes met Singh’s and he promptly returned to the point. “I had a look in the Janissary’s reactor and found this.”

It took Singh a moment to truly process what he was looking at. The background was a dark, tangled mess of twisted metal, but caught in the tendrils of solidified molten metal was something silvery, shaped like a dart.

“Is that…” Singh squinted, but comprehension still didn’t come.

“I’m no expert,” Reid declared, “but that looks to me like a gauss-round.” Singh leaned back, his mind reeling with questions.

“Doesn’t look like one of ours,” Singh looked at the picture again. “Are you saying someone shot at us?”

“Radiocarbon puts it beyond fifty-thousand years old,” Reid shook his head. “There was a battle here, in this system, and these munitions didn’t quite make escape velocity.”

“Fifty thousand years and it looks like it could have come off the assembly line on Luna.” Sick dread filled Singh’s stomach. The idyllic new Eden they had found suddenly seemed sinister and hostile. “Have we been contacted by anyone, seen anything out there?”

“Just the stars and the planets,” Reid said. “And a cloud of deadly shrapnel.” He took the terminal back. “There are alloys in this shell that we’ve never seen before.”

“So we got caught in the spent munitions of an alien war?” Singh asked. Reid shrugged again. “Well, I suppose it’s a comfort that aliens go to war.”

“Oh?”

“It means we can understand them,” Singh replied. “One the one hand, if they had our tech fifty-thousand years ago, what do they have now? But on the other hand, if this system is inhabited, then where are they?”

Singh grappled with the implications of the finding, before deciding against releasing images of the alien round to the wider fleet. Until they saw little green men flying towards them, Singh decided, the find was interesting but not crucial. Whomever had fired it, there was a distinct lack of evidence they were still around.

Singh and Reid had discussed theories surrounding that mystery. Cataclysms that had caused societal collapse and - Reid assured Singh the term was out of date- regression to a planet-based species, solar-wide extinction events or even the idea that whoever had lived here once, had simply moved on. Reid claimed he would know more when they got the chance to survey one of the planets, while Singh tried to avoid thoughts of European settlers and first peoples.

Ignoring the possibility of company when they arrived, there was another decision to make. Where to land the fleet. Singh knew a destination had to be chosen, or the fleet would choose all of them. Reid had finally run the numbers. Mass starvation and a scarcity-driven breakdown of society would occur within five years if the fleet scattered to the different worlds.

The Foundational Articles drawn up on Earth gave Singh absolute authority. He could order the fleet to Ionad-II, but in reality he could not be sure the order would be obeyed, especially when Deigh-III was so much closer. Reid had suggested the solution; a fleet council, chosen by whatever means the individual ships decided.

The meeting was due to be held in Deyga’s briefing room A, affectionally nicknamed Debra by Reid. Twenty delegates and representatives, depending on the ship, had arrived, and were waiting. Of course, Singh had sent his officers on charm offensives across the fleet, overseen by the chief science officer who had proven an able strategist, if a rather charmless man himself.

            “I think we have the votes,” Reid said in a low voice as they walked the corridors of the Deyga. “I’ve been able to get our people speaking at intervals in the agenda. Captain Mollinero of Akiva is the only hardliner we’ve identified who adamantly favours Deigh-III.”

            “That could be a problem,” Singh commented. The Akiva was one of the three surviving colony capital ships. If Deyga had been designed to populate a planet, Akiva and her sister ships Ryoko and Solodkin could manage a few cities each. They were also, Singh realised, the only ships capable of matching the Deyga in combat. “Do we have the Solodkin?”

            “Mollinero is isolated, and he’ll have to go with the majority decision,” Reid shot back. “Captain Nitcher is old Terran navy. He’ll stick by Deyga until the sun… Until Ionad burns up.”

            “With our luck, that’s not likely to be very long,” Singh joked, reflecting they had likely been the luckiest humans to have ever lived. Reid laughed politely.

            Under an oval of white light, around a long, angular table, sat the captains and representatives of Sol’s first colony fleet to a new star. It struck Singh that they had successfully made the journey, not just to one star but two – perhaps three if Reid’s latest scans were accurate. Looking around he saw people drawn from every facet of humanity. Traditional Ghanaian dress sat beside the latest Martian fashions and Europan styles.

            “Welcome, everyone,” Singh began the meeting. “As you know, the Foundational Articles give the commanding officer of Deyga unlimited power to decide the operational direction of the colony fleet.” He let that sink in. “However, the articles also warn against dicatatorship, heavy handed authoritarianism and the tendency to descend into autocracy, cronyism and sectarianism in the face of adversity. It is all too tempting to order the fleet to Ionad-III. The roadmap to dictatorship is well worn and easily legitimised by the Articles.”

            “I am not interested in power for myself, but in the long term future of our species. We do not know how much time has passed since our departure and we may be the last of our kind. We have a duty to survive, and an obligation towards future generations to build. This requires good governance, which requires strong institutions that are inclusive and legitimate. We all should know what is at stake if we silo and other ourselves. Bad decisions will be made in the narrow interests of a few and out here we would consume ourselves.” Singh cleared his throat and looked each delegate in the eye.

            “That is why I have asked you to meet here, as equals, to form the first fleet council. The decisions we face and the interests that must be balanced are too big for one individual. A charter and further political structure must follow, but for now we face one pressing question.” Singh took another dramatic pause as the display behind him warmed up to display Reid’s rudimentary map of the system. “Ionad-II or Deigh-III?”

            “Dr Reid will first make the case for Ionad-II, followed by Dr Mangjoul making the case for Deigh-III. There will be a discussion and then a vote. This vote will be binding on the fleet.”

            “On what authority?” The voice that called out was Captain Mollinero’s. He was a tall thin man, with a neatly trimmed blond beard. He wore a simple boiler suit stamped with the logo of Akiva, a red sun surrounded by green laurels, on his breast. He leaned forward, half out of his seat.

            “There will be time to discuss the legitimacy of this council later but for now, it rests on my authority,” Singh said forcefully, “and the outcome will be enforced with my authority.” Singh stared at Mollinero, who stared back until Reid cleared his throat.

            Singh found that, when planned out, the chief scientist could deliver a good talk. He began by talking through the data, showing bar graphs with several peaks, suggesting oxygen and nitrogen on all inner rocky planets that they had surveyed.

            “There are variations,” Reid explained. “Ionad-IV has lot more CO2 than expected, despite it’s relative position to it’s star. This could be an overabundance of plant life, or perhaps some other natural process.” After summarising the science, Reid continued. “Ionad-II is undoubtedly the most Earth-like planet in this system; it appears to be of a similar mass and is in almost the exact equivalent position as Earth is, in relation to Sol. It has one large natural satellite and it’s atmospheric composition is even slightly better for us than Earth’s.” He turned his body to better face the room “We must think about what is best for our future. The Ionad system has more resources more readily available, the only advantage Deigh-III has over Ionad-II is that it would take half the time to get there.”

Reid resumed his seat next to the screen. The next speaker, Dr Mangjoul remained in her seat. Instead there was a shuffle in the direction of Captain Mollinero. He walked up to the screen. Singh looked to Reid, who looked to Mangjoul, who simply stared directly ahead back at the councillors.

“I’m the main advocate for Deigh-III,” the Captain began, his voice smooth and relaxing. The accent was elusive, but it seemed to be a wandering combination of Terran. “So I thought I would give my chief scientist a break and speak to you personally.” Mollinero’s gaze fixed on Singh. “Acting-Captain Singh believes his authority derives from the Fundamental Articles as commander of Deyga. I dispute this, and I expect my case to be heard.”

“We are discussing the future of the fleet, Mollinero, not your personal bid for power,” It was captain Nitcher who spoke, his fluffy white beard obscuring much of his dark, wrinkled face. “If you have something to say then get on with it, or we can take a vote.”

“Very well,” Mollinero’s smile was thin and contemptuous. “Dr Reid spoke at length about the benefits of Ionad-II,” the Captain nodded towards Reid. “Less well explored are the risks of undertaking this journey.” Mollinero addressed the councillors directly, softening his tone. “Five days ago, half our ships did not have functioning drives – if they break, we die. By the time we make landfall on Ionad-II, we’ll be entirely dependent on food grown by Harvest, Cornucopia and Abundance, all of which have had problems with energy production.” Turning back to Singh Mollinero smiled. “And are you really going to place your trust in a man who let Redcar die?”

“Enough,” Singh cut through the murmurs in the room. “This meeting was called in order to have a full scientific discussion of the merits of each destination. You have failed to engage with this process. I move to table a vote,” Singh said to the delegates.

“I second the movement,” Nitcher added. “Err, if a second is required.”

They went clockwise around the room, as the votes went one way or another, Singh glancing at Reid when a member declared for Mollinero. It was a nerve-wracking experience, Singh found as he realised that his authority would be shot to pieces if Mollinero won. The bowels of Valkyrie were not a fond memory, but Singh had to admit the anxiety he felt then had been of a purer, simpler flavour.

In the end Deigh-II was trailing by five votes, and Nitcher, who voted last, sealed it’s fate.

“Well, I don’t know what he offered you, and I don’t particularly care either,” Mollinero rose and was the first out of the room. Singh bid the delegates farewell and promised to piece together an agenda to discuss a formal constitution at the next meeting.

The bridge was peaceful as Reid and Singh took up their stations. 

“Ensign Santos,” Singh called out. “I want traffic to and from Akiva monitored, and I want the logs sent to my terminal.” Singh knew the wait would not be long.

“Incoming message from Akiva,” Capra announced as Singh’s stomach tightened with anticipation.

“Acting-Captain Singh,” Mollinero greeted him from the main viewscreen. The bridge of Akiva behind him was a flurry of activity. “I’m sure you can guess why I’m calling. The Akiva will be heading for Deigh-III and we’re taking some friends with us.”

“Akiva just lit up her drives,” Santos announced, her voice carried an edge of panic. “Judyville, Ancha and Cornucopia are all hot.”

“Lieutenant Alfort, keep Akiva in range,” Singh ordered as he felt the pit of his stomach drop and realised, for the first time, he was experiencing gravity. His limbs felt heavier and even his chest was tight. It would be a struggle for anyone in the fleet to maintain any kind of sustained heavy burn, he realised.

“Keep you distance, Singh,” Mollinero warned and then gave a muted order off-screen.

“I’m detecting heat signatures on Harvest and Abundance, sir.” Santos reported.

“Targeting lasers?” Singh asked and Santos nodded. He turned to address Mollinero. “Captain, relinquish your targeting laser and surrender your ship. Failure to do so will be met with deadly force.”

“Relax,” Mollinero smiled, “I’m not interested in killing anyone. I just want to take my ship and my fleet on a little trip over to the Deigh system, that’s all. If you approach, I’ll have to start putting holes in your farms.”

“Target Akiva’s drive,” Singh turned to their weapons officer. “Fire on my command.” Singh made sure Mollinero could hear the orders. “Cornucopia stays.”

“Sorry, Mr Singh, but they chose my way, not yours. Though I can see you’re not familiar with the concept of self-determination. Anyway, you shoot me, I shoot your breadbaskets and we all die out here. Let me live and we can all go our separate ways.” The screen went dark.

Fuck, thought Singh. The fleet was doomed without Cornucopia, Harvest and Abundance. Reid’s models required output from all three to sustain the fleet once they made landfall. Singh was left wishing he had had Mollinero spaced as soon as he had gotten up to speak.

“Stay on Akiva.” Singh got out of the chair. “Lieutenant Capra, inform Harvest and Abundance that I would like to speak with them and notify Sergeant Gyrzik to assemble a team for shipboard action in the rostral shuttle bay. Ensign Santos, you have the bridge.”

Singh took the call his office, sat behind Admiral Vogel’s oversized wooden desk.

“They’ve got a lock right on our drives,” Captain Abulafia said in exasperation. “I won’t countenance a course of action that puts my crew in danger.”

“Neither will I,” Singh replied harshly. “The fleet can not survive without the Agri-ships. A loss of a single one will result in half a million deaths by starvation. I’ve seen the numbers, and the fleet can’t sustain a loss that size.” He looked directly into the camera of his terminal. “I need you both to power up your drives and put Deyga between yourselves and Akiva.”

Singh felt like he was swimming in sweat when he arrived back on the bridge. The reports about the food situation within the fleet were not widely published, but everyone was feeling the restrictions and the bridge crew were not stupid. They knew the stakes.

“Ensign Santos, notify me when Harvest and Abundance are in our point-defence arc.”

“Yes sir. We have incoming from Akiva.”

“Patch it through,” Singh resumed his seat.

“Singh, if you think I’m bluffing-“ Mollinero was looking a lot more nervous now.

“I have given no direction to Harvest or Abundance. You can understand when one of the capital ships in the fleet starts lighting them up with lasers that they would be nervous.” Singh raised his hands as his terminal beeped. Sgt Gyrzik in pos. . He sent a green-light signal to the Sergeant. A crucial few seconds later Mollinero’s own sensors had clearly detected something was happening, because the calm, placid features boiled violently into anger. “I wouldn’t do anything hasty, Captain. Your leverage is safely within point-defence range.”

With one eye, Singh watched his other monitor as Gyrzik’s shuttle approached Cornucopia. The two graphics collided and were overlaid on the screen.

“Target lock Deyga,” Mollinero yelled to his bridge officers.

“I would be careful with this course of action, Mollinero,” Singh’s terminal beeped with an incoming message. “I have Cornucopia waiting for me to take their call, presumably to tell me they’ve surrendered to my marines.” Singh kept his face neutral, he didn’t want to antagonise Mollinero into a course of action that would doom them all. “I advise you to take your victory and run, Mollinero. You have what you want.”

Mollinero’s screen went dark and the forward screens displayed the bright white-star of Akiva’s drive blazing brilliantly as it receeded into the black field of stars. Singh let out a sigh of relief and opened the line to Gyrzik.

“Cornucopia is ours sir, they didn’t really feel like fighting. Captain was relieved that you only fired marines, sir, I think she thought you had shot her and was grateful to have someone to surrender to instead.”

“Good work, Sergeant,” Singh allowed himself a breath of relief and smiled. “Keep the bridge crew under control, and I’ll send a team over ASAP.” Singh dropped the connection. “Ensign Santos, any news on our point-defences?”

“Still down, sir,” she replied.

“I want them up and running as a priority,” Singh ordered. “Capra, I want you to draw up a skeleton crew to staff Cornucopia.” He held out his hand to the Lieutenant. “Congratulations on your first command.”

Location: Nupolis, Deyga

Date: 8 Years Post Exodus (PE)

The city of Nupolis stretched out before him in the setting sun. From high up in the presidential apartments of what once had been the Deyga, Gudmunder Singh could see the arcology towers that had been Abundance, Harvest and Cornucopia, their black hulls glowing orange in the light fading behind distant mountains. Most of the big buildings that penetrated above the urban sprawl of life in between, had been ships once. The first foundries and factories had been set up in the footprints of drive-cones.

The people had spread, as they were want to do. Houses, shops and bars grew up between the ships. Pavement, roads, spaceports and plating for stations and more ships had all come from those original hulks. Looking up at the sky Singh could see white contrail fingers stretching all the way up to the wispy clouds. At the end of each one was a ship that began on Deyga.

The planet wasn’t all that had been promised, Singh reflected. He knew one-g well, it was in his very bones after all, and this was not it. It had been eight years since they made landfall and Singh was unsure if the ache between his spine would ever fully go. Reid had gotten the atmospheric composition wrong too, and there was a slight sweetness to the air though it was rarely noticeable now.

There was still much to do, Singh reminded himself and took the moment to indulge in a few breaths of almost imperceptibly sweet air. He had intended to retire not long after the fleet had made landfall, but no one could decide when and how to set things up and so Singh had broken the deadlock in the council. Then there had been the terraforming project to oversee, and the repopulation programme. Then elections had to be established, in which Singh finally won a mandate, and the work simply continued. Colonisation rights over Ionad-III and Ionad-IV, now called Valya and Lepidus, were his current headache.  

Taking one last breath Singh scanned the city lights that were beginning to eclipse the stars. His eyes rested on a dark patch of ground. Valkyrie Park was a hole of dark green in the thriving urban heart of this new world. If he went down there, as he tried to do as often as possible, he would see the familiar sights of oak and birch lining the paths though the soft ryegrass. Birdsong familiar to his Terran ear would call out from those trees and there, growing in new soil were, for good or ill, were the seeds of old Earth.