The skiff’s hatch hissed open. Kaia blinked, her eyes watering as the dry, dusty wind blew grit into her cockpit. She shut down the skiff’s systems and sat in silence, her gaze fixed on a distant point as her mind replayed the sighting from earlier today. Even here, removed from space and time, her body reacted with primal fear to the object. She jumped as the loud clang of a ladder snapped her back into the present. She unfastened her straps and climbed down, wary of her unsteady legs.

“Another fun day in the Cloud?” a member of the ground crew asked in the clipped local accent.

“Always,” Kaia replied dryly, handing him her helmet. “Please check out the number three ACS thruster. The thrust axis seems to be off.”

“I’ll take a look, Ma’am.”

Kaia turned, intending to visit the mess hall and ease her cramped stomach, when she looked back. “Do you know what happened out there? Who the SAR teams were after?”

The mechanic shook his head. “Sorry, Ma’am. My shift just started.”

“No worries.” Kaia shrugged. It was likely a candidate with a mechanical failure. Those ancient buckets could have been from the Ancestral Empire for all she knew. But even as she crossed the landing pad, she couldn’t shake that ominous feeling.

Despite the late hour, the base was still busy. Kaia greeted a pair of sleepy candidates as they headed to the launch pad for their trials. When she got to the mess hall, she found the lights dim. Small groups of people sat clustered in isolated islands, drinking coffee or eating late night meals. Kaia walked up to the food counter and started poking around the mealtime remains. Not finding anything of interest, she grabbed a wrap and a stale looking pastry. She was about to go sit down when the voice of her mother sounded in her head, chastising her choice of food. So, she wheeled around and grumbled as she added a small salad. With her tray full, Kaia turned to find a seat and smiled as she saw Rilleta and Rapher sitting a few tables away.

“Hey, guys! Long time no see,” Kaia said, setting down her food and sliding into the seat next to Rilleta.

“Hey, Marinoch. Did you just get back?” Rapher asked, a sombre tone to his voice. Kaia nodded, stifling a yawn.

“Me too,” he said.

Kaia took a bite of the egg salad wrap, feeling her stomach immediately quiet down. She shook her head as she swallowed, then said, “That last leg was a bitch. I swear I almost ended up as debris a few times. Do either of you know who the SAR teams went after?”

The look in her friends’ eyes darkened and a blanket of melancholy fell over the table, smothering whatever joy Kaia felt at being done for the day.

Rilleta looked down at her empty plate. “Giana is dead.”

“What?!” The bottom of Kaia’s stomach dropped out. “When? How?”

“The cadre said it was an accident while in the Cloud…” Tears welled up in the corners of Rilleta’s eyes and Kaia could see her friend struggling to hold it together.

Kaia glanced between her two friends, the voices of the other tables fading into hollow echoes. She had just seen Giana this morning. They had joked and laughed about who was going to have the worst time in the canyon. And now she was gone.

Rapher looked at Kaia, fear in his eyes. “I don’t know. The cadre claimed it was a mechanical failure, but that’s not what I saw. My last leg crossed her course, close enough that I could see her. We waved to each other and, from what I could tell, her skiff looked perfectly fine. Ten minutes later, I slingshotted around a rock and I saw her skiff explode.” The temperature at their table seemed to drop as Rapher paused. When he continued, his voice was lower. “The thing is… I saw a light right before the explosion. I can’t be certain what it was… but I could have sworn the light moved toward her skiff.”

“A missile or drone?” Kaia asked, her mind struggling to catch up.

“Maybe…” Rapher waved his hand, dismissing his own thoughts. “I really can’t be sure. All of us are tired. Like, how is it possible to see a cloud in space?”

“You mean the debris field?” Kaia’s insides froze.

“No. A cloud, like a rain cloud.” Then he just laughed at himself. “I was tired and likely stared at a sunlit object too long. Because at one point I saw dead space. But when I looked back, all the stars had returned.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Kaia put down her wrap, no longer hungry. She considered telling them about her sighting, but it still felt so silly. Had they seen a ghost? Or some space-born creature? In the end, she held her tongue.

“Shit! I gotta run. My skiff trial starts in five minutes.” Rilleta jumped up and started gathering her stuff onto a tray.

Kaia motioned for her to stop. “Go! I’ll take care of this.”

“Thanks,” Rilleta said as she took off at a run.

Kaia watched her friend go, wondering if Rilleta would return or if the ghost would get her too. Kaia and Rapher finished their meal in silence before cleaning up Rilleta’s leftovers. Then, with a yawn, she bid goodnight to Rapher, and they headed back to their rooms. After a quick change to get out of her sweat-stained clothes, she flopped into bed. Tiredness pulled at her eyelids, yet sleep wouldn’t come. Her eyes kept looking over at Giana’s bunk. They hadn’t even had the chance to clear out her stuff yet. When the tears finally came, she let them flow, warming her face and soothing her to sleep.

***

She woke to the sound of someone shuffling around her room. Her mind, still groggy, refused to focus on the source. The blackout curtains were still down and the only light came from a penlight held by a shadow rummaging through a footlocker. Kaia groaned and shuffled around in bed, drawing the shadow’s attention.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” Rilleta whispered.

Kaia blinked sleep from her eyes. “No worries. I was planning on getting up…” She checked her carpi. “… in an hour, anyway.”

Rilleta let out a tired laugh.

Kaia propped herself up against the wall with her pillow. “I’m glad you made it,” she said, looking over Rilleta’s shoulder at the empty bunk.

Rilleta followed Kaia’s gaze, then came to sit beside her. “Is this the first time you lost someone?”

Kaia nodded. None of her previous postings had involved anything more dangerous than boarding smugglers and the odd poacher. She let her mind drift unanchored across the sea of her life before it settled back on the strange object she had seen yesterday.

Eventually, she blurted it out. The need to tell someone felt greater than the need to keep it secret. “It killed her… the black ghost. You probably think we are crazy, but something was there.”

Rilleta placed a hand on Kaia’s knee and took a deep breath. “I was serving on the cruiser Aerothorn. We were patrolling along the border with the Belteshen-Izar State. It was a few years back when they were still sending raiding parties into our space. We were surveying the systems just off the node system when we saw something. It was during dog watch. The XO and I were on the bridge playing Name the Star. The object was bizarre; a hole in the sea of stars. We sent a radar ping, but nothing came back. I dunno. We ended up convincing ourselves that it was nothing. It wasn’t until months later when I was drinking with a group of traders that I spoke of it. Turns out my encounter wasn’t the first they had heard.”

“What are these things?”

She felt Rilleta shake her head. “I don’t know…”

Kaia shivered and leaned into Rilleta, feeling the need for warmth and companionship.

“I talked to the cadre,” Rilleta said. “They have agreed to allow us to hold a wake for Giana this evening. So at least we’ll have a chance to say goodbye.”

They sat there for a few more minutes before Rilleta shuffled off to sleep. In the stillness of the night, Kaia remained wide awake, her eyes locked on the abyss, her mind filled with contemplations of mortality.

***

The day passed by in an unorganized blur. Kaia vaguely remembered going on another sortie, but she had no memories of how well she’d done. Not that she cared. They could have kicked her out and she would have shrugged.

How could the cadre ignore the fact that they had killed Giana and continue with their damned Qualification? To Kaia, it spoke volumes of this organization’s beliefs. When she had first voiced her desire to break the psychometric contract, her father warned her that the military didn’t value life like they did. He told her she would either have to come to terms with that or it would eat her up inside. She was only now realizing what he meant.

She walked into the mess hall that evening, emotionally exhausted. The room was lit with candles and a stillness compressed her soul. Most of the remaining candidates were there with sullen expressions. Above the central table floated a large hologram of a smiling Giana. Kaia’s eyes welled up at the happy, expressive woman and she wondered where Rilleta had found the image. She moved through the crowd, hearing hushed stories of Giana. When she reached the centre table, she picked up a memory scroll from the table and used the whisper pen to write a message of goodbye. Then she held the scroll over the flame until it caught fire and dropped it into the bucket. The scroll burned up, sending the message to Giana’s soul. At the same time, she closed her eyes and asked the Immortal Emperor to grant Giana passage to the Sacred Light.

“The Emperor doesn’t answer the prayers of a herator!” Khaazsa spat venom from behind her.

Kaia turned and said through gritted teeth, “How about you go fuck off!”

Why couldn’t you have died instead of Giana? It went against Kaia’s upbringing to wish death on someone, but at this moment, she could not stop herself.

“I’m not the one who doesn’t belong here, herator.”

Tears of frustration welled up, and she viciously shoved her way past Khaazsa. He fell backwards, tripping over a chair and fell down with a cry.

Kaia didn’t wait around to find out what happened next. Instead, she stalked out of the wake, her anger red hot. Rilleta called after her, but Kaia kept walking. She didn’t stop until she got back to her room, then she slammed the door and closed the blackout curtain, plunging the room into a comforting darkness. She dropped onto her bed. It was strange to cry over someone she had just met a few weeks ago. She tried to convince herself it was foolish, but her body didn’t respond. Weeks of exhaustion swelled up in a tsunami of emotions. Not for the first time, she considered calling it quits, but that same pressure at the back of her mind refused to let her.