Tooley had put them through several random FTL jumps to scatter their trail, and Farsus had swapped out their ship’s transponder, making them virtually impossible to track by conventional means. Morrakesh, of course, had unconventional means at his disposal, but they’d probably bought themselves a few cycles, at least. Their primary problem was that Kamak hadn’t moved from his huddled position in the cargo bay, nor said a word to anyone who approached him.

“We don’t actually need him to go places,” Tooley said. “He’s the captain, yeah, but I’m the only one who can actually make the ship move.”

“That’s beside the point,” Corey said. “Him not moving it all is a bit concerning.”

“Eh. Honestly it’s about time someone else had a mental breakdown,” Tooley said. “Kamak was the most likely candidate. Well, him or you again.”

“Really?”

“You know I’m right,” Tooley said. “Come on. Let him have his fetal position time. We can figure out where to go on our own.”

“And where do you propose we go?”

“Well I don’t really have an idea right off the bat,” Tooley admitted.

“We find ourselves unwanted almost anywhere we might go,” Farsus said. “Paga For is our only possible haven, and even that comes with inherent risk.”

“Yeah, I know. We could...fuck. This is hard.”

“Say what you will about Kamak, he’s decisive,” Doprel said. “Not always in the right direction, admittedly, but he’s a conversation starter.”

Tooley fumed at the idea that she might in any way be dependent on Kamak, but she could offer no alternatives. While she nursed her wounded pride, Corey took a step back.

“I only know like ten places anyway, and nine of them would get us killed for sure,” Corey said. The tenth was Paga For, firmly a “maybe” get them killed, as Farsus had said. “I’m going to try talking to Kamak again. I can probably get him to call me a moron, at least. That might get him going.”

No one objected to Corey’s idea or to him getting called a moron, so he wandered off to the cargo bay. Doprel had done his best to sweep up the broken shards of Kamak’s shattered datapad, but a few fragments still remained. Kamak had one held between his fingertips, and he was staring at the jagged edges with unnerving focus. At least he was moving, Corey thought to himself. He’d been sitting against the wall with a dead-eyed stare for cycles in a row.

“Hey, Kamak, we were thinking-”

“Shut up.”

Corey took that as a good sign. Kamak was talking. Talking rudely, but talking.

“Answer a question for me,” Kamak said. It was an order, not a request. “When this whole thing really started to break bad, when that cop Mokai got blown to bits, why’d you grab To Vo?”

The question, while seemingly random, was not entirely out of left field. To Vo La Su had told them everything about what had happened in the elevator shaft, and just outside it. Corey didn’t necessarily object to the decision, but he did wonder why Kamak had chosen to save To Vo before Kiz Timeka, the only woman in the galaxy who could’ve solved their Morrakesh problem. Apparently Kamak himself didn’t know the answer either.

“I don’t know,” Corey admitted. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“Even though the only thing she’d ever done was hassle you,” Kamak mumbled.

“Yeah. It just...she was going to die if I didn’t do something, so I did something.”

Kamak just shook his head. Apparently the answer didn’t satisfy him. Corey dug deep into the depths of his soul and pulled out something a little more substantial.

“And, I guess, on some level, I knew that she’d at least try to do the same for me,” Corey said. That actually got Kamak to glance upwards for a second. “I never met Kiz, but I’ve learned enough to know rich bastards are the same across the whole universe. If things were the other way around, she wouldn’t have even thought about you.”

A provably true statement, given everything that had happened just before Kiz’s death. She’d gotten all the info she needed to prove that Kamak was desperate. Not just that, but that Morrakesh’s schemes were putting intergalactic trade and billions of lives, and billions of cece’s worth of Timeka’s profit, at risk. She’d even learned that the dead themselves were not spared. Kiz Timeka had learned all of that and not even hesitated before trying to screw it all up for her own benefit, and sacrifice Kamak’s crew in the process.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Even knowing that didn’t undo the tangled knot in Kamak’s stomach. Saving Kiz was about more than just his feelings, or even his own life. Everyone on the ship could’ve walked free if he’d saved Kiz instead of To Vo.

But he hadn’t. And now he had to live in the mess he’d made.

“Come on,” Kamak grunted. He pulled himself to his feet and stretched out aching legs. He’d been sitting too damn long. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

Kamak took a wobbly walk back to the common room. Tooley and Farsus were trying to map out all the most remote outposts in the galaxy for potential hiding places. Kamak took one step into the room, took a look at their holographic map, and wiped it clean.

“Good to see you too, asshole,” Tooley grumbled. She’d worked hard on that map.

“Yeah, fuck you,” Kamak grunted. He took a seat on the couch and kicked his feet up. “Let’s get out of here. Every move we make, we make things worse. Time to find a place to quit moving.”

Every time they tried to be smart, things got worse, and bodies piled up. Morrakesh’s bloody scheme was getting bloodier every swap, and they had instigated some of his worst bloodbaths, intentionally or not. Kamak was no saint, but he didn’t want to watch his hands get bloodier.

“We’re bordering the Arkenne galaxy,” Kamak said. “We can take the long shot through dead space and be at Centerpoint in a little less than a month. We’ve got the supplies for it, if we ration.”

“And then?”

“Hope Morrakesh has either pulled off or flubbed its big plan,” Kamak said. “Once it’s done everything it plans to do, history should vindicate us. It’ll be obvious what it was up to after the fact.”

“And if its plan isn’t wrapped up?”

“We can always turn ourselves in to the GC Police,” Kamak said. His crew recoiled from the idea, and Kamak jumped in to explain himself further. “As opposed to literally every other faction, they don’t like immediately executing their prisoners. If we raise enough of a stink about corruption and have To Vo pleading our case, we can probably keep ourselves alive long enough for Morrakesh to realize there’s no point killing us.”

That decreased the overall level of disgust, but not by much.

“You know anyone else who’s going to even try to keep us alive, feel free to name them,” Kamak said.

“If we’re just giving up the ghost, I could always pull a decoy strategy,” Tooley said. “We’ve still got that old dummy plug to remotely pilot a ship. We can land some place remote, like that unhab planet we found Wagam on, and fly the Hermit away without us in it. It’d get people off our tail for a while.’

“Firstly, no way in hell that fools Morrakesh, and then we’re just some assholes stuck on a rock with no way out,” Kamak said. “Second, even if it did work, I’m sure as hell not spending the next few decades stuck with you scraping edible algae off rocks.”

“I’m not saying forever, just long enough to get Morrakesh off our asses.”

“Not happening. Any other suggestions?”

“Well, if we want to talk about people who don’t want us dead...”

Corey took his time to say it. It was quite possibly the only idea less appealing than surrendering, or hiding out on some barren rock.

“There is Morrakesh.”

Saying it out loud resulted in the exact amount of judgmental stares Corey had expected.

“Am I wrong?” Corey pleaded. “Morrakesh actually helped us, and even offered us a job. I’m not saying he’s looking out for us, but he has a proven interest in keeping us alive. Maybe we can exploit that. Say we’re desperate and we’ll take the job, find out what his next move is and ruin it.”

“No way in hell is it going to be that easy,” Kamak said. “And whatever the hell you think you’re scheming isn’t going to work either.”

Corvash still had that glint of rage in his eyes, a glimmer of a long-held grudge. It had been present since finding out about his Uncle Richard’s presence on Paga For, and had only intensified since realizing Morakesh had desecrated his mother’s grave.

“Statistically, it seems as likely to fail as your plan,” Farsus said. Kamak tried not to take that personally. “But it is more proactive. I favor striking out, to our last breath.”

“I’d like to die the way I lived: spitefully,” Tooley said.

“I’m not a fan of dramatic last stands,” Doprel said. “This whole scheming thing is going to blow over some day. We don’t need to throw our lives away over it.”

“I agree. I know the Galactic Council Police is not perfect, but there are enough good people in it to protect you until the truth comes to light,” To Vo said.

“Oh look at that, a perfect tie, how nice,” Kamak said. “Do we settle it with a coin flip or a fist fight?”

“You’ve got Doprel on your side, we’re doing the coin flip,” Tooley said.

“Okay, hold on,” Corey said. “We don’t need to decide shit right now. You said we’d be taking the long way to Centerpoint, right? Same if we went to the Morrakesh Collective?”

“Avoiding Bang Gates feels like a good idea right now, yeah,” Kamak said. They’d been able to get through security checkpoints with decoy transponders and bluffing so far, but Kamak didn’t want to push their luck now that Timeka would be after them. Unlike the other rag-tag factions out to kill them, Timeka had trillions of cece’s worth of assets and the will to use them on a grudge. The universe had just become a vastly more dangerous place.

“So let’s just take a minute to think about it, yeah? We’re between the two places right now anyway.”

The Timeka station had been situated in a galaxy between Centerpoint and the borders of the Morrakesh Collective -presumably one of the reasons it had been attacked. The convenient location should have made it an obvious choice for Morrakesh to attack, in retrospect.

“If we are going through dead space, it’ll take me a while to calculate a route anyway,” Tooley said. “Got to compensate for galactic drift and all that.”

“Fine then. Take some time, calculate some trajectories, whatever,” Kamak said. “We’ll talk more once we have some plans.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Tooley made for the cockpit and sat down, glad to be free of the morose conversation. She had only just regained her will to live and now they were talking about which way they all wanted to die. It just felt like bad timing.