The docking bay was busy. Extraordinarily busy even for Binary Bloom. People were packing themselves into the available ships as densely as would be borderline acceptable for two or three days.

„One piece of luggage per person, I’m sorry.“, one of the guards at the entrance told an elderly man. „I’ll have to take this. Tell me your quarters and we’ll bring it back there. You left your destination at the door? We’ll send it with a future transport. Nico gave his word.“

At the far end, Nico and a few of his administrative staff were overseeing the evacuation. There were twenty-seven ships of all kinds docked at Binary Bloom. The two ships the Erulas marines had come in were almost finished loading. They carried the twenty seriously injured from the now defunct medical center and would leave first. Nico had also convinced them to take another twenty spouses, parents or children with the wounded. Any person off the station counted.

„What’s the total?“, he asked the dock master.

„Just 640, I’m afraid.“, was the answer he didn’t want to hear, „There’s just five haulers down there, the rest are smaller ships.“

Nico nodded: „What do we have incoming?“

„We called everyone who owes us a favor or felt like taking up a lucrative offer. We’ll get another 500 or so boarded tomorrow, and then on average a thousand per day after that.“

Nico stared into the distance. He had never expected to oversee the shutdown of Bloom. Nor did any of his staff. Without looking at them he could tell that their faces were serious and hard, just like his own. They had a job to do, and he knew he could count on them to do it. But they all hated every second of it.

„Where are we on section control?“, he asked, without turning around.

Someone behind him to the left answered: „We’ve cleared out two barely used sections. We are sealing them off now and will dump excess heat into them as needed. That’ll be enough for today. If the evacuation continues to work smoothly, we can keep pace with our thermal demands by gradually closing more sections as they empty.“

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Down the docking bay, the last medical transport was arriving. The last two seriously injured. Four marines took the collapsible stretchers and wheeled them unto one of their ships. The other one was already closing up. As Nico understood, only one of the ships would fly towards the battleship, the other one would head back to Erulas. But two days in space was too much for the patients, so the battleship was their destination.

The final two stretchers were brought on board. The ship was a repurposed transport ship, with a cargo bay converted into temporary quarters for the marines. It now squeezed in twenty medical emergencies and twenty family members. The flight to the Aegis Prime would last an hour at most, much of it maneuvering time. But even so it was somewhat cramped. And it smelled of antiseptics and sweat.

Micah was one of three patients inside the tiny medical bay of the ship that was not equipped for serious cases. He had been put into an induced coma. A piece of the spacesuit was still around the stump of his severed arm, the emergency seal offering better protection than what the overloaded and dysfunctional medical center on Binary Bloom could do. Splints fixated his legs and blood-soaked bandages covered the worst wounds that had been closed with staples. A pressure IV hang on the bedside.

Two rooms away, Valarie was slumped over on a bed that was intended for a marine. Her leg was splinted and a few plasters and bandages covered the bruises and cuts she had suffered. But the only thing they could do about her extensive inner bleeding was pumping her so full of painkillers that she was barely conscious. She had not even noticed the other two in the room, sitting across from her on the other bed. A boy and his mother who had been hit by a falling steel beam. She woman’s hip was shattered and she was sobbing quietly.

„Departure in thirty seconds.“, a voice from the intercom announced.

„So this is it.“, Valarie thought, half alive. Not the way she had expected her life among pirates to come to an end. Aside from that, she did not really think anything. The drugs prevented her from focussing on a continuous train of thought. She felt numb and overwhelmed more than sad, mostly. A part of her felt sorrow at the things she had to leave behind. There had not been an opportunity to visit her private quarters. There was a printed picture of Twitch somewhere that she would’ve really wanted to have right now. She had had a bunch of digital pictures on her tablet, but that had not survived the EMP.

The ship began to vibrate slightly as she slumped back, its engines coming to life and the propulsion systems moving it out of the docking bay. A slight jerk indicated the ship’s own artificial gravity field taking over from the station’s. Valerie fell back into a semi-conscious state again as she left Binary Bloom, for the last time as she expected.