I was jolted forward; my positioning eased it and kept me all well, but my knees felt the impact; and it felt as if they had all but broken, an odd numbness. That was when my ship passed through only the hole, that tight fit. The eastern hallway was shaved off, and anything still left in the western utterly obliterated. I had my eyes closed. But if they had been open I suspend that the second impact, when my ship, now through the hole made by the cannon earlier, hit the floor of one of the many decks of the Eustacia, would’ve delivered to me the sight of all of the front most windows behind the dashboard in the cabin– all of the things around them, the front of the hull– being crushed into what would be a bloody heap had my ship any life.

And if there was any electricity, I would’ve seen the flood lights go on, too, but there wasn’t. And my eyes were closed. So I only knew that the cabin was depressurized when there was a loud ripping of the hull and crashing of the windows and, finally, when I felt all the air in my lungs being ripped out. I had trained for this, though. And I let the air– my life– go easy, no room for fear, because had I attempted to hold my breath I would’ve only destroyed my larynx and lungs proper. Would've died brutally in blood.

The force of pushing through the layer of steel that made up the floor of that deck was terrible. So terrible that it ripped the chair I was on– which I had stuck to the carpet earlier with a strong adhesive– all off from the floor and sent it flying over the dashboard. One of my shins which had not cleared the dash well enough hit it painfully and a cracking could be felt. Grinding and a dull pain. The chair, with me on it, danced somewhat in the air for a split second; it danced because the ship was righting itself since those two previous collisions had altered what was a straight plummet into something of a ‘landing.’ That is, the underside of the ship hit the next deck as if, having gone through the first, it decided that the cabin had taken enough.

And with that, everything in the cabin was sent horribly to the ground. The fridge fell off behind me from the attic, falling heavily and crashing into the carpeted floor and partially through it. The candles– which had all been put out from the evacuation of air from the cabin, and had been removed from the tables despite the adhesive just as my chair had– crashed one after another. The chair I was in fell hard although it fell backwards such that the back portion– the cushion– absorbed most of the fall. Although I still felt an odd sensation as if something in my had been grotesquely maimed.

The ship was at rest.

It was at rest and so I needed to act quickly. I was in the vacuum of space, and my lungs were dreadfully empty. I ripped the duct tape off from around my torso– which had only served to strap me to something of a deathtrap, the chair– and attempted to get up onto my feet. It was easy without any gravity. I used my right hand to push off of the ground at and at an angle so that I would glide forward towards the front of the cabin which was almost wholly ruined and gone.

I hadn’t noticed earlier it, but now that everything was at something that you can call a standstill here in this quiet solitude of space, I saw the red flood lights. Not from my ruined ship, but from the still operating ship that I had just crashed into. Red that illuminated the bodies.

Those crew members who were unlucky enough to have been in this hallway– or the one above it– had all died. Maybe it was instant for some of them, or maybe they suffocated, too afraid, too surprised to do anything. But they met their end all the same. And there was blood in zero gravity.

But I was suffocating now, and I couldn’t waste my time. Only a few seconds had passed but I was already feeling light and no longer of the world. A gray haze like that which I imagined eternally surrounded death, if that thing was even real– or if my delusions of a creeping death in the darkness above my ceiling were maddeningly correct. Regardless, my time was running out.

The hallway was wide and had three ways to enter it. But all those ways were electrically shut by some automatic system because of the flood. I supposed that The Army’s protocol was that all crew in flooded chambers were to be declared dead without even bothering to save them.

I came up to one of the locked breach doors. It was hearty steel and indestructible. However, above it was a vent probably used to simply allow air into the space for if the breach doors were ever pulled down for a reason beside a flood: quarantine and so on. But that provided an easy vulnerability. It was locked and shut, of course, but a vent was surely easier to bypass than a door twice my size.

I pushed up off the door and up to the vent. The ceiling of the hallway was all fancy and arched, and there was a section above the vent, which was naturally near to the top of the hallway, seemed like a grand place to ‘hang’ off of. I grabbed it and used it as an anchor to swing myself toward the vent; I was attempting to kick it in whilst in low gravity.

Now I knew that I was probably destroying whatever hadn’t been already destroyed in my hand, but their state wouldn't matter if I were dead. It helped that all pain was almost entirely absent.

So as my vision began to turn almost all monochrome or maybe some odd shade of gray, the vent, finally and on what was probably the last kick in me, exploded with pressure. My work had exposed some portion of the hall on the other side to the vacuum of space which consequently resulted in a rush of air coming straight towards me and my legs which had just kicked the vent. The air pushed the vent now in the opposite direction towards me violently, and, since my legs were still on it, forcefully rotated my body clockwise as it slid past below me. So I was up against the ceiling and air was rushing below me; I angled myself and grabbed the vent before it was out of reach. Then, with the other hand I pushed off the ceiling and towards the entryway I had made.

The air attempted to send me far back toward my ship behind me where I wouldn’t have had the strength to return. So I reached my hand through the empty gap where the vent once was there and grabbed the other side. I then pulled myself through the rushing current with the last of my strength.

The fit was painfully tight but I got through, and with the vent still in my off hand. Once completely through, I put my legs up against the margins of where the vent was on the other side so that the air was merely pushing me against the wall that my legs were using as if the ground where I, lastly, put the vent into place. But it didn’t hold very well, so with my other hand I took out the last of the duct tape, cut off a piece with my mouth, and sealed the vent into place. I was now in a pressurized portion of the Eustacia.

The ship had a gravity synthesizer, so I fell to the ground on all fours, and I took a large breath of air. I looked up from the concrete floor and analyzed my environment.

Firstly, the emergency lights were on. And an automated voice was repeating a message over the intercom.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Unauthorized biological anomaly on deck six.”

I assumed that was me at first, but after I got to my feet I saw very clearly that I was on deck three. I had crashed into the middle of the ship and went through a deck so I was naturally closer to the bottom.

The message was eventually cut off abruptly and I changed my focus to weigh my options now that I had the ability and the time to breathe. I leaned against a nearby wall since my legs weren’t walking right, and my arms wouldn’t respond to my commands anymore.

“I’m so… so disoriented… I’m so… dizzy,” I mumbled to myself.

I tried moving my arms again– which moments ago were working– but there was nothing. Nothing. No movement. I was too afraid to look at them. They were so numb that I worried if they had simply been amputated when I wasn’t looking.

“That’s a funny thought.”

I tried to get off the wall and walk to the other side of the linear corridor, but my legs kept moving all wrong. I stumbled and fell back again against the wall.

So, I turned to the wall and said to it, “Oh you’re my lover, aren’t you? Will you mend my wounds and take me to your place far away on a distant planet? You’re sure in favor of supporting me, so why don’t you go ahead and do that, too.”

But, moments after my bout of insanity, the breach door at the end of the corridor, which had been automatically shut from when I kicked in the vent, opened. And there were armymen before me. So I made myself get off the wall and stand, even though it was all terrible and shaky.

There were eight of them. The majority of their uniform was gray, and what wasn’t was black. The only gladdened color was the yellow that marked their surname below their left shoulder, and the gold that read ‘The Army’ under the right. The uniform had helmets but these men had taken theirs off. They were humans without any visible augmentations.

According to the gold, it was some 'Azimuth' who stood at the forefront of the men. He kept his hands down at his sides in some military stance; his men, however, leveled their gunpowder rifles at me which were all black and dreadful. He spoke while his men took practiced positions all around me.

“I was worried that I would never see you again. That I would never get to tell you what I've learned about you. Because I used to wonder what that name of yours meant, Fare. And I just couldn’t figure out even the first… the first place to look for that meaning. I didn’t even know the spelling.”

Two at my left, four at my right, one behind me, and of course him who was in front, blocking the way.

“Fair– a fair guy? Does he fare well against all odds? Does he make others say ‘farewell?’ Is he the fair that is in town?”

And he tilted his head to the side in mock rediscovery of some absurd meaning of my name.

“Or he is the Fare that must be paid?”

This ship had a hum from its many engines that moved it along the infinite cosmos. So it wasn’t silent when he stopped speaking. But it felt silent because I knew how this must end.

“I don’t know you, armyman. I don’t know you at all. And I do not know if you're trying to say that you intend to line my pockets because in this case I think goes the other way around. So come here. Come here and get a payday and let me go. Come here and get a share.”

I did not have any money on me.

“You know me. And I know you. And I told the captain that you would be here alone in this nebula. And you knew that. So let's not play dumb here." He closed the distance. "I have a team I lead now, and I'll be a captain of a ship all soon enough." He tilted his head the other way. "But what do you lead? What do you have? I saw your ship plunge into ours, so you don't even have that anymore. I saw your-- how you say-- 'friends' meet their respective ends in the wretched battlefield made of what was a beautiful station complex-- New Levens. And even before all of that you've met me boots out in the tundras of Gymen where I suspect you were hoping to flee to again after your grand heist in a move that was absurdly predictable. So of course none of that worked out. The Army is collecting 'the pot' from your 'friends' and will collect yours after today. The day your ship was destroyed, and the day you died." He drew his revolver and leveled at me.

I could not face him properly. My legs were all ruined. There was a mechanical noise from the weapon.

And then the lights went out.

Although dazed and exhausted, I reacted well enough. I let my legs slip and I fell purposefully onto the ground. It hurt because my arms still would not move, but I endured. Azimuth fired first-- his weapon sending my ears into a horrible bout of ring, and blinding me with its fire. Then the armyman behind me fired, and the black hallway was all white and then dark and then white again. Neither of their bullets, luckily, made no breaches likely because we were away from any exterior sections of the hull. And they all missed me, of course, because they were aiming at torso height and I was now on the floor.

But then the one behind me cut off with something like a squelch. I expected him to stop shooting at some point, but he only got off four or so shots before he abruptly stopped. Before I could think about that any further, someone else, probably Azimuth, began to shoot. Not at me. But then they were cut off as well. And then the next. And the one after after.

And then it was just the hum of the ship and a powerful darkness. And I had the strangest feeling that death was around me. That delusion from before. It was just that the air was thick with some invisible substance– like mud– that only this time did not cause me to cry, it caused me to feel some odd humidity in my throat and chest. And I was so afraid. There was so much fear throughout all that has happened today, but the fear now was at its zenith. The fear that death– as absurd as it is– was with me in this hallway.

There was a skittering in the darkness. It came from far in front where the men had entered and continued, circling around me, until it ended just behind me. Whatever it was moved fast.

And then the humidity in my throat and chest strengthened almost so that it felt like there was water in me, and that I was drowning– but, oddly, I could still breathe. But then it grew. It grew closer, stronger. And I felt a breath against my ear. Humid, flowing with water. As if I were near to a never-endering river-- or perhaps a rain under an infinite overcast.

“Companion, you seem to be at the very end of your rope. Today was probably the worst day of your life." 'She'-- assuming it is not some absurd replication of the voice box of a human female-- let that linger in the air.

'She' continued, "But it’s all alright, companion,” and the voice flowed like honey with an aftertaste of a faint, throaty wind, “it’s all alright because you are still able to breathe. A wonderful accomplishment... even if your arms may no longer pick you back up. So I'm glad. I am glad because I didn't know if you would be able to take advantage of the opportunity I gave you against this formidable ship that should have been that which ended you."

The odd light I saw through the windows of the Eustacia must've been gunshots, then, not the engines of fighters preparing to engage. They were gunshots. Aimed at 'her.'

"Now if you wish– and only if you wish because you have declined my previous offer– I may help you. And I apologize for interfering without asking, but I wanted to give you a fair choice since not wanting to speak with me doesn't me you wouldn't want help in such a dire situation as you are in now. That is why I boarded the Eustacia in the first place before that poorly timed clearing you entered. Although I have to say that I intended for you to simply escape in your ship rather than violently make this... entry." There was something that I suppose approximated a sigh, although it was all wrong in a variety of ways.

"So we are together again. And I am in the dark again. All is normal and standard for us. So, companion, what do you say? Would like something to help you?”