Theodore darted over to an engineering console as dull-red emergency lighting flickered to life. Then there was another shudder, and the lights disappeared again.

“Activate my contingency batteries,” Theodore snapped, as a crewman carefully jabbed commands in the darkness.

A dull whir filled the bridge, followed by the same red lights, this time distinctly dimmer. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“Checking, sir,” the engineer said. “I’ve lost most of the ship’s functionality… we’re drifting out of control.”

A chill ran down Jack’s spine. Looking around the room, he noticed more alarmed faces. “Did your sins catch up with you at last, Teddy?” he asked.

Theodore glared at him, but quickly turned away as he worked with the bridge crew.

“We put the ship under a lot of strain with all those maneuvers,” muttered the helmsman, though Jack could see he didn’t believe his words.

“Something’s out there,” Darryl said quietly as he looked through one of the bridge’s telescopes. “Off the port bow. There’s a patch of black with no stars.”

The bridge was deathly silent. Theodore slammed a console, causing every man to leap out of his skin. “Dammit,” he cursed, “why is nothing working?”

“Night Stalkers,” Rashid said calmly, and Jack saw a fatal resignation in his eyes. The experienced pilot had obviously heard enough of the stories.

“Absolute nonsense,” Theodore snarled. “A pack of old wives’ tales spread by the cartels to keep people off our routes.”

“You know that for a fact, do you?” Rashid asked with a raised eyebrow.

Theodore didn’t respond.

A distant bang reverberated through the hull of the ship. One of the engineers went pale.

“I-I’m showing a slight dip in air pressure,” he stammered. “I think something has breached the hull.”

“Where?” Theodore snapped.

“I can’t locate it—the batteries are barely able to keep the core systems online.”

“It’s pirates. Has to be. We ran into someone else’s route, and they obviously don’t know who we are.”

“I never heard of pirates stopping an EM-shielded vessel dead in space, even with—” Darryl began, but stopped as more bangs rang through the corridors of the vessel.

“More air pressure drops,” the engineer cautioned.

“Well,” Theodore said, “they’re about to find that they messed with the wrong guys. Darryl, take your men to the weapons lockers and patrol the ship in threes. In threes, do you hear me?”

“Yes, boss,” Darryl nodded, and signalled to the others.

They moved quickly; their earlier trepidation lost as they now only sought leadership to see them through the quickly deteriorating situation.

“It won’t help,” Rashid shrugged as he seated himself in the pilot’s chair, drawing a small bottle of spirits out of a cubbyhole. He offered some to Jack, who declined.

“We can get control of this if we can get the generator back online,” Theodore said calmly. “I’ll head over there and see what I can do.” He turned to the engineer at his side. “Stay here and be ready to reset when I call you over the comm.”

After his brother left the bridge, Jack strode over to one of the consoles.

“I’ll keep an eye on life-support,” he announced to the room at large, though nobody paid him any attention.

Several minutes later, the backup generator hummed to life, restoring a little more light and more of the secondary systems. When he saw his console light up, Jack quickly went to work.

“Okay, ship’s internals are back and… Jesus, there are whole decks offline,” the engineer said.

“What was that?” Theodore snapped as he re-entered the bridge.

“I think… I think they are severing cables wherever they go. Looks like the entire aft half of the ship is just…dead.”

“Darryl,” Theodore called into the ship’s intercom. “Wherever you are, get on a comm panel and tell me what’s going on.”

Silence filled the bridge, reaching into the primal parts of Jack’s brain to stir his worst nightmares. It continued until Theodore’s patience snapped.

“Someone get on the damned com!” he yelled into the speaker.

There was a brief fuzz of static, followed by a deep, rasping cough. “It’s Jan,” a voice wheezed. “They’re on deck four, moving forward. We can’t stop them.” A clatter of gunfire rang out. “They’re so fast… not human…we can’t fight back. I’ve been shot. Theodore, you need—”

The voice and the intercom cut off abruptly. Jack had thought he had heard a soft and repeated tap in the background. His imagination was churning away, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. Nothing else mattered to him now but to complete his task. Not even his own life.

“I’m getting a gun,” he called, as he hurried off the bridge.

With more of the ship going dead, and gunshots ringing out through the stifling air, Theodore eventually ran from the bridge, his anger turning to dread. The shooting was sparse; hurried bursts followed by long stretches of silence. At the far end of a corridor, he saw the dull red lighting flicker to blackness as another part of the ship died.

Theodore shuddered at the thought of what was approaching through those shadows, and he hurried on, ducking through the crew lounge towards the storage lockers on the port side. He raced through the compartments until he came to the cubbyhole he had had secretly installed. There he would find salvation, there would be his way out of the nightmare, waiting for him alone, as the engineers had promised.

He hauled the false bulkhead aside, pushed his thumb against the sensor, and waited to hear the wonderful acknowledgment beep.

But instead, a harsh error tone buzzed in his ears. He jabbed his thumb down again, and when the lock refused a second time, he smashed it with his fist.

“Good plan,” Jack’s voice spoke out from the shadows. “A secret escape pod known only to you. Easily accessible from the bridge, physically separated from the ship’s systems, and with one of the new micro-fusion plants to power it. You even had the latest EM shielding installed and permanently active, even as the dampener hid it from the internal sensors. Probably could have survived anything.”

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

“Jack?” Theodore hissed. “What have you done?” He shoved his face up against a glass portal, desperate to glimpse a sign of his lifeboat in the stubbornly empty blackness.

“I’m sure it’s doing a great job taking care of itself, floating out there on its own,” Jack went on. “With all the rest of the ship’s pods.”

“You…” Theodore sunk his head against the bulkhead as he quivered with rage. “I’ll kill you.”

“Yeah, why not? Not like I’m going to live much longer with these eldritch horrors getting closer. They’ve probably killed everyone else by now—won’t be much longer before they find us here.”

In the silence that followed, Theodore realized he hadn’t heard another gunshot in quite some time.

“I always thought Ruben was full of shit,” Jack chuckled. “Well, I guess he got the last laugh.”

Theodore turned on him with a snarl, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him up against the cold metal wall of the compartment. “What have you done?”

“Honestly, I don’t really know,” Jack said with a manic smile. “Been a crazy couple of months, met some crazy people. But I did what mattered to me. I trapped you and the rest of them in this coffin so you can die like you deserve, big brother.”

Theodore smashed his fist repeatedly into Jack’s face until he tired and stepped back, his expression a mask of helpless rage.

“All that anger.” Jack spat blood onto the floor. “What’s it doing for you, Teddy? Is it getting your escape pod back? Is it getting your dead men back? Is it going to resurrect the Fenway family before it dissolves into nothing?”

“How could you do this?” Theodore whispered. “Your own family?”

Jack laughed. “My own family? You tried to hand me over to Rayker as a present. You ran to your private little escape craft so you could abandon everyone else and save your own skin.”

“It’s… it’s not personal.”

“And trafficking kids, Teddy? You defiled the Fenway family for a few extra credits and killed anyone who figured that out.”

“I don’t know—”

“Come on, you colossal fool. I found your bolthole—did you really think I wouldn’t find the hidden space in hold eight too? I’m a pretty good smuggler, Teddy. You can’t let me on a ship unless you want me to learn all its secrets.”

Theodore drew a pistol from his belt and aimed it squarely at Jack’s chest. When he pulled the trigger, the detonation exploded in the cramped compartment like a bolt of lighting. Jack fell back against the bulkhead. He reached up to feel the sticky blood on his chest.

“I know the stories too, little brother,” Theodore said quietly. “They leave one alive to scare the others. Lucky me, right?”

“Not really the point,” Jack managed as his breathing grew heavier. “I left all the files on a public server for VennZech to access.”

“What?”

“All the plans, the communications, the payoffs. The whole galaxy will know that it was your job, and the Helvetic League will pull every string they can to wipe the Fenway family from existence. The whole clan will be gone in a couple of months, and everyone else who did business with them. Everyone will know it was you. Everyone will know you were fooled by your idiot little brother, and that you were responsible for the destruction of the business empire your father left to you.”

Theodore turned a sickly green as he took this in.

“I thought I knew how evil you were, Teddy. But kids?”

Theodore turned away, waving a hand. “I don’t have to answer for that—it’s just business. The League squeezes us more every year and I had to get creative. Of course, the lieutenants would pretend they are better than that. But what happens when percentages shrink, and their precious lifestyles get threatened?”

He turned back. “Violence, of course. Clan warfare. Men dead and women weeping. I took the cruelty off their backs and put it somewhere else. There are League aristocrats who pay good money for that kind of service, and why should I judge? What difference does it make?”

Jack shook his head, feeling the slow dullness of the movement. He tried to concentrate as darkness crept into the corners of his vision. “Maybe a man like you would never understand. Or maybe you’re not really human.”

“You just hate me, don’t you? I know you always have, like the rest of them,” Theodore snapped. “Why should I disappoint everyone?”

Jack coughed blood onto the deck. “Hate? It’s not hate. Do you feel hate when you wash dirt off your hands? That’s all you are really, and you know it. You’ve always known that Dad despised you, knew you to be weak and incompetent. All your successes came from luck, or from the hard work of your lieutenants. Even in the last few years, everyone knew it was Riley who was the real strength of the family. I’m guessing that trafficking was his idea, and he talked you into it. And you were too stupid to think of anything else.”

Theodore’s cold eyes drifted away, devoid of the manic energy that usually illuminated them. The mask had fallen, and it could never be replaced.

“You’re not a real person,” Jack continued between rattled coughs. “You’re a cancer on the human race. You proved that when you started trafficking people. But you always knew, didn’t you? Always suspected the truth, even as you tried desperately to hide it. Your whole life has been a lie, and now everybody knows it, and there’s no anger, no lies, no manipulation that you can pull that’s going to save you from that. The League aristocrats you served will parade your head around on a stake as a token victory against human trafficking. You’ll be blacklisted by the cartels, and in a month you’ll be as dead as I am. So no, I don’t hate you. I’m just glad I got it done. Whatever I got out of this shitty mess, I at least did something good for the world.”

Theodore examined the gun in his hand closely. He savored the elegance of the finely shaped metal, ran his fingers over the embossed signature that made it his own. “I always knew you were a sharp one, Jack. A coward, but sharp.”

He turned to walk away, then paused as if lost in thought. After some time, he appeared to make a decision, then turned back.

“Well,” he said coldly. “I won’t leave it to you. I won’t give you that pleasure. I will end it my way, at least.” He pushed the barrel of the gun up under his own chin as he squeezed the trigger.

Jack didn’t really hear the gun go off, and the flash of light seemed as dim as a candle in the darkness. He thought he had passed out, waking groggily to see a pair of boots stood in the doorway. When he looked up, he saw a gray armored figure with a blank-faced helmet and a rifle aimed at his head. He saw the red emergency lights glinting off wet patches across the figure’s body and weapon—blood.

He stared at it calmly as it observed him. Eventually, it lowered the rifle, remaining in a position of rest while it appeared to wait. Jack wondered what thoughts must be passing through the thing’s mind as it took in the scene—him shot and clinging to life in the corner, with his brother dead by his own hand.

He grew cold and began to shake. As the life seeped from his body, he felt that his soul was leaking through the ship’s hull into the void beyond, to wander amongst the stars for eternity. The image comforted him as he lay still, watching the mysterious being that had destroyed yet another ship.

Another soldier appeared in the walkway beyond, shoving its way past the first, as a third followed closely behind. They knelt next to Jack, and he watched as a gloved hand reached up to its blank helmet.

There was a hiss, and the face mask was pulled away, revealing Urtiga’s grim smile. The third soldier did the same, and he saw Gucci, her face a mask of alarm as she took in his wounds. Once they had cleaned and bandaged his wound and hooked him up to an intra-venous bag, Jack heard Urtiga call into a radio for blood, watching as more faceless soldiers flooded the compartment. He felt himself lifted into the air before he passed out.

He regained consciousness in a sickbay, a forest of tubes sticking out of his body, while monitors displayed his vital signs. When he tried to sit up, he felt intense pain stabbing through his chest, and thought better of it. A young woman in a doctor’s coat approached, studying him with the coldness of a reptile. He tried to speak, but all he could manage was a murmur.

“Try to rest, please,” she said, and turned away to activate a comm unit on the wall. A short time later, Jack felt pressure on his arm, and opened his eyes to see the faces of his rescuers.

“We really have to stop meeting like this,” Gucci said as she flashed him a smile.

“Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner,” Urtiga said sheepishly. “We basically had to run across the whole ship once they identified you.”

Jack sighed and shook his head. “Did you get the bomb?” he managed.

“Yeah. It’s all good Jack. You did great.” Urtiga patted his forearm.

“The others?”

“Anyone who didn’t resist is okay. We usually give them memory erasing drugs and drop them off in a dive bar somewhere.”

Jack chuckled. “Night Stalkers,” he managed, before he broke into a coughing fit.

“Sergeant, please don’t tax my patient,” the doctor snapped from the corner of the sickbay. “He needs rest.”

Urtiga smiled guiltily. “Sorry, Doc.”

“Most of the stories are bullshit,” Gucci explained. “We’re just doing a job. Some of us more professionally than others, maybe.” She exchanged a stern glance with Urtiga, who winked back.

“You… will erase my memory?” Jack asked.

“Well, you know that depends,” Gucci said thoughtfully. “You did pretty well, and when we find good assets, we like to hang on to them. Something for you to think about.”

Jack, now growing tired, flashed a thumbs up. They left him alone, promising to visit him again when he had healed. He sank back into his bed, letting his eyes close and his consciousness sink into a warm and comforting sleep. He dreamed of an alien sky and clusters of farmland as people around him worked for their future—a place where he hoped he could one day belong.