Director Rotolo looked and felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Once again, she found herself in her office, nursing a cup of woefully weak coffee as she did her best to unwind from the chaos of the evening. Her whole body wouldn’t stop shaking, each beat of her heart felt hollow and dull, and instead of getting any more work done she’d resigned herself to staring blankly at the door of her office–ready to throw a mask on and perk right on up should anyone come across her in this sorry state.
To say her passengers were unhappy about the situation would be the understatement of the century. Never in all her years had she faced such vicious backlash–and she couldn’t even find it in her to get upset right back at them for it. Every one of them were exhausted and fed up already, and finding out that the CU was facing a catastrophic failure of its two most critical systems had been the final straw on the camel herd’s back. There was screaming, hysterical sobs, doomsayers announcing to anyone that would listen that they’d be dead within the week.
It was so bad that for the first time in her career, she had to ask security to step in and quell what was quickly forming into a small-scale riot. For the moment, excessive force wasn’t needed, which was good for everyone. Rotolo didn’t want her passengers getting hurt from their own stupidity, and she just as equally didn’t want her security team busting up their weapon supply this early on.
More bad news would need to be shared. To her crew, to her passengers, to everyone aboard. After a sleepless night, Ulys had come to the conclusion that there was nothing he could do. Their software had completely locked them out, leaving them entirely cut-off from the rest of the world communications-wise. The cryopods, too, were completely unusable–they couldn’t even be turned on manually, one by one. And the kicker? It was all because of the company.
Only an official member of Internal Software Diagnostics could access the faulty system and hard reboot it…which was not a crew member deemed essential to have aboard an Economy class CU–the official reasoning was that the process was so streamlined and consistent that they didn’t need one, which was just another way to say “we are spending too many credits on this, let’s get rid of it”.
The only way to get in touch with anyone from ISD was through the comms–a revelation that almost made Rotolo put her head straight through the crummy synthmetal of her desk.
Cryo, too, was a victim of relentless corporate interference. If the internal workings of the cryopods detected any external interference (such as, say, trying to manually engage or disengage the cryostasis function), it shuts itself down for the standard Galactic Day of 28 hours. At least a third of their pods were now busy taking a nap after Ulys and his team fruitlessly tried to brute-force them to work.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, they couldn’t even get into another CU for help. CUs could only be opened and closed by their respective Directors, which again, was made impossible due to the inability to send any sort of emergency signal out. It was like the company had thought of every possible emergency except for this one.
While trying not to lose her damn mind more than she already had, Rotolo began to make note of everything she would need to file a proper complaint to the company about the sorry state of the CU’s failsafes–or rather, the lack of them.
She wanted nothing more than to sit in her office, away from the noise and the pressure of all eyes looking to her for answers. Here, she could pretend that none of this ever happened. Maybe if she pulled out a datapad and started writing a damning future testimony against corporate for their meddling, she could instead pretend she was doing the same boring paperwork as always before an embarkation.
But she wasn’t doing paperwork. She couldn’t even waste her time on a testimony right now, not when time was of the essence.
They only had enough supplies to last them a year–and by year, that meant a year on their scale. All of their rations would theoretically run out just before their journey had reached the half-year mark in true-time. The CU had no greenhouse, no replication units–the only upside is that they’d always have fresh air, and if used properly their waste filtration would ensure they’d never go thirsty. But food? Medicine? That’d all be gone.
If they didn’t make contact with the outside world, they’d starve.
But leaving the CU was assuredly a death sentence in of itself. They were not so small that the human eye (or in this case, inhuman) could not pick them up, but they could be easily overlooked. A stray bit of dirt, a bug, a crumb…to someone not looking close enough, a diminished human would easily look the same as all three and discarded without a second thought. A breeze could throw them around the room, every footstep from their gigantic pilot would knock them off balance.
How could they possibly get within Ucari’s line of sight? Or, barring that, would they be able to risk the slim hope that his enhanced Thuvonian hearing would be able to hear their pathetic little voices screaming to be saved?
The CU had a few final Hail Marys built-in for emergencies that took place outside, such as if the CUCU were damaged beyond repair or if it were stolen by pirates…or if their assigned courier had “gone postal”, as it had been described in her training sessions. These were all last resort options, of course. Only to be employed if Rotolo had no other choice, and the knowledge of which only privy to her, her senior staff, and anyone smart enough to read the fine print of the waivers they signed (so…nobody else.)
First to consider was a Black Hole Event. In the books this was defined as a scenario in which “death was more preferable to one’s current circumstances”. Such as, for example, being sucked into the gravity well of a Black Hole, knowing full-well that it would be better to die now rather than suffer the agonizing death caused by spaghettification. If conditions in the CU were that terrible, that hopeless, she’d call it a BHE and proceed forward. The gas needed to humanely and mercifully euthanize herself, her crew, and her passengers was manually activated–no computer interference (or lack thereof, rather) would stop it.
Then, there was the Supernova, which was non-applicable to their situation. If the safety of the entire CUCU was at risk by an outsider threat then they could deploy the Supernova and destroy themselves and their assailants in one fell swoop. Some questioned the existence of the Supernova–to which the higher ups reasoned that it would be better to make sure the CUCU didn’t end up in the wrong hands by blowing the thing up to Kingdom Come.
It was, after all, proprietary technology.
Shortly before she had sequestered herself in her office–well, the reason she had done so in the first place was that Ulys had informed her that the White Dwarf Protocol could still be enacted. Rotolo had quickly made him stop talking, pushing it far out of her mind, suppressing the disgusted shiver down her spine at the thought of it.
Not that. It would never come to that. She didn’t even want to think about it.
Shaking her head to banish the thought for good and clear her mind, she knew what her next move had to be. No more sitting in the dark, no more theoretical testimonies she may never be able to present, and certainly no more hemming and hawing. She had work to do.
Director Rotolo activated her communicator and called for her Head of Security, Commander Cassius Volgis.
“Get me your most able-bodied team and send them to meet me at the Hatch. Make sure to get them their cams, too.”
“You decided we’re gonna start sending folks outside?” Volgis asked, though they hardly sounded surprised.
Rotolo slumped in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose tightly.
“It’s the only option we have.”
A lone security officer watched as the Hatch’s doors sealed tight and flush against the synthmetal of the CU, leaving him on the ledge that connected their vessel to the CUCU. He knew, from having seen one of these things at his normal scale, what they were meant to look like. A decently sized box, with inserts on its front-facing side that held the CUs inside like hard-drives. Right now, with the cold silvery walls surrounding him, it was difficult to contend that the same thing he had seen before–so ordinary, so unremarkable–was what he was standing on now.
The Director had decided that they needed to make contact, and the best of the best rounded up to do it. Per her orders, only one member of Security would be sent out at a time–to minimize potential casualties, and to ensure that the inside of the CU still had robust protection in case the passengers decided to step out of line.
A fine plan. All the officers had been trained in the event of an evacuation like this, and were the most well equipped (quite literally) to handle the environment outside the CU. They were all assigned a regulation standard set of protective gear to use, and provided a gravpack should they find themselves falling off of anything tall.
Selected specifically by Commander Volgis for this mission, he would be known as “Alpha”. According to them, it’d be easier for Director Rotolo to keep track of who was outside the CU if she knew them by an alphabetical signifier rather than their names–easier to call on a codename than trying to remember the names of so many people. It made sense. She was a busy woman, with more on her plate now than Alpha could ever possibly comprehend. Whatever he could do to minimize her stress, the better.
Before Alpha laid a no-man’s land. An endless expanse that was actually only the interior living space of a ship. Seeing it on a view-window could not in a million years accurately reflect the scale of it–how even a cup sitting on a table in the distance looked magnificent. Otherworldly. Dust reflected in the dim light like the stars projected from the outside, the string-lights above were like little suns dancing in the air.
“Wow…” Alpha breathed in awe. His earpiece rang, and he answered.
“How are you doing out there, Alpha?” The Director’s kind voice asked him. Alpha chuckled and shrugged.
“Oh, you know…it’s no big deal being out here. Haha.”
Rotolo didn’t laugh at his little joke, but her voice still retained a distinct sense of warmth. “That’s great. The camera’s connection is very strong, so you should be good to proceed with the mission at your discretion.”
Attached to his helmet was a camera, yet another thing that thankfully didn’t require the internal computing systems to be online. It was more of like a two-way radio, with an established connection to a tablet that now rested in the Director’s hands back in her office. It would give her, the Commander, and the rest of the senior staff a real-time feed of Alpha’s mission.
Which was good. He liked having company. He would have preferred the rest of his team be out here with him, but he understood why they couldn’t. This was for the best.
Far, far away, Alpha heard the sound of a door sliding open, magnified by a hundred. It was not unlike the great metal doors of a hangar, and soon, he heard the rumble. Rhythmic and precise–the sound of footsteps. Alpha perked up, running over to the ledge of the CUCU to strain his neck for any sign of movement. Before long, a great red mass known as Aesa Ucari reared his handsome head.
His body was bare save for a pair of tight black boxers at his waist. The Thuvon was broad shouldered, with thick arms, thicker legs, and a soft exposed belly. His striped, crimson skin appeared slightly damp, and Alpha could spot the sparkle of water droplets shining in his hair as he came into the light. Aesa must have been taking a shower this whole time.
Alpha’s attention was soon caught by something else, and he let out a low whistle of appreciation.
“Damn Ucari! How d’you fit an ass that fat in the captain’s chair?” He quipped, unable to avert his gaze from the rather eye-catching behind as it quivered and shook like some sort of massive water balloon.
In his ear, Commander Volgis spoke up.
“Focus, Alpha. You’re not there to be a voyeur.”
“Sorry, sorry…”
Without the aid of a view-window to compensate for the time-dilation, the colossus appeared to move eerily slow. Each step of Aesa’s took almost three times as long to finish as one of Alpha’s would have, and yet covered more distance in that time than the shrunken man could hope to in a single day. Alpha realized that the way Aesa was going would take him right in front of the CUCU–and if the Thuvon might be able to hear him, this would be the best time to do it.
“Damn, and here I was thinking this was gonna be difficult…HEY! BIG GUY!”
Alpha began jumping up and down, waving his arms, doing anything to make his miniature form more visible for when Aesa heard his cries.
“LOOK DOWN HERE! DOWN HERE, PRETTYBOY! WE NEED YOU! GOT AN EMERGENCY! C’MON! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!”
Hundreds of feet in the air, a pointed ear twitched towards him.
Aesa could have sworn he heard something.
He’d just gotten done with his shower, perfectly relaxed after washing away that awful sheen of ick that one gets from sitting in the pilot’s seat for too long. It’d been a perfect day–his passengers were secure, he was finally doing a job he’d been dreaming about for decades, and the best part? He was still going at a pace ahead of schedule. Aesa didn’t want to get his hopes up, but if things ran this smoothly for the whole trip? He could see a lot more orders headed his way in the future.
These pleasant thoughts about all his future endeavors were swiftly interrupted by a strange, high-pitched sound in his ears as he strode past the CUCU. He startled, definitely overreacting in hindsight, whipping around so fast that he felt his tail smack against the side of the little metal structure hard–which only served to freak him out some more, as his focus quickly became on making sure his cargo was still intact.
There was no way he’d hit it hard enough to damage it, but he did knock it so hard that it moved a few inches. A nasty pit of guilt welled up in his throat–even though all the passengers were asleep, he couldn’t help but feel awful for having jostled them so hard. Hopefully they didn’t feel it while they dreamed, and wouldn’t mind the mess he no-doubt caused on the inside when they woke up.
As he looked over the CUCU and returned it to its proper place, his ears twitched and turned incessantly, trying to find the source of the noise. It was driving him mad…until he realized what he was hearing, and almost smacked himself for not realizing it sooner. It definitely came from the very thing he was meticulously inspecting–a thing like that had to have so many little metaphorical bells and whistles in it, making…well, literal bells and whistles.
It’s way too early to get Spacer’s Paranoia, anyway. Aesa thought to himself with a roll of his eyes. Everything was fine, he was just…antsy. Who wouldn’t be?
He just needed to get to bed already.
Rotolo had no words.
One moment, she was watching the world through Alpha’s eyes as Ucari came into view. Her optimism had risen when the slow-moving colossus started to make his way past the CUCU, in perfect view of an infinitesimal man shouting up at him. And shout Alpha did, so loud and so hard that it peaked the microphone attached to him and no doubt ruined any chance of him speaking right for the next week.
An enormous, pointed ear flicked in Alpha’s direction. Everyone in the Director’s office let out a collective sigh of relief or clapped each other on the back–Ucari could hear them!
Rotolo herself exhaled an excited little laugh, taking a moment to bury her face in her hands. She could almost cry she was so happy.
Far away, Aesa’s eyes widened–what was that look on his face? Shock? His head began to turn fully in their direction, but his gaze was not on the CUCU–it was anywhere else, though it was hard to tell exactly where he was looking. His entire body, too, turned–and with it came a world-serpent sized tail, barreling right towards the CUCU.
They had all the time in the world to react, and yet no time at all. The Director fumbled for her earpiece, connecting into the P.A system just in time for a panicked shout.
“BRACE! BRACE! BR-”
The next thing she knew, there was a great bang. Everything that was not nailed down ended up getting launched to the side. Pens clattered to the ground, mementos flew off her desk and shattered upon impact. Rotolo’s head knocked into the wall, her tablet flying out of her hands. Groans bubbled up from her senior staff, but her priority was not on them now–it was on whatever was going on outside.
She scrambled towards the now-cracked tablet, trying to make sense of the feed coming through it. Alpha, it seemed, was tumbling down. Flailing against the air, the view from his camera was a blur. Volgis shook themselves out, running forward to rip the tablet out of her hands and get a look at what was going on. Rotolo just sat, heartbeat pounding in hear ears, as Volgis tried to contact their officer.
“Your pack, Alpha, USE THE DAMN GRAVPACK!” Volgis shouted into their earpiece.
Rotolo knew from her own brief time training with one just how finicky gravpacks could be. Yes, they’d slow your rate of descent, but it all depended on when you deployed them. In function, they were almost like…a parachute, she remembered. Wait too long, one becomes a splatter on the ground. Deploy too early, and the gravpack runs out of fuel and the fall begins again. She couldn’t imagine trying to appropriately judge the right time to activate one while flailing a thousand feet in the air…
From the tablet, a shaky, breathless shout of “Gravpack deployed!” could be heard. Rotolo rose from her feet, inching to Volgis’ side to watch as Alpha’s fall stabilized and he drifted gently down and down…until landing (rather roughly) onto the ship’s floor.
Which was a terrible, terrible place to be.
Alpha felt like he was going to throw up. His body still felt like it was falling, even though he knew he had landed firmly on the ground by the soreness in his legs. Sweat stung his eyes, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
It was a miracle to be alive after getting smacked–not even by the tail itself, he realized, but by the force of the impact itself. Just that was enough to send him flying.
From Alpha’s troublesome position on the ship’s floor, to get a glimpse of Aesa’s face now required that he crane his neck back as far as it could go–not that it helped any. From this great distance, the Thuvon’s upper body was a blurry silhouette, as if the universe was telling Alpha that he was no longer worthy of perceiving him. Beholding him was a privilege for people that weren’t smaller than ants.
Even so, taking him all in left Alpha breathless. His base, most primal of instincts, were giving mixed signals to his senses. There was no way that the thing he was looking at could have been a living, breathing creature. To Alpha’s frazzled mind, he was more like a mountain; a tidal wave in the shape of a person. A facsimile of someone like him and the true definition of something alien.
Alpha could hear Aesa move again before he saw it. The dull drone of metal creaking as an enormous weight shifted. He watched, sickeningly curious, as the Thuvon put all his weight onto his right leg in preparation to turn his body away from the shelf holding the CUCU. Alpha could see the shifting of the muscles in his round, sturdy thigh as they stiffened to accommodate the added pressure and the wobble of fat that would have gone unseen to normal-sized eyes as gravity took hold.
The enormous alien twisted toward Alpha, and with this simple act, everything changed. Shadows moved and shifted like Aesa was a celestial body blocking out a distant sun. As the metallic floor groaned some more under him, Aesa’s foot finally lifted from the ground, and Alpha’s ears popped uncomfortably from the sudden vacuum of pressure it caused. A single, thoughtless step did not bring a foot much higher than an inch, but from Alpha’s perspective? He may as well have been watching a rocket launch.
Aesa’s leg surged forward, and the extended time it took him to do so from the sheer difference of scale between him and the tiny officer made it look…graceful. Awesome. Elegant, in the same way watching an elephant would have been.
His mouth was agape, his heart pounded, Alpha couldn’t even hear the sound of Commander Volgis screaming for him to run over the incessant ringing in his ears.
The quake of Aesa’s foot connecting with the ground, having brought him that much closer to Alpha, pulled the shrunken man from his state of shock. It was a rattling that Alpha felt traveling through the metal ground and right towards him, with enough force to knock him to his knees. Falling down was bad enough, but being down only served to make more of his body have contact with the rumbling floor and discombobulate him further. It was the sort of shaking that left his heart leaping into his throat, his head pounding hard against the confines of his own skull, and all he thought to do in the moment is curl into a little ball and grasp his head in his hands in a meager attempt to make it all stop.
He was like a pill bug crawling into himself.
Again, the air shifted, moved once more by the sheer force of something so huge moving about. Instead of a pull that popped his ears, it was a push, a blast of power that sent Alpha hurtling. He felt like a cat toy being knocked around by intangible giant cat paws.
As he tumbled over and over on himself several yards away, he couldn’t stop the yelp of pain that shot through him as the protective padding he wore couldn’t stop the feeling of having his body slammed into the ground. All the air had gone from his lungs, and when he finally came to a stop there were stars in his eyes and a darkness to the edges of his vision–everything hurt. Everything hurt. Even sucking in a breath of air was so painful that he ended up choking on it, coughing up nothing but a dry throat and a bit of spittle.
All Aesa had done was take a single step–and even with how far it had launched Alpha away, the distance was negligible compared to how far the alien could move.
“Alpha!” He heard in his earpiece, so loud it stung his ears. “You need to get out of there, now!”
Shaking from the adrenaline, the aftershocks, and his own horror, Alpha did as he was told and rose to his feet…only to let out an agonizing scream as a lightning rod of pain shot up and down his calf. Had he broken it? Dislocated it? He didn’t have the time to tell, as Aesa’s other foot began to rise.
With the Thuvon closer than before, the suction force of displaced air as his leg rose was much stronger. So much so, in fact, that Alpha felt himself being pulled in. His boots skidded against the ground and as his injured leg buckled under his weight, he found himself on the floor again, sliding even closer to the gargantuan foot before him. It was exactly like being caught in a riptide, unable to fight against the current as it sucked him into his doom.
At this point, the gap between him and Aesa had closed to a point where looking up no longer afforded him a hazy look at a face in the heavens–only his towering legs and the soft pudginess of his belly that blocked out everything else. There would be no hope of making eye-contact with this unnatural, beastly thing in some far-flung hope for salvation–or perhaps it was him that was the one who was unnatural?
The only things meant to exist at this puny of a scale were bugs and dirt. Humans could only manage it by being safely entombed in synthmetal boxes and made unconscious.
What did that make him, then? What did that make all of them, in this warped world where bugs could survive but they could not?
Nothing, Alpha realized. It made them nothing.
Darkness fell over Alpha, and the sky was dominated by the red flesh of the bottom of Aesa’s foot.
“Alpha, you need to get up.” Ordered the staticky voice from his earpiece.
Lesser than bugs, to be discarded and forgotten because they dared to leave the confines of the one place that kept them safe.
“Get up.”
His blood wouldn’t even be visible against Aesa’s skin. There’d be no way the mountainous alien would even be able to tell he’d stepped on something.
“AJAX, GET UP NOW!”
His name. His real name. It felt weird to hear it, like it no longer belonged to him. It bounced around in his brain, the panicked desperate shriek of his commanding officer echoing over and over. It…stirred something in him. A desire, he realized, that fought against the creeping tendrils of despair that had begun to strangle him. He was not nothing. He was a person, and as much as his mind struggles to reconcile with it, he was the same as the gigantic man who loomed high above him.
The Director, the passengers, the mission…all of it no longer mattered. His priority became himself, to get out of this alive and make it back to the CU to regroup, recoup, and take a shot at this another day.
This is what it meant to be human, he realized. The audacity of their continued existence in the face of impossible odds! To survive even when all hope was lost! This is what they were known all throughout the galaxy for, and he would not be an exception to this rule.
His entire body felt as if it were set on fire and he was awash with nausea and dizziness…but still, he grit his teeth and fought through the pain. Ajax struggled to his feet, limping forward with all his might. His sky was dominated entirely by flesh, the grooves and canyons etched into the skin like angry storm clouds above. There was nothing but darkness all around him, save for the horizon, where light shone through like a beacon of hope.
That is where he needed to go. That is what would provide him salvation, not the man about to crush him underfoot.
The light grew bigger and bigger the closer he got, as if it were welcoming Ajax into its arms. The sky, too, gave way to once again reveal the far ceiling of the ship rather than the alien’s toes. Just a little further, just push a little harder–
Heavy wind lashed against him, displaced by the oppressive mound of flesh above, pushing him down to the ground once more–pinning him down. Ajax fell to his back, where the only thing he could see was the shape of a big toe as large as a stadium coming down upon him.
“No, no, no–”
His tired, battered body could no longer get him off the ground. Ajax, unable to think straight and working on pure instinct alone, was only able to start a pathetic backpedalling crawl away in vain. By now, he could feel the heat coming off of Aesa’s skin. The air grew thick with the smell of him, the familiar scent of a living body–sweet from his bodywash but marred by the salty tang of meat.
Realization that he had failed hit him hard and fast.
“Goddammit, no...Not like this!” Ajax could only sob, his eyes stinging, his breaths coming in short hysterical puffs.
The light had disappeared entirely. He began to beg.
“Please, no, I’m down here! I’M DOWN HERE! PLEASE, DON’T ST–”
The camera feed kept going. That was the worst part, Rotolo decided. Even after Alpha was dead and his vitals no longer registered, the camera kept going. Recording nothing more than the footsteps of the giant man outside, who had no idea of the life he’d just taken. Up and down, up and down, until Aesa crawled into his bunk and they were left in the dark under his blankets.
The company made the cameras strong enough to endure the force of several hundred thousand tons pressing down on it, but couldn’t figure out the same for armor. Like how a black box was made to survive an airplane crash–to bear witness to the tragedy: to give an explanation to insurers and lawyers and the families of the deceased as to what happened.
Rotolo cut the connection off, and placed the shattered tablet on her desk.
Once again, all the eyes of her senior staff fell upon her. Volgis, in particular, had a look in their eyes that could strip the paint off the walls.
The Director bit her lip so hard it broke the skin. There was a metallic taste on her tongue.
“I want medics down in the Atrium to assess if there are any injured, and treat them as necessary.” She finally said to her Chief Medical Officer. Rotolo’s voice was robotic. Seemingly devoid of feeling. “Use your supplies as sparingly as possible. We can’t afford to waste anything. If they ask about what happened, tell them the ship took an evasive maneuver that knocked us to the side.”
She turned to Ulys, whose eyes were far away and distant.
“You need to take your technicians around the CU and see if anything broke. I highly doubt it, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Ulys nodded, and was out the door with the rest of the staff, many of whom could ascertain what they needed to do or figured they would no longer be needed in the office–the Head of Maintenance looked like he wanted to say something before he vanished, but seemingly thought better of it. It could wait, whatever it was.
Finally, there was Volgis.
“...Commander, you will return to the Hatch and select the next officer to be sent outside. We won’t let this setback deter us.”
There was a moment there, a spark, a twitch on Volgis’ face that might have been construed as outrage. Their hands folded behind their back, and their voice had drastically changed from the booming roar it had been when they were barking orders to their normal, regulated, soft tone.
“Setback? Director, with all due respect, one of my officers has died. That’s more than a setback. You expect me to go down there and tell them their comrade is dead? And follow up that lovely conversation by ordering one of them to go out there and try to wake a sleeping giant?”
Rotolo stood her ground before them, gaze steady and level–they were built from different stuff, the two of them. Rotolo was a supposed people person, but didn’t have anyone to call her own. Volgis was…quiet. Gruff. But, and it was never more evident than it was now, they cared so very deeply for their officers.
The pained look in their eyes said everything their silence on the matter didn’t.
“I expect them, and you, to do what they’re paid to do. They know that this was a potentiality. They signed the forms. So, yes Commander, you will go down to the Hatch and select someone to be the next in line. If we’re lucky, Beta might just come back alive.”
Quiet fury boiled within Volgis. Rotolo could almost feel the heat of their anger radiating off them in steady waves, but they did not argue with her. Instead, they nodded, stomping to the door. After a beat, the Director found herself running after them, catching them by the arm–they whipped around so fast that they nearly bowled her over. She held her hands up in a gesture of peace, and exhaled a sigh before saying what she needed to.
“...I am sorry about what happened. We’ll be more careful this time–and…and we’ll have a memorial service. For Alpha–”
“Ajax. His name was Ajax Ward.” Volgis replied, venom oozing from their words.
“Ajax. Right. We’ll have a memorial service for Mr. Ward, and his family will receive adequate financial compensation when we arrive to Centuari b.”
The Commander only snorted, spitefully and fed up with her, and stalked out of the office. Rotolo thought she would at least be left alone in silence, but a quiet noise came from the broken tablet on her desk.
”No, no, no…”
Helena walked back to her desk, staring down at the splintered glass of the tablet. It was the moment just before Ucari’s foot came down. Ajax’s voice echoed through the room, burning into her skull and worming its way through her ears.
“No, no, no…”
Her breathing became shallow, her heart kept beating faster and faster.
”Not like this-” Ajax had said, so small and so pitiful, up at an uncaring God that could neither see nor hear him. The screen flickered, the cracks in the glass corrupting the image. The recording began to loop, replaying the same scene over…and over…and over again.
”I’m down here! I’M DOWN HERE! PLEASE DON’T STE-”
”PLEASE, DON’T STE-”
”PLEASE, DO-”
A scream of her own erupted from her throat as Helena took the tablet in her hands and smashed it against the corner of her desk as hard as she could. Pieces of broken glass flew across the already messy room. She hit it and hit it and hit it until there was nothing left in her hands but bits of plastic and metal connected pathetically by the frailest bits of wire. Her hands felt warm and slick, and it took her a second to realize that they were bleeding.
Blood on her hands. It was so stupid, it was so…on-the-nose. She let out a hysterical, pealing giggle from her now-sore throat, and laughed so hard it made her breathless.
Helena fell to her knees, and with nothing better to do until Volgis selected their Beta, she began picking the bits of glass out of her fingers.
Maybe, if she were lucky, that bottle of whiskey in her luggage hadn’t broken, just like everything else around her had.
Even though the tablet was broken to pieces, she swore she could still hear that damn kid’s voice calling out.