life or death?

“If you find yourself in a seemingly desperate situation when all the odds are against you. Even if you are in the middle of the most hostile environment, do not give up. Believe in yourself and fight, fight for life.” ~ Vladislav Rogozov

5 Lightyears Away and Some Time Ago

“Crystal,” I said, standing up.

“Wonderful,” Co-Director Hackney said with a glance at Co-Director Clemmins who wore a thin smile. Something about him gave me the creeps.

I was finished playing games with these low-lifes. It ended now.

“Chris, walk CeCe to the door, if you please,” Kellan Hackney said and returned to his holographic console. “I’ll get this report in straight away and you can proceed as planned, Ms. Pain.”

His back to me, he missed the blaze in my eyes at his intentional lapse of my doctoral title, but I said nothing. Worried my fury would take on a life of its own and jeopardize my plans, I kept my lips sealed and my movements stiff. I felt like the tiniest shift in the artificial gravity responders could upset my controlled equilibrium.

Chris Clemmins stood at the door and gave me a slight bow; I didn’t miss his lingering gaze on my chest, and I didn’t doubt he got an eyeful of my ass when I walked out, but his ogling registered at point zero don’t care on my “fuck it” scale.

I counted three strides before I heard the door slide to a close; a fast peek confirmed it, and I broke into a sprint down the corridor to the bank of elevators. Slipping inside, I pulled the panel of controls and entered my macro program.

Hackney’s bogus meeting went one hundred percent the way I’d predicted it would, and I’d planned for it accordingly. Macro entered; the elevators wouldn’t stop at the Executive Suites for five standard hours. It should give me time to implement my plan plus a spare hour or two before they knew what I’d done.

The car stopped at Communal Area 14, right near the women’s bunkers, where I jumped out and fast-walked to the auxiliary control station. Popping my head in the room, I caught Jake’s eye.

“Hey, Elevator B is acting kind of weird,” I said, and he shrugged. “I mean, makes no difference to me, but it’s not stopping at the executive suites. Do you think they’ll mind?”

Jake popped out of his chair so fast it spun, and he elbowed past me without so much as an ‘excuse me’.

Counting to five, I watched him disappear into Elevator B, then I spun into the control room and found the klaxon controls. Two presses of a button and a switch later, the Under Attack alarm blared, and I dashed out of the control room and raced down the corridor. I had exactly four minutes and forty-three seconds to get Joan in a pod, VELMA-X secured in the P-MIV, and myself strapped in that sardine can the engineers called an orbiter.

With silent footfalls as my toes barely touched the floor, I could hear my own breaths pounding in my lungs and throat. Focused solely on finding Joan, I startled when a tall, beautiful First Nations woman stepped in my path. I veered, but not enough, and we crashed shoulders.

“Sorry ‘bout that!” I shouted but was already turning the corner to the Communal Area. There! Joan, my dearest friend, stood like a sandpan caught in hoverlights. God love her, this widowed exobotanist needed a keeper. An unexpected sob stuck in my throat.

Not now, dammit. Work now. Emote later.

Skidding to a stop in front of Joan, I snapped my fingers in front of her pale face. “Joan! Pod!”

Confusion marred her perfect brow as her hooded dark eyes tracked the people around us hustling to their places while the klaxons sent vibrations from the floor through our footwear and into our chests.

“Sweetie,” I uttered under my breath and grabbed her elbow. For a second, I remembered what she was like after David died. Aw hell, no. She better not do that to me again. I needed my girl more than she ever needed me. She just didn’t know it.

Her pod lit up when I nudged her through its hatch, and I saw her snap out of her daze. Meeting her gaze, I waited a split-second for her nod.

“Go. I’ll meet you on the Other Side,” I said and chucked her chin, then turned tail and raced back to the auxiliary ship docking bay.

If anyone noticed that I wasn’t running toward the pods, they didn’t say anything. The only people I was worried about noticing were stuck on the executive level while the elevators dinged and descended, stopping at every floor except theirs. With no other access to the suites but via elevator, one had to wonder: was it an engineering design flaw? Or executives reaping the consequences of another terrible idea? Guess I would never know.

Skidding in front of the P-MIV, I muscled the hatch open and climbed in, stepping carefully around the cubbies since the vehicle was “parked” on its side. Grabbing the lanyard from around my neck, I kissed the badge for luck and stuck it in the best place I could think of, inserting it in the main console.

Tapping the keys, I woke up PHRED and coded the same parameters the EEP X215s used, then added the macro that would allow me to control it remotely from the orbiter.

“Okay, boom,” I said to myself and made an explosion motion with my hand and retraced my steps out the hatch, sealed it, doublechecking the controls, and then ghosted between the P-MIV and a mech drill until I got to the Single Contained Occupant Orbiters.

Checking my watch, I saw I had a minute thirty-nine seconds to spare.

“Heck yeah,” I murmured and climbed into the orbiter, pulling the cockpit shut with a final click and hiss. I’d done a preflight check yesterday on a hunch, thank God.

Toggling the controls, the dash lit up like Christmas on Old Vegas, and I grinned.

“Speak to me, SCOOBE baby,” I said. “Mama wants to fly.”

“Initiating auxiliary bay egress, K-90 Miner 107,” SCOOBE said. “Prepare for launch and subsequent cryo-sleep protocols.”

“Got it,” I said and fastened the final latch of the harness. I keyed in my last macro, this one the program that would wake me up in time to control the P-MIV before it cycled into its planet insertion. I’d already tethered the two vehicles wirelessly; PHRED and SCOOBE would remain in constant contact while we fled from the Lucidity and the megalomaniacs that ran IGMC.

The orbiter’s software, Single Contained Occupant Orbiter Bio Equerry, was programmed to keep me alive through the reaches of space until the P-MIV and I reached our destination. Ideally, it would be the exact same destination as the EEP X215s, but my algorithm allowed for tiny adjustments that could plop me on an orbit around a planet’s moon or even an asteroid orbiting the same star.

“Sweet baby Jesus, let this work,” I prayed aloud and pressed “Enter”.

Lights inside the orbiter dimmed, and I could see out the clear cockpit when the giant auxiliary vehicle bay doors opened. The field of stars lay open before my eyes, and tears pricked at their corners. Mama and Daddy said I was made for this: unexplored frontiers. And there it was—immense, sparkling, vast—measurable only in terms of numbers and theory. It waited for me.

The cockpit shut out all sound, but I could imagine the alarms and the zip-whoosh of the pods as the launchers jettisoned them.

SCOOBE began the countdown, and I crossed my fingers and closed my eyes as the cryo-mask slipped over my face and adhered around my nose and mouth.

Did I do the right thing? Every time I second-guessed myself, all I had to do was remember my Mama, helmet under her arm, down on one knee and peering into my eyes.

“I’ll miss you too, baby,” she said. “I’ll miss you every day, and I’ll wonder if I did the right thing by leaving. To have a child is to forever be torn in two.” She put her hand on my chest. “My heart will be here.”

I had put my hand on her forehead. “And your reason will be here.”

She nodded and grabbed my hand and kissed it, tears running down her face.

“God above let my reason and heart be right,” she said when she released my hand and pulled me into a fierce hug before standing and kissing Daddy goodbye.

Daddy rested a heavy hand on my head, and we watched her join her team on the temporary dais the Aux Space Agency, a subdivision of Space Global, set up for the pre-launch ceremony.

Mama’s team was the first human envoy to meet the Qhudret in neutral space after they initiated first contact.

Every choice I made today was governed by my heart and my reason. But every choice had incalculable consequences that would spiral in an irretrievable domino effect that might be felt for eons. That sob I’d swallowed earlier rose right back up, and I cried.

“Damn, CeCe,” I said to myself. “You really know how to party.”

The orbiter launched into the field of stars, its FTL engine blurring them into streaks, but they would have blurred through my tears anyway.