At the time it was all I could do to pen down basic facts. There’s no story to tell when you’re in the throes of fate. But with Mary taking over log, I realize that although the reprieve from writing is nice, there is something healing in putting my frustrations on the page. I write this now, in the solitude of my half-suite, a few days out from Port Sumeria.

I have many responsibilities—to Ava, the Sojourner, the Artship Defense Corps. But telling Oren’s story is something I owe to no one but myself and his memory (if we consider that collection of brain configurations a metaphysical entity). In his absence, Vedod has stepped up, become the glue that holds us together. But Oren? Oren was the force that propelled us forward, the lens which directed us. Both literally and figuratively, seeing as Oren was Kal’s brother and Ava’s fiance. He was the connection, the bridge-builder, the door to our common ground. He was the Artist among us.

It was a day like any other. Half a click deep in Scarship territory, all hands on deck. Silence, save low routine checks and status on the short-wave.

“The signal came from 12-10, moving dead-ahead 12-12,” Ava said over the intercom. “We should be right on it.”

“Copy that,” Oren responded from the loading bay, his voice muffled by his pressurized suit.

I glanced out the window at our companion, Arcton. The signal we were after was for a scuttled craft whose crew offered a generous bounty to anyone who retrieved the rare diamond-plated artifact left onboard. The mission was off-the-books officially since the scuttled shift was officially a tech shuttle from Atmo Eakal—not licensed for artifact transportation. Normally we didn’t take on this kind of scavenging, but K. Boss Nebraska (the captain of the scuttled tech shuttle) had approached us personally. Furthermore, he was vouched for by Boss Riggh—Sarge’s buddy from her days in the smuggling arena. Boss Riggh now captained the Arcton, a sleek, blue julian vessel and since we owed Riggh a favor after he cleared us from the whole guild politics fiasco a year ago, this job seemed like the perfect way to even the debt.

In retrospect it all seems rather obvious. Once you connect the dots, it’s ‘elementary my dear Watson’. Boss Riggh hadn’t even looked over the scavenging contract we’d drawn up. He’d just shrugged and shook on it.

Those who scoff at their own rules can always be counted to break them. The Arcton would remain in close watch while the Sojourner would board the scuttled craft, extract the artifacts, and be off. Every party puts at least one man on the ground, no matter how much it hinders the efficiency of the mission. Demand and offer collateral from and to all joint parties. It was that, or risk betrayal.

In this case, Boss Riggh himself offered to join Oren and Kal on the space-walk recovery mission.

The first sign of trouble was the ship itself. It had a pretty mangled look to it. Usually a scuttled ship looks like an abandoned cafeteria sandwich. A bite or two out of it, maybe some mold, nothing more. But this ship? It looked like a desktop computer that had survived a blender, been turned inside out, then put through the blender again. There was really no point docking at the entryway, which defied the rest of the ship’s mangled status by remaining (somehow) intact.

Kal and Oren (the semi-famous Asteroid Rally brother duo) were suited up along with Boss Riggh at the bay doors before we even pulled up. The key to a successful mission was speed—acting swiftly without hurrying. Hurry is haste and haste makes mistakes. What exactly went on in the ship, I do not know. At this point I had taken the upper gunner station of the Sojourner. My eyes were fixed on the heads up display. All was clear, save the Arcton making careful circles a kilometer out.

A red blip flickered at the periphery of the radar screen. I ordered the targeting computer to flag it. Then, palm on the intercom, I signalled the Arcton.

“Bogey, 9-2 o’clock, your 6, do you copy?”

No answer.

Ava’s voice answered me, but low, muffled, and on the shortwave. Only on my personal channel. “Arcton has changed course. Please advise, over.”

My heart leapt in my chest. My gaze swept across the holo desk, confirming Ava’s observation. The Arcton had swerved from its careful orbit, veering away from us and the bogey.

“S-Stand down,” I sputtered. “R-Recall our t-troops.” My hands were slick with sweat. Memories of silver visored Heartless, swarming from their vessels of death, clambered across my mind’s eye, fighting for my attention like locusts for nutrition. “Get them out of there!” I screamed into the headset, heedless of which channel I was tuned to.

Somewhere beneath the din of blood pounding through my ears, I could hear Sage’s ever-calm voice demanding the craft identify itself. It was all I could do to keep the crosshairs of my artillery locked on the approaching vessel as it weaved and soared at insane intervals. Suddenly one ship became two. Two became ten. I couldn’t tell if the triggers were hot from the adrenaline in my hand, or from the heat of the guns, spewing my return fire and somehow conducting leftover heat up through the axles.

One moment we were parked against the abandoned scavenge, the next we were off, a sickening rollercoaster with death at our heels, fire skittering across our hull. I could hear Vedod walking Kal to the dormitory, still half clad in his space suit. Mumbling, a dazed, horrified expression on Kal’s face.

“We could have waited,” Kal muttered in the low, ragged tones of the half-crazed. “They could have been just around the bend. We could have waited.”

As if to counterpoint, the ship shuddered, a piece of damaged shielding disconnecting itself as the ship reconfigured for interstellar travel.

“We did what we had to do,” Vedod was saying. He sounded surer than he looked. I wondered if it was him who closed the bay doors before Oren and Boss Riggh made it back to the ship. Did he urge Ava? Or was he under her orders? What about “no man left behind?” I guess it doesn’t work like that in space. It's “flee or be debris”.

I turned back to the gunner’s display, pulling up the recorded footage. I watched Boss Riggh’s angular vessel, red and yellow on the thermal camera, turning and fleeing, calm abandonment of the Sojourner and their Boss Riggh.

Cowards, I thought to myself. The Arcton will burn. The thought was bitter, but quickly melted to a sour shame as it occurred to me that the Arcton had most likely already succumbed to the scarship blaster fire. The Sojourner had narrowly avoided destruction, abandoning Oren in the process. The Arcton had been even closer to the swarm with less time to react. Oren, Boss Riggh, the Arcton, were likely nothing more than space rubble. What honor is there in wishing harm upon the dead?