When Sirius woke up, the first thing he noticed was the gravity. From the uncomfortable way things felt, they must be moving fast enough to generate full-G, or something close enough to it. He could feel his whole body being pressed into the surface he was lying on.

That’s when he noticed the rest of the room.

He was lying in a hospital bed, but the room was sterile and devoid of the usual overly cheery warm décor of a regular hospital room. This room was all exposed metal and glass, full of sharp edges. Everything about it said military hospital.

They’d taken the EVA suit off him at some point. He tilted his head up, as much as he could in the higher-than-usual G environment. His neck muscles and spinal cord hadn’t adjusted to the increased pressure, normally adjustment was a much slower process than this. On his remaining arm was an IV port, plugged into a machine, probably inserting oxygenated blood to counteract his diminished breathing and likely a painkiller for his many injuries.

He wasn’t the only one in the room, Sirius noticed. As he glanced over to his left, he saw another bed. Sirius recognized the large frame of Dima lying in it.

“Hey…hey, Dima!”, he called out. His voice sounded weak.

Dima started, and looked over at Sirius. He was strapped down so they must have assessed him as a greater threat, which was true. Dima looked better suited to life at higher G and would recover faster. He looked a bit distant, they probably had him drugged too – these guys were smart.

“Hey…” Dima said woozily and drifted back off.

“Hey, stay awake! did you see what happened?”, Sirius asked.

“See wha…?” came the answer distantly.

“The guys that got us, did you see what they did after I went under?”

“No…”

“I don’t like this. We have no idea who these people are or what they want, we should at least know one of those by now”, Sirius mused.

Dima mumbled some sort of affirmative, and his breathing settled into a more regular rhythm as he fell asleep.

Lot of help, that guy… Sirius thought.

He turned his attention to the problem of where they were. He listened to the hum that resonated in the background. It sounded like air recyclers and a low far-away tone that had to be the roar of an engine. So, they were in space, at least, in what sounded like a truly massive ship. Sounded even bigger than the Anna Karenina. He wondered where the rest of the crew was, probably in other rooms like this one.

He could hear footsteps coming and going outside the room, some muffled voices too, but nothing that he could recognize or understand. He took another glance around the room, trying to see if he could spot any more clues about their location. There was the two hospital beds and their occupants, of course, overhead shone two electric lights that flickered ever so slightly in response to barely perceptible power changes, outside of that – not much else.

He wondered how long it would be before someone came in. It was obvious that they didn’t consider him a threat, even letting gravity do the business of keeping him in place. He must have appeared weak to them. Their mistake.

Sirius rolled off the hospital bed and collapsed into a pile on the floor. He used his teeth to rip the IV out of his arm and spat it out. The painkillers they had him on kept it from hurting. Then he reached onto his leg, near his femoral artery and depressed a small capsule that had been implanted there.

Last time he was back home on Deimos he’d paid for a series of capsules to be implanted that were full of stabilizer, a chemical cocktail that helped ward off the unpleasant effects of higher G maneuvers but only for a short time. He felt himself become steadier as the drugs hit and pulled himself up, using the hospital bed for support. His legs ached with the added weight, and his joints popped, and it felt like his stomach dropped to his knees. It made him feel sick. His spine felt like it was made of lead.

He pushed himself along, trying to ignore how his body was reacting to the gravity. He went over to Dima and pulled out his IV, then he unstrapped the big man. While he waited for him to come back from the drugs, Sirius assessed the door to the hallway. Leaning against it, he tried to engage the door lock, and of course: it was locked.

He studied the lock mechanism and found a brand name stamped on the plate metal. It was a fairly common commercial lock which made things easier but also seemed kind of odd – a little too simple. If he still had his prosthetic arm, he could hack this lock using an NFC chip and one of the hundreds of stored lock-breaking programs stored in a hidden memory unit. Instead, he had to go old school. Studying the panel, he looked for a way to compromise it. In the background Dima shifted and mumbled something.

“Morning, big guy”, Sirius addressed him while still glancing at the panel. He could hear the big guy swear under his breath as he took his time getting up.

“You… Need… Help with that?”, Dima asked.

“Yeah, need a way to get past the panel”, Sirius explained, he could feel the stabilizers wearing off and his focus was beginning to dull.

Dima looked back at the hospital bed, thought for a moment, then pried off a small piece of metal.

“Here, this should help pop the cover”, he seemed to notice Sirius’ discomfort because he said, “Let me get it, and then tell me what I need to do”.

Sirius nodded in thanks and walked Dima through the process of forcing the lock to disengage. It wasn’t an easy process. These locks were designed to be difficult to force if you lacked the right technical skill, but Sirius had spent a few years working at one of the larger lock manufacturers on Deimos station during his time in the Program. Depending on how new it was, he’d probably assembled the damn thing himself.

Reaching the last step in the process, Sirius instructed Dima to cut the last wire, and reached down his leg to pop another stabilizer capsule. Dima noticed this and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You should save those for later in case we need to split up”, Dima warned, “I’ll keep you moving till that happens, just wait here while I crack open the doors”.

Sirius nodded and leaned back while Dima pulled the doors open. They opened out into a hallway, which as they looked out seemed to stretch endlessly. There was a slight curve upwards to it which made Sirius guess that the part of the ship or station they were in was a sort of rotating ring or cylinder. The degree of the curve seemed to confirm Sirius’ guess that it was more a station than a ship.

“Now all we gotta do is figure out how to get the crew out, then find the hangar. I’m guessing it’ll be on the outermost part of the ring so we need to get down there”, Sirius said.

“Easier said than done, let’s go”, Dima put an arm around Sirius, helping him walk into the corridor.

Sirius had barely any time to comment on the strange ease of their escape when the sound of a gunshot erupted from behind them and Dima stumbled to the ground. The two fell, and Sirius nearly missed being crushed under Dima’s deadweight. He saw a bloom of crimson between the big man’s shoulder blades. He barely had time to realize what was happening.

He needed to run. He hadn’t run in full-G in years. He was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to. And yet, here he was.

Sirius depressed another stabilizer and started forward down the hall, trying to get away from their attackers. He chanced a quick look back and saw a line of more of those power armored assholes in their clunky black armor, their faces obscured with helmets that looked eerie and inhuman. They advanced wordlessly towards him, inevitable.

Sirius scrambled down the infinite hall. Everything looked the same, it was as if the track would never end. There was no cover here, eventually he’d be gunned down, too, whenever the guards decided the chase was going on too long. He took a step and felt his ankle grind painfully, attempted a few more steps, then took to the ground. He pulled himself along with his good arm and leg, but the guards were gaining on him fast.

Soon they had assembled around him as he inched his way across the floor. Sirius stopped, there was no point continuing to drag himself like this. One of the guards shoved his rifle barrel into his back and Sirius waited for them to pull the trigger.

Instead, there was silence.

“Ah, come on!” Sirius rolled over and grabbed the barrel in his hand placing it on his chest, “Fucking do it already, you cowards” he said as bravely as he could manage, “I’m making it easy for you fuckers!”

Sirius stared at the black helmets surrounding him, they betrayed nothing that was going on behind them. All he could see was his own desperate, pained reflection staring back, so he flipped them off.

When the closest guard finally moved into action, it was only to holster their rifle on their chest plate while the rest of their team kept their own rifles trained on Sirius. The guard then pulled Sirius up by his collar and dragged him down the hallway, the rest of the team fell into formation behind them in. The group passed the room Sirius and the recently late Dima had occupied and headed farther down the corridor to another nondescript door. They cycled it open and dropped Sirius inside, and then left. Sirius wouldn’t see them, or anyone else, for a long time.