Location: Singh Station, Deyga Orbit

Date: 63 PE

“It looks like a piece of shit,” Ray Southern held the terminal in a bulky, pressure-suit gloved hand. It was an off-market piece of tech and its small screen chipped it one corner. The keypad buttons were worn down and it was all housed in an equally beaten up frame. The bright yellow and black paint had been worn away over the years, revealing the grey metal underneath. However, it was not the obsolete computer in his palm to which he referred, but the image of the ship displayed upon it.

“Look at that hull,” he focussed the image on the brown blocky exterior. Antennae protruded from its surface like the whiskers of an ugly fish. Seams ran at strange angles all along the hull and sections of the fuselage appeared to have come from two or three different ships. “The Phoenix,” Ray read the name. “Is that because we’ll be ashes when we burn the engine.”

“It’s the only way to get you off this station,” Ray’s companion, Geist, said. His voice was calm, but more than that it was completely devoid of emotion. He was as tall as a Gaian but lacked the thin frame that often came with growing up on that low-G moon. Other than his height, he had no distinguishing features. Short brown hair, plain pale skin, and a face blander than prison nutri-paste.

Ray and Geist crouched in a small access tunnel, barely wide enough for either of them. Ray’s back ached with the effort of being bent over for so long. First in the hold of the maglev and then in a pressurised crate carrying supplies up to Singh Orbital Station.

Humanity had come to the Ionad system battered and bruised but seven Earth-Like planets held the promise of a great-interstellar civilisation. That was all in the future if it ever got there, Ray thought. Only Deyga, the capital, had a substantial population, with nascent colonies on Valya, Lepidus and Gaius. But the outer systems, mostly unsettled and beyond the control of the Councillate, were waiting in the black for those willing to take the risk.

The planning had been meticulous, waiting quite literally for the heavens to align. They needed Valya and Lepidus to be on the other side of Ionad, so no ship could be dispatched to stop them. By the time garrisons were scrambled from elsewhere, Ray intended to be tumbling through the vacuum and not looking back. Ute, in the Teine System, would be waiting for them.

“We won’t have long,” Geist warned. In his hand was a knife, the blade glowing orange. They were surrounded by pipes carrying water and oxygen to this part of the station and Ray swallowed his fear at seeing the plasma-heated blade so close to the pressurised O2 line. “Are you ready?”

Ray nodded and Geist gently applied the blade against the pipe so that the edge was able to stand inside the newly made groove. Ray’s stomach lurched as the blade came to rest just a metal-skin away from the station’s oxygen. He stomped at the access hatch below his foot, with a barely controlled reckless strength. It came open easily, by design in case of fire.

The world flipped and turned as Ray tumbled out of the vent and onto the metallic floor with a crash accompanied by the gasps and shocked cries of onlookers. The docks were crowded with men and women in boiler suits from a hundred different ships, sporting their colours and logos. Two Deygan navy officers had been walking along the causeway in fresh-pressed black uniforms. This small part of the dock came to a standstill to watch the strange man stumble to his feet. Ray felt a pang like embarrassment as people began to move towards him.

Geist dropped out of the hole in the ceiling with considerably more poise, landing on the floor and rolling to his feet in one silent, swift movement. Geist pushed through the crowd, rather than stop to stare and Ray followed in his wake.

“Halt!” A voice barked. They did not stop.

Encased in his pressure suit, Ray never felt the hot gush of flame that followed them out the access tunnel. He could only see it in the orange light thrown onto the metallic walls. He could only hear it in the panicked screams from the crowd behind him.

Less than a second later, jarring Ray to his bones, the most terrifying alarm that could be heard on a space station cried out as the O2 levels dropped and every wall-mounted ad-screen and kiosk sign flickered with the message, Oxygen levels falling. Seek shelter immediately, accompanied with a thirty second countdown.

Pandemonium erupted. Workers and overseerers alike threw down their tools and manifests in an attempt to scramble for safety. Some ran towards the airlocks, whether there was a ship docked or not, while others stumbled towards offices and shelters built into the station wall.

The mass of humanity was overwhelming, but Ray kept his eyes on Geist, who moved solidly through the panicked mass of fleeing workers, like an island in a stream with Ray following close enough to shelter behind. From out the nearest viewing portal, he recognised the blocky hull, a collection of squares with antennae and radiator panels bolted across the surface. It was brutalist architecture in ship form.

The tide had ebbed. Geist punched in the key code while Ray allowed himself a moment to look back and survey the scene. The docks had mostly emptied but a few who had been trampled cried out from the floor and Ray’s heart softened. There should be enough oxygen in the docks for everyone to survive – a series of devastating fires on mining stations had made the lockdown systems overly cautious - but Ray found himself hoping that the station rescue would arrive soon.

Not too soon, though.

The airlock doors hissed open, and then closed behind them. The seconds waiting for the airlock to cycle up to an acceptable O2 level were agonisingly exposed. Geist’s featureless visor remained fixed on the doors of the Phoenix as they opened ponderously.

The ship was dark, even as the lights flickered on as they walked through the hallways, boots clanging on grated floors. The first thing that struck Ray was the grubbiness. Every surface seemed coated in a thin veneer of grease and dirt.

“Ugh,” the sound echoed through his helmet. “Who did you buy this piece of shit off?”

“Auction,” Geist replied non-committedly. “Quick sale and a quick buy, and I had my payout.”

“He could have cleaned it first,” Ray commented. “It makes me almost miss prison.” The lights had a flicker to them, and an artificial tininess compared to the full-spectrum lights back on the station.

The captain’s consoles were just as bad as the rest of the ship, though the migraine-inducing flicker was thankfully absent, as the fitting above the captain’s chair had been removed. Catching a look at the thin and worn metal throne, Ray found himself wondering if it would even survive their plan. Geist took the pilot’s chair, recessed in front of the captain’s and Ray could only see the top of his helmeted head.

Most of the terminals came alive as Ray keyed in the access codes, relayed through his helmet’s comm. The LADAR output was showing two blips moving around their frame of reference. They were close and coming around the station. Ray tapped a few buttons and vibrations ran through the ship as the docking clamps were released.

“We have two ships manoeuvring towards us,” Ray said, feeling sick with dread and the cloying sweet giddiness of freedom.

“Brace yourself,” Geist’s voice was as calm as ever. If Ray had not seen definitive proof, he might have thought his companion had been programmed rather than simply conditioned to not break under stress.

The floor of the ship bucked, jolting Geist from Ray’s mind, as the whole room began to sway as though on an ocean current and the the external cameras – those that were working – showed the station rotating in their frame of reference. He could see their berth on the habitation ring, pulsing red with emergency alarms.

The dorsal camera caught a flash of sunlight glinting off a black hull. Automatically, as the software sharpened the image, Ray could see a sleek-hulled attack ship. There was something shark-like in its dark, emotionless exterior. He felt the giddy panic rise in his throat again and, realising that he might vomit, hastily shut off the camera.

“Prepare for heavy burn.” Was the voice Geist’s, or the ship’s automated systems? Regardless, Ray closed his eyes and focussed on his breathing.

The world went through a series of changes that no amount of bracing could have prepared him for. At first, the rattle of the ship and the feeling of being pushed into his chair was just like any other acceleration just like driving a moto too-fast in Deyga city, or the beginning of a mag-train journey. It was the same as making orbit, Ray tricked himself.

The falling feeling in Ray’s stomach never stopped, like the organ was trying to drop through the floor, as his centre of gravity changed with the chair, aligning him as much as possible with the direction of acceleration. As the chair rotated its joints screeched and groaned violently, and what small part of Ray’s frontal cortex still monitored his surroundings was sure that the whole structure would heave itself onto the deck before it bent.

The dark walls were physically groaning, an alarming sound that was like some great dying beast. Ray was sure his joints were making a similar noise as he remembered his exercises and started to flex his increasingly heavy muscles. His suit felt so tight that he could no longer feel if he was making any movement at all. He felt like a brain, a centre of nerves, and nothing else.

All the noise around him fused into one great cacophony as the ship rattled, alarms blared, and the engines roared. Panels and terminals were shaking in their housing, while the consoles around Ray became a meaningless swirl of distant light. He needed to be sick, but his stomach spasmed violently, painfully and impotently in his abdomen. The quick inside his helmet felt like it was made of putty.

Ray’s screams, stifled as they were behind his coffin-tight helmet, added to the din crowding inside his skull. Darkness gathered at the edge of his vision, and he had horrible, lurching thoughts of being simultaneously crushed and strangled to death. Was the rhythmic pinging he could hear bolts in the ship coming out, he asked himself, or was it his own eardrums stretching and snapping like a string of chewing gum?

#

Ray had no knowledge of when he had fallen into merciful unconsciousness, but his awareness of his surroundings creeped back into him slowly. He tried to breathe in deep, the first unrestricted breath in an eon. A sharp pain shot across his chest forcing him into ever decreasing, careful gulps of air.

Beyond that, movement felt impossible, which gave his brain a shot of panic when he realised he was immobile. The feeling subsided quickly when Ray realised he had been strapped down and a fatigued ache permeated his muscles. Compared to the panicked, short quick breaths and the fear of nervous tissue damage, the tearing, searing heat of his joints was almost a blessed relief.

Calming, Ray tried to consider the unfamiliar surroundings but his vision was still marred by dark, swirling artefacts that seemed stuck on his eyeballs even when he managed to blink – itself a long painful process akin to dragging sandpaper slowly over the surface of his eyeball. The skin around his mouth and nose felt sticky and tight. As Ray began to inhabit himself more with every second, he became aware of a horrible pain like a poker of light pushing deep into the space behind his eyes sickeningly close to his brain.

“How are you feeling?” The flat emotionless voice asked. It could have almost been automated. Speech was beyond Ray as he realised his throat felt tight and narrow. He could only swallow the acrid bile and ferrous spit, and try not to vomit. “I’ll put you under again.”

Sedation was not sleep, and when Ray woke to an empty room, he found himself wishing he could just close his heavy eyes and rest. Just as he re-inhabited his own body piece by piece, his awareness of new surroundings grew slowly.

The spots and distortions were mostly gone, but pain lanced across the back of Ray’s skull as he moved his head to take in the room. There were two beds either side of Ray, both empty and bare, the plastic mattress reflecting the blue light of a monitor behind him. The light weakly washed the walls of the room, some kind of medbay, though the dank, rusted corners and low grubby light told him he was still on the Phoenix.

Hesitantly, he decided to examine his wounds. The undersides of his arms were tender, and when he raised them up to look, Ray saw that they were mottled with large, purple bruises where capillaries had ruptured. Even with this small effort, his vision swam and every joint ached.

Despite the aches and the bone deep fatigue, or perhaps because of them, Ray wept hot tears of happiness and relief that the agony he had experienced after the burn was over. The pain and weakness that remained felt like pleasurable release in comparison.

The medbay door opened and the companion walked in, carrying a foil-sealed pack of rations.

“Eat this,” he said handing it over. Grunting in pain, Ray took the meal and set it aside. His stomach and chest were not ready for food yet. “You should eat that, keep your strength up.”

“What-Ah!” Ray attempted to sit up on the bed, his shoulder and back protested the movement. He was still strapped in.

“The plan worked,” the emotionless voice told him. “We burned at eleven-G for one hour. I cut the drive, used the manoeuvring thrusters to give us a new trajectory and now we’re tumbling through space like any other debris.”

“The fighters?” Ray asked through gritted teeth.

“Eleven was too hot for them.” Ray sighed and leaned back onto the chair, the dull ache of his bruises pleasantly painful. “We’re heading into the Rim,” Geist continued, “covering about one AU every week. I suggest we run dark until we are cross Glow. ETA three months.”

“Flying the old-fashioned way,” Ray commented. “And you’re sure we can’t be tracked.” His voice sounded stilted as he gasped the words.

“You can track anything out here, if you look hard enough,” Geist shrugged. “Between us, the rocks, the dust and the pirates I think we’re well enough hidden.”

“Thank you,” Ray breathed.

#

The first time Ray glanced at himself in the mirror, he gasped at the old man looking back. His eyes were sunken, the skin around them bruised. The rest of his face had been pulled down, and his features could now be described as sunken. The lines in his face, just beginning to show when he escaped prison, had opened into great canyons running along his forehead and by his mouth.

Days passed, with The Phoenix tumbling through the void with Ray and Geist held down by magnetic boots as they floated at thirty-five thousand km every second further away from the light of Ionad. It struck Ray, as it had every time he had left a planet, that he was travelling many orders of magnitude faster than the vast majority of humanity.

The ship – or parts of it – had been an old mining hauler destined for deep runs into the ring and out towards Beacon. Therefore, she was tough, reliable and could be well stocked for deep space missions crewing hundreds. Day to day, she required very little maintenance, which suited Ray, who had never been much good at working with his hands.

Geist, by contrast, had undergone the training programme for every combat and support specialty in the Council Millitary. Although it wasn’t his specialty, Geist’s training had emphasised flexibility and that included routine maintenance of any Council Navy Ship up to the size of a frigate. He was more than capable of keeping their pile going with just two occupants.

Over time, Ray observed that Geist was able to busy himself with anything. When a line needed clearing, he would clear it. When the drive needed calibrating, he would calibrate it. When the life support rattled, the companion would fix it. When not maintaining the ship, he would read reports about the ship from the onboard computer. When what little work that had presented itself dried up, he seemed content to simply sit.

“How do you do that?” Ray had asked after an uninspiring meal of rations; reconstituted protein cakes and carbohydrate bars.

“Do what?” Geist asked from his seat. The canteen on the Phoenix continued the motif of the rest. Dark metallic walls, slightly grimy and way too big for just the two of them sat on opposite sides of one of the fifty or so metallo-plastic benches.

“How do you just… do nothing like that?”

“At Ostia we spent six months in solitary.” The big man began slowly. “Meals were pushed through the door and that was the closest contact I had to another person the entire time.”

Ray nodded. He knew that, of course he had known. The brass had wanted a full year, in those small rooms, but Ray argued that the solitary conditioning was too risky for teenagers to undergo. Not for the first time, he thought to himself that the Council had created psychiatric problems, rather than soldiers.

“Yes,” Ray coughed politely. “That must have been difficult.”

Geist shrugged in his noncommittal way and Ray assumed that was the end of the conversation until he spoke again.

“You develop strategies, ways to be in your own head without going crazy.” There was a pause. “Or maybe you do go crazy,” The companion considered. “Then you have to build yourself back up when you get out. It wasn’t scary though; we knew we would be getting out and so it just had to be endured.”

“All of you thought that way?” Ray had seen the psych evals, and realised he knew the answer before the question was fully formed out of his mouth.

“All of us who made it out,” he replied.

“But what if something had gone wrong, or the program was binned and that was your life? What if Ostia had been destroyed, and you were all left to die in a vacuum?”

“Then we would have done something to get out,” Geist’s expression never changed, and it was clear to Ray that the questions he had posed were nothing new. “It might have taken years, but I knew that we would eventually get out.”

#

The long weeks beyond the Rim found Ray with time to reflect on prison. The memories creeped up on him at the oddest times, before bed, while he was reading the ship’s error logs or as the result of the long snaking thought processes that he found himself indulging in. His life had been so structured compared to how he lived now, with his sleep and eating patterns cutting across the ship’s shift change with barely of note of recognition.

In prison he would get up at eighth hour in his shift. He would shower. He would attend his classes, grudgingly. When you had a distinguished career in gene-tech behind you, the Secondary Science modules were at best boring but at worst a tantalising window into what he had lost. After lunch he would be escorted back to his cell to wait for the next day. Lights out were at Twenty-Second hour. The guards were unable to force him to sleep then, but there was nothing else to do. His days had been spent running into the arms of the self-neglect of depression, only for him to be caught every morning by the prison guards pounding on his cell door.

Superficially Ray was still trapped inside a metal box with no relay network, nowhere to go and time stretching endless and enclosed in front of him. But the alarm went off when Ray told it to. He ate breakfast rations if he felt like he could face them. He floated lazily through the halls of the ship, wherever he wanted to go. Lights out were whenever he wanted them out. Sometimes, he just kept going through the nightshift, floating and thinking.

He was free, he thought, freedom where he could both do what he wanted and yet could do nothing. Whenever the pangs of hunger hooked into his stomach, the thought of the dried protein rations banished any desire to float towards the galley and begin the laborious task of rehydrating a packet. Ray would have smashed his hands to a bloody pulp on the bulkhead to get to a roast dinner dripping with gravy or even a bowl of sticky fried rice, but instead he simply satisfied himself by thinking of all the food he would eat when they made it to the outer systems.

#

“You should use the mag-boots,” a voice said. Ray remained floating on his back, looking up at the blue-grey ceiling, his eyes following the exposed pipes for O2 and water. He knew who had spoken.

“I don’t want to, so I won’t,” Ray replied petulantly.

“We’ll be passing through Glow’s orbital in about a week,” Geist said, ignoring the outburst. “Then we can burn the drives again.” The clank of his boots started to recede. “You need to begin to build yourself back up again.”

Holding the wall, Ray pushed and twisted his body to face the companion. He had become better. at the small micromovements that allowed him to adjust position in zero G. He found that now, even with a strong shove, he avoided moving very far.

“I’m fine,” Ray declared.

“You’ve wasted,” Geist might have been commenting on the temperature of the ship. “Your muscles barely work anymore, and you’ll be even weaker when we start the burn.”

Ray floated, thinking on his companion’s words.

“What will you do when we get to Ute?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know,” Geist said. “Get work on a ship or join up with someone. Lots of work for a Deimos Soldier out there.” He shrugged and there was a pause. “If not, maybe the law.”

“The law?” Ray barely tried to conceal the surprise in his voice.

“The Deimos project raised me to be a soldier, but it was law that shut the project down,” Geist said slowly. “The Deimos project raised us to believe we existed to mete out justice in the system, and I liked the sound of that.” Geist sighed. “But it was a lie and our role could never be about delivering justice. I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.”

“I can’t really imagine a future outside of this ship,” Ray shrugged with his hands. “Not much need for a disgraced bioweapons scientist in the outer systems.”

“You might be surprised.”

“I think I’m out of that game now,” Ray said continued. “Maybe I can put my skills to better use. The planets out there are less well suited to life. Maybe I can help with that?”

“Maybe.”

During Ray’s ghostly travels through the ship he found himself thinking about Geist’s words and his time before prison. The Deimos project had been a chance to work at the cutting edge of his field, to be a pioneer and help keep the system safe. He had analysed performance data, measured mortality, and thought up ways to improve scores. Of course, the outcomes had been measured in blood, Ray reflected darkly. How many had died before his change of conscience?

He knew the answer. It had been read out at his trial and written on bloodless screens in all his reports. One hundred and eight children had died in the Deimos project. Professor Reid, and his eccentric requests had accounted for most of them, but the telomere engineering had been Ray’s idea.

Reid, the sociopathic director and even his mentor, Doctor Estis had warned him not to get attached to their subjects, but they had been so human, despite the weaponization the program had forced on them. They laughed and joked and formed friendship groups. Reid remembered the advanced Biotech class he taught them, and it was like any other school room he had ever been in.

How can I live with myself? He asked himself. How could he do anything but?

Yet, as one thought snaked seamlessly into another, Ray found himself travelling through time and into the small minutiae of his life, which worked his mind feverishly while he drifted, drifting in and out of sleep.

He remembered a girl he knew with whom he fought about who was right or wrong about an obscure point of biology or religion on their way to classes. I’ve decided you may walk me home, she said one day in her dismissive, causal voice. Ray instead decided to walk back with someone else, and she never offered again, but the thought left him thinking through the infinite possibilities. Had he said yes, would he still be on the ship?

Another night he was kept awake, remembering the laughter of his peers in Secondary when his secret of watching Caturai, a show for children about a samurai cat who, using his deep sense of right and wrong, saved the world time and time again. He remembered one boy calling him Catu-Ray and cringed at both the memory of tears and the flush of embarrassment that he had ever cared.

As the ghosts kept coming, as Ray lost all sense of time. Things he thought he had forgotten, things he knew had never happened and spectres of futures that would not ever happen. They swirled around his consciousness while he did nothing but float like a spirit through the halls of the ship.

“Why did you help me escape?” Ray asked, after forcing down his meal of protein cake. They had spent months onboard together, the old super soldier and his old jailer, but he had never asked why. Ray had begun to make a point of eating when Geist ate, but the meals were quiet, awkward, and therefore unpleasant. It was much easier to eat alone, but Ray had decided he would try the hard path. It felt like a good way to build himself back up.

“You helped me,” Geist replied, simply.

“I helped torture you,” Ray admitted, his heart pounding from the adrenaline of the admission. “Everything they said at the trial was true. The telomere lengthening was my idea!”

Geist’s face twitched, almost imperceptibly, and his expression remained an enigma. They both knew to what he referred. Many of the children had died weak and wasted, drooling and without the energy to clean themselves. They were undignified deaths for children who had been instilled with an almost fascistic devotion to martial service. Seeing their small frames in the bed, Ray had felt happy that many of them could barely wake and felt sick that a short unconscious life was mercy.

“Deimos was a contradiction,” Geist said after a long silence. “We needed to be an effective team, to trust each other with our lives and be able to anticipate each other’s thoughts.” Geist sighed, it was the most emotion Ray had seen him express. “But the project didn’t want us getting attached to each other either, because the process of creating us was so dangerous.”

Ray was briefly amazed at how much Geist had puzzled out. None of this had been explicit in the project files, but he was correct. They had not wanted the Deimos subjects to blame them for the deaths of their comrades. That the idea of being kind to their subjects was beyond Reid said a lot about that man.

“Those two things are mutually exclusive,” Geist continued. “Duch, a friend of mine, we came through the same facility before Ostia. He reacted badly to one of the biotechs,” Geist shrugged. “I don’t know which one, but I was angry and all through the convalescence my anger grew.” His tone had changed, the flattening that had existed in his voice was thawing. “Then, one day, it was all over. We were told the program had been disbanded and that was it, the Deimos Soldiers were finished.”

Ray was looking at the floor. That was where he entered this story. His old mentor Leonard Estis had a change of conscience. He was dying, and the weight of his guilt had begun to coil up inside him. Ray knew, because as soon as Estis had been murdered to keep the project secret, that guilt, along with an encrypted beam-message of all the proof needed to end the program, had flown through the void of space to take up residence at the base of Ray’s own brain. Before then it had been easier and safer to forget about the Deimos program.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I… Couldn’t stand it anymore.” Tears and pills, it should have been quick. His message to that detective had taken all his courage and left him with nothing left for the final act.

“A lot of us went back,” Geist continued. “But I knew we were unsuited for the army. Our skills are not their skills, and I was happy to see the men and women who had killed Duch were facing justice, the same justice we had been raised to believe that we were safeguarding.” Geist’s eyes met Ray’s. “You gave me my freedom so I wanted to give you yours.”

Ray wondered if this freedom had been worth it. In prison he had yearned for it, and eagerly agreed to the plan. Out here, faced with eking out a life in the cold Utean soil he was no longer sure he would have chosen it. He certainly did not deserve it.

“I might have killed your friend,” Ray muttered, quietly.

“He never fit with the program,” Geist replied, sadly. “It was another contradiction. You needed loyal soldiers and you needed critical thinkers.” Ray nodded, smiling. That had been him too, a curriculum that not even the richest Deygan shipping magnate could buy. The scientists and the military had argued that one in circles, but in the end he had prevailed. “Duch saw all these contradictions clearly and he hated it.”

“Surely he would have rather been free, living his life than dead.”

“That wasn’t an option,” countered Geist.

“I denied him that option,” Ray needed absolution, he realised with a new clarity of thought. At one point he had believed that prison would give it. Then he yearned for absolution by living a good life. Now here was another chance, but absolution had to be absolute and for that only the full truth would suffice.

“No,” Geist cut him off. “That option was denied when the first child was stolen. I know you didn’t make these decisions; you were caught up in them like I was.”

“I could have left.”

“You did,” Geist concluded, standing. “And many of us were sad to see you leave.” He paused halfway to throw his tray in the cycler. “I can’t give you your forgiveness. You made amends by speaking out and I do not care if it was done for fear of your own soul, but I felt indebted to you.” With a glance over his shoulder, the vast powerful super soldier concluded. “I’ve given you your freedom in return, I won’t negate that act by holding you in perpetual bondage.”

“Thank you,” Ray whispered, his eyes felt hot and tears began to pool under his eyes, the fluid stuck there by the cohesive properties of water. He had done nothing, in the end. It was the basics, being kind to children whose lives had been stolen, while being complicit in robbing them further. Ray searched for the words to try and make Geist understand that he was unworthy of the man’s help.

“No, you misunderstand” Geist shook his head, speaking as though he was addressing a child who could only see the world through a simple unnuanced lens of morality. “Not a single one of us can forgive you in any meaningful way. You must find your own absolution and your own way to live with yourself.”

In Ray’s mind, passing through Glow’s orbital was an up-close encounter with the golden, swirling mists of the Teine System’s largest planet. He imagined his thin, floating form silhouetted in the reflected golden light that bathed the observation deck as they floated dreamlike past the gas giant. At this distance, Ionad was barely perceptibly brighter than the rest of the stars and Deyga was completely beyond the resolving power of Ray’s human eyes.

Teine appeared as a small fierce ball of energy on the ship’s rostral camera. Glow, by contrast, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, gazing out the ship’s porthole, Ray could only see the same black absence he had observed throughout the journey. The stars on the black field seemed as unmovable as a ship in a painting. Drawing up a map of the system on his hand terminal, he saw that Glow was billions of kilometres away on the other side of the new sun.

Suddenly there was a rattle in the ship. Ray imagined it was the sound of a great beast drawing breath, but the exhale never came as Ray’s feet touched the deck. He instantly felt tired and heavy. Sleep had been his constant companion throughout the journey; a skittish animal tentatively acquired and reluctantly relinquished. Now, staring at the metal-framed chairs welded to the floor, Ray sat and finally rested.

When he awoke it was eighth hour on the ship and Ray felt lighter than he had done in years, despite the renewed gravity trying to push him to the floor. Examining the heavy, worn hand terminal he saw the relay icon glowing softly in the top right of the screen. Geist must have turned their network back on.

With a new, giddy excitement Ray allowed the information on the relay network wash over him. He dived into feeds, swimming through a current of information and limitless possibility. The story of his flight was old, the cycle had moved on, but Ray gave pause when he saw a bounty had been placed on the ship. Would it hold this far away from the centre of Council power?

Ray thumbed through the system map. Teine boasted only three planets, Iroqia, Ute and Glow with her numerous moons. In the seventy years since humanity had arrived Ionad had grown from a few million to near two-hundred million inhabitants. The entire populations of the outer systems were a rounding error by comparison, but, as Ray examined the shipping logs for the system, he realised that did not make it empty.

Mining ships were the most abundant, moving too and from bases scattered around the system, their trajectories snaking over the map in thin silver strands. There was a handful around Xophon and the other moons of Glow with many more between Ute and her moon Pavel. His heart began to race as he mentally tallied the ships. Before the numbers could overwhelm him, Ray reminded himself that the maps for Ionad would contain thousands of ships.

Nominally, the Council claimed everything orbiting the three suns, but the only sanctioned settlements out here were small bases run by mining corporations and a single city on the surface of Ute, the system’s most habitable planet. Beyond that, Ray knew Ute’s surface was speckled with unauthorised bases and townships; people who for one reason or another had felt the urge to flee the inner system and start a life out here. They had been outcasts, utopians, strange religious sects and the odd pirate trying to escape the law. Ray had grown up hearing the stories of desperate weirdos and violent armed groups fleeing to this corner of the systems and it now struck him that he was one of them.

While wondering where they would go now, Ray glanced at the ships again and a small triangular icon caught his eye. Ray’s reaction was visceral, his legs began to shake and sweat began to pour from his skin. The text next to the ship icon was small but it demanded his mind to notice; CNS – Council Naval Ship.

“It’s a council ship!” Ray said exasperated. He was seated in the Captain’s chair on the bridge, which was looking cleaner than it had at the beginning of their journey. Geist had evidently used his free time productively. “Navy!”

“They won’t be interested in us,” Geist replied dismissively from the pilot’s console, his chair turned to face Ray. “It would take them days to reach us, even if they were inclined for a heavy burn.”

“How do you know?” Ray shivered. Right now, hurried conversations could be taking place on the bridge, the Phoenix being identified and some faceless Councillate captain ordering a high-G intercept.

“Look at their orbit,” Geist told him. “They’re clearly there to guard the mining operation around Glow.” Ray studied the orbital, snaking through the moons of Glow but it meant nothing to his untrained eye. “And it’s more for show. The Mars-Class are frigates and any sustained pirate activity would have them burning for Ionad.” Geist turned back to his terminal. “It’s a token force, no more than that-“

An insistent beeping interrupted Geist. It was coming from Ray’s terminal – the captain’s terminal. The screen’s readout pulsed genetly. Incoming Transmission: CNS Mars.

“Fuck,” whispered Ray as, hands shaking, he relayed the message to the main viewscreen just above Geist’s head. A severe looking middle-aged man in a tight black uniform filled the screen. His hair was cropped immaculately short and every pixel of the captain’s appearance exuded martial duty.

“This is Captain Fiyo of the CNS Mars,” the figure announced, as if the circumstances had not already indicated the man’s identity. “The Phoenix is registered to known fugitives Ray Southern and… Geist.” The singular name had given the Captain pause. “You are hereby ordered to surrender your vessel to the authorities at Lowell Canyon Station on Pavel.”

Ray typed away at his console and saw that the orbit of the Mars had shifted. She was now burning sunward in the direction of Ute’s moon, Pavel.

“They must be bored of guard duty,” Geist replied.

“What do we do?” Ray asked, the thought of another burn like the one from Singh station made him feel physically ill. Geist remained silent, while Ray began to work himself up with worry.

“Give me the Comms,” Geist said, suddenly.

“What’s your plan?” Ray asked, perplexed at how this could possibly do anything, but transferred communications to Geist’s station anyway. “We should burn through the system, get out even further!”

“My name is Geist of the Deimos program,” the former super soldier announced. With confusion Ray saw that his companion was broadcasting on an open frequency. “For those who do not know, the Deimos program was a clandestine military operation to create a black-ops team of super soldiers.” Geist continued. “I have been trained since childhood in weapon’s technology, null-g combat and covert operations. My eyes, my ears, my muscles and even my nervous system have all been modified to better function in combat. The goal of the Deimos project was to be able to create soldiers that could fight and win anywhere against anyone and it was successful.”

“I am aboard the Phoenix under a sustained burn for Ute. The CNV Mars has made an intercept course for this ship with the objective of returning me to Ionad.” A dawn of understanding rose over Ray as he realised what Geist was doing. He could barely dare to hope it might work. “If you need a weapon wielded, I will wield it. If you want your rivals killed, I will kill them. If you need protection, I will give it, but only if you extend that same protection to me now. Geist out.”

Silence filled the spaces of the bridge.

“Do you think it will work?” Ray asked tentatively, scanning the system map for ships. Mars had changed her course and was now burning directly for them, but she was still days away. A cluster of new ship transponders had appeared by Pavel.

. “Imagine if a Council battleship appeared in this system, empty but intact. How long would it be before the pirates and mercenaries in the system came to claim her? None could afford to ignore her, even if to simply deny her to their competition.” Geist shrugged, turning to look up at Ray. A tear was running down his cheek, and the soldier’s eyes were wet, although his voice betrayed no hint of emotion as usual. “That is the scale of what we are offering.”

“What now?” Ray asked, trying to puzzle out his companion’s emotions.

“You’re the one in the Captain’s chair,” Geist pointed out, turning back to his controls.

“Keep on this course, but drop to half a g, I want to give anyone out there time to consider our offer.” Ray stood up and stretched his legs, wondering if his joints would ever be the same again. “And if they don’t,” Ray’s mind briefly flashed through the ordeal, this ship, and the utter pernicious liberty he had experienced, “I think we want to savour these last days of freedom.”

The captain’s console began to beep gently with the sound of incoming messages.