Miles nearly got lost as he was running back to Tannis. Without the bureaucrat’s instructions, the lengthy corridors turned into a labyrinth which were made doubly worse because he couldn’t stop at a terminal like on the Hyperion and ask the computer for directions. His personal comm had been shut out too, so he couldn’t ask for help from any other men aboard the derelict.

In all, it took him nearly an hour to retrace his steps. His heart pounded as he finally entered a section he recognized, and he sprinted down the circular passage. Every second that passed was one more Tannis had at his disposal. Miles didn’t remember taking his pistol from its holster, but he gripped it tightly as he rounded the last corridor and found himself in that familiar hallway.

He rushed to the closed door and waved his hand over the control pad, but the bulky machine refused to open. Desperation clawed at him as he pounded the steel contraption with his fist. Looking through the thick, reinforced glass, he saw Tannis glance towards him from an ancient monitor. Dr. Philips was no less harmed, though he seemed hunched over as he worked, burdened by a weight that Miles was all too familiar with.

“It seems circumstances have driven us apart, Mr. Kieth.” Tannis reached for a device which played his voice over the door. “There is always a low probability of catastrophe, but I can’t say I expected Erika to be such a fool. Oh well.”

“Let me in!” Miles shouted at the man.

The bureaucrat couldn’t help but chuckle. “Without my leverage? Not a chance. Just sit there patiently while I finish my work. We can negotiate once this ship is on its way.”

Miles stepped back from the door and set his pistol to maximum kinetic force. Firing three times into the glass, the substance creaked and cracked. However, before he could get a fourth shot off, a golden barrier appeared over it.

Tannis inspected the nearly broken glass. “Did you really think it would be that easy?”

“Maybe.” Miles lowered the gun. “But then again—maybe I just need a bigger gun.”

Tannis caught on to what he was saying instantly, and a smile widened. “Well, I don’t know how good you are at piloting Andromedan shuttles, but it would be entertaining, nonetheless. I had Dr. Philips contact his associates on a private comm. All the shuttles have been dispatched.”

Miles looked for a weakness in the door, but the mechanism seemed sturdy and the golden barrier would likely reinforce any damage he inflicted. “Then I’ll get help.”

“An intriguing possibility.” Tannis’ eyes lifted to the ceiling, thinking out the option. “But most of the staff on the Hyperion are scientists. That was why we could pull off our little stunt. They don’t have the disposition to fight back. All what was needed was a scare, rerouting control and a threat over the comm.”

There was a certain giddiness that radiated from Tannis, and suddenly it clicked for Miles. The bureaucrat actually enjoyed this. He enjoyed guiding Miles through each option and eliminating them all systematically. Perhaps some of it was a clean mathematical urge that sometimes arose in humans, a sense of order from solving an equation. For Tannis, it really would be no different from solving a complex formula.

But then there was that perverse glee in his eyes. It wasn’t just a harmless amusement; he enjoyed doing this to people. Running them down and then tossing them aside. Maybe that was the only kind of person who could ever run the Free Exchange, the type of man motivated not by a greater plan but by sadistic pleasure.

“What will you do?” Miles asked, beaten once again.

“It’s more a matter of what the Hyperion will do. They’re going to send the shuttles back. We’re waiting for them right now.”

“And you’re going to destroy them.”

Tannis almost looked offended at the question. “You’re so unimaginative, Mr. Kieth. There are sixteen shuttles on their way here. Dr. Philips, how long could the supplies on one last us?”

Dr. Philips shot Tannis a glare. “About a month for thirty people.”

“We’ll take three then.” Tannis nodded. “In the meantime, I suggest you relax. You have a nice view. Sit down and enjoy.”

Miles turned toward the blasted hole and looked out. He could see the small shuttles near the Hyperion. It would only be moments before they advanced.

“You can stop this!” Miles yelled over to Dr. Philips, but the man didn’t reply. The scientist only gave Miles a sad smile and silently shook his head.

Tannis had gotten to him just like he had to Miles. There was no telling what argument brought Dr. Philips over, and Miles doubted he’d ever be able to turn the man to his side again. However, the Doctor did not go back to his console. Instead, he hesitantly gestured with his eyes upward.

Miles didn’t need to follow the gaze. He knew exactly what the look meant. He had felt the same thing too. It was of a man trapped, asking another to do what he couldn’t.

He sighed, and he looked up to the shield generator. Miles had known it was an option before he had walked into the room. Pain took him. It was a strange, bulky object. Too large to be put in the control station and so uglily fastened just outside. A design flaw that spoke of a rushed construction. It was the singular barrier that held the air in the damaged section. If it was destroyed, then the both the corridor and the control station would be vented.

But there was no chance he could destroy the device and live. Even if he fled down the hallway as fast as he could, the air would be sucked out before he could get to a sealed section. His augmented body could survive much, but all the genetic manipulation in the world couldn’t save you from the vacuum of space. The depressurization would kill him in minutes.

Tannis followed his gaze and smiled. “I confess I didn’t see this coming. It’s a shame that despite all the planning in the world, the unexpected always rears its head, but I think the universe has an affection for irony. Go ahead and destroy it—if you can.”

Tannis said those words knowing very well that Miles would never risk harming the generator. It was the same reason why Miles had worked with the bureaucrat all those years without once turning against him. It was the same reason why Tannis could manipulate Miles to take him all the way from the Hyperion to the control station of the derelict.

Miles just wanted to live.

He didn’t want to die on some rust covered ship on the edge of space. Miles just wanted to be left alone to live his life how he wanted, and now that decision was presented to him again. Live under the thumb of Tannis… or die.

There was no escaping that choice. The destruction of the gravity core might have given Miles a reprieve, but not even the Butcher of Three Systems could defy Tannis for long. No one could. This was the bureaucrat’s game, and everyone else was just pawns.

Even if Captain Singh or Commander Terese seized the derelict, the game wasn’t over for Tannis. The man was always too clever. He could always weasel himself out. Miles knew the Captain had killed Mia Williams, but she was just another tool. She was an agent and not the puppetmaster. Could they really do the same to the man who had orchestrated all this?

“I had myself going for a moment.” Miles sighed as he fell against the door. “I really thought I could’ve won.”

“Mr. Kieth, there are no winners and losers.” Tannis’ voice came over the comm. “We all have our parts to play. The Free Exchange must go on, and our lives are only fuel to the fire.” He spoke with the same arrogance as he always did, but Miles could tell that he did truly believe it.

“Then tell me.” Miles turned to face the glass once again, staring right at Tannis. “I’ve fought and killed for you. I spent my life as your slave. Give it to me truthfully, was I ever free?”

The bureaucrat paused. The smile disappeared from his lips as he contemplated the question. It was a reaction that Miles didn’t expect, but he somehow knew why. Tannis had pondered the same question himself. Even if he enjoyed the work, there was still a cost. The man was a slave just like Miles, and there was always a moment in any man’s life where he asked himself if things could be different.

Maybe that was Tannis’ humanity, buried under all the smug narcissism.

Tannis raised the device to his mouth. “You were always free, Mr. Kieth. Same as me. Every choice you made was of your own volition.”

“Then—”

“But you think choices are easy. They aren’t. Not the real ones, anyway. Everything will be demanded of you, Mr. Kieth. Every drop of blood in your body must be accounted for—and only then can any of us ever really be free. That is the truth the Free Exchange was founded upon.”

Miles knew what he was saying. It wasn’t that the Free Exchange thought that men couldn’t change, it was that they wouldn’t. For most men, changes were slow, often superficial, and took many years. That sort of thing could be accounted for, and for every one man in a million capable of the kind of change needed to bring down the Exchange, there were ten thousand men like Miles Kieth ready to correct it.

Human beings were just too compromising, and the Free Exchange was always willing to offer a deal.

Dr. Philips turned. “They’re advancing.”

Glen Tannis snapped right out of his uncharacteristically somber mood and grinned. “Activate the firing sequence.”

Miles ran over to the blasted hole and watched as the shuttles approached. Suddenly, there were a dozen flashes from the Hyperion behind them. It took less a second for Miles to realize what they were.

“They’re firing missiles!”

“Calm down, Mr. Kieth. They’re just aimed for the turrets, and if Dr. Philips’ speculation is correct…”

Miles could barely track the slender sliver objects as they flew infinitely faster than the shuttles. Propelled by gravity cores, their light distorted forms, however, did not accelerate faster than light. Instead, they flew toward them with utmost precision. Miles had enough sense to turn his gaze away before they struck.

The explosion screamed at the derelict but did not devour the vessel in fire. The light reflecting off the walls nearly scorched Miles’ eyes, but it dimmed and he turned to see a familiar golden barrier outstretched in an oval around the derelict.

“What good is a firing sequence if it doesn’t also activate shields?” Tannis explained to Miles. “The protocol hadn’t been mapped completely, but we hoped it would also activate the defenses of the ship. This will make things considerably easier.”

Miles was about to respond before a burst of sparks exploded from the wall, nearly knocking him over. He ran to the other side of the corridor as he saw wiring burst apart in flame. Looking outside, the outer golden shield flickered.

“You told me the ship could handle it!” Tannis’ voice came over the comm, apparently he left it still on.

“They can! It’s not the missiles causing the damage! These circuits are old. Turning them on again after at least a decade was bound to have problems!” Dr. Philips yelled back.

It doesn’t matter. Miles desperately looked out into space. Above him, a sound reverberated through the metal as one turret locked onto a target. A deep roar echoed through the ship as a slug torpedoed into the void.

Miles couldn’t track it, but strange red sparks emitted from its trail as it flung itself toward a shuttle. The gravity shield acted as it always did, the projectile was turned away harmlessly into the void. However, not only one projectile was fired.

The entire line of turrets soon opened fire upon the shuttles. Red light burned so intensely that Miles could’ve mistaken it for laser fire. In reality, thousands of projectiles were being fired every second. If the shuttles had been equipped with tracking mechanisms—as was necessary for personal shielding—then they would’ve overloaded in nanoseconds. Instead, the permanent barrier deflected them in all in seemingly random directions.

The entire sky was filled with a cataclysm of red light as the projectiles mostly bounced away with a few ricocheting into other shuttles. It was as if hell had opened up and the very inferno of the abyss had advanced with all its fury. It was only a matter of time before a lucky shot hit the chink in the armor.

Miles couldn’t have possibly seen it, but he knew what happened anyway. A part of the projectile had hit that infinitesimally small area open to normal space. While most of the metal was violently ripped away, a small part of it rocketed forward with such force that it tore away from the main body.

He had only ever witnessed one antimatter explosion in his life. Such weapons were banned in the Free Exchange, and he had only been witness to one because he had been dispatched to take care of a cabal of rogue scientists. However, he recognized it all the same.

The effect was that of a pure white as antimatter and matter reacted together in an explosive force that seemed to rupture the laws of the universe. Outlining the edges was a crimson red where the chain reaction subsided and only reached temperatures equivalent to a red star. Once it subsided, there was nothing left. The shuttle had been obliterated from existence.

It didn’t take long for another shuttle to detonate, and then a third, and then a fourth. Miles could only watch as the barrage of fire slowly massacred each shuttle in turn. Another barrage of light erupted from the Hyperion. However, this time, a few of the slender missiles made it past the shield.

Miles was thrown back against the wall as the explosions teared away chunks of the hull above him. Several of the turrets went dark, and the outer shield flickered even further. Suddenly, all the turret fire ceased, and he heard the hum of machinery die down.

“What happened?” Tannis yelled.

“There’s been an overload! I have to reroute the systems!” Miles heard Dr. Philips frantically work.

Miles dazedly pushed himself up against the wall. He looked out against the black void and saw ten shuttles still pressing the advance. This is it. Miles took a deep breath as he rested his head. He could hear it in their voices. There was some panic, but Dr. Philips could get the systems back up again.

He would have to act now if he was to have any hope of changing things. And he knew in his heart of hearts that this was his last chance. Even though the derelict was on the verge of failing, it was clear from the engagement that it held the advantage. A few more minutes of fire would be all that was needed to eliminate the remaining shuttles—they weren’t even halfway to the Andromedan ship.

Maybe the derelict couldn’t win against the Hyperion, but after what he saw, he had his doubts about that as well. There had been nothing certain from the outset, especially since no one had been sure of the derelict’s capabilities, but the Hyperion was more or less defenseless without the gravity core. Had the slugs been normal rounds, it would’ve been a different story, but antimatter was another thing entirely. The random hand of fate had yielded in favor of Tannis, as it always seemed to do.

So this window of opportunity was the last one. Tannis could win this battle—he would almost certainly win this battle. He would leave a few of the shuttles alive, of course, and then destroy the Hyperion. The survivors would have to come crawling to him for their lives. And while Miles wasn’t sure what would happen next, Tannis could still easily take control of the situation all the same.

Even if he had another chance at Tannis, it would be on top of the bodies of the rest of the Hyperion. Miles raised his pistol toward the shield generator. The ugly thing hummed with unstable energy; he was sure it would only need one shot. His finger shook against the trigger, but he couldn’t bring himself to press down.

It’s not fair. Miles slowly lowered the pistol. It’s not fair! Why did this have to fall upon him? Out of everyone on the Hyperion, why did he have to make this sacrifice? He could almost imagine Tannis’ voice smugly whispering in his ear. Because you’re the one least likely to make it.

“It’s not fair!” Miles shouted as he leveled the pistol at the door. He unloaded round after round in the contraption, blasting wildly and hoping against all hope that the next one would work. He doubted they even heard on the other side. They were too busy trying to bring up the systems online, and meanwhile, Miles was wasting precious seconds what time he had left.

He slumped against the wall and fell to his knees. Miles felt exhaustion tugging at him. I’m sorry, Captain. He thought. I can’t do it. I can’t. Maybe that was selfish of him, but he didn’t want to die. Not now, not after coming so far. Tannis said he was a man of hope. That was wrong. Miles was a coward through and through. He just didn’t want to die.

It was a good run while it lasted. Miles bitterly chuckled. We really thought we could beat them. Maybe Captain Singh had delayed the inevitable with Terese—and maybe Tannis’ gambit with the derelict wouldn’t have worked—but that wasn’t the point. No matter how many losses the Free Exchange took, there would always be another play, another angle. Circumstances could keep throwing victories for Singh or even Miles, but eventually the Free Exchange would win. It always won in the end.

Because they know what master you serve. Father Soren’s words pounded in his head. Well, it was clear which master Miles served—the Free Exchange. He didn’t doubt Tannis would have some use for him afterward. And Miles would go along again because he didn’t have a choice.

No! He beat his own chest with his fist. You always have a choice! This was you from the beginning! All of this was you! If he hadn’t helped Tannis get to the derelict, then none of this would’ve ever happened. He had every opportunity to end it right there and then, and he still didn’t. It was his fault. All of this was his fault.

Miles slumped against the metal wall as the realization finally took him. Where was that dream of saving the Andromedans now? It all seemed so petty to him now. Those high-minded ideals all crumbled to dust around him. No matter how he justified himself, he was always a weapon of the Free Exchange.

And maybe that’s the only men truly change. He felt a dampness on his face. This was it, and there was nothing he could do about it. Can’t run from it any longer. He had to try one more time.

Miles stumbled to his feet and raised the pistol one more time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tannis and Dr. Philips work furiously. It seemed an eternity to him, but it would be over soon.

It didn’t take but a moment to aim the shot, but Miles still couldn’t pull the trigger. Not yet. It would make no difference if he lived or died. The universe was a cold, uncaring void. The lives out there made no more difference than his, and he wanted so desperately to live. It didn’t matter that he was just a puppet—that was still a life he could live. If he pressed the trigger, then it was all over.

I could really use some help right now. He silently begged Father Soren. The man may have never told him what he wanted to hear, but the priest had always told him what he needed to know. In a cold, uncaring universe, nothing could justify this. His death was meaningless, and he might as well just go on living. He knew that in his bones, but he wasn’t enough of a religious nut to believe otherwise.

But if that cold universe of the Free Exchange brought you to this hell, why not take the leap? Father Soren whispered in his ear. What do you have to lose? Miles lifted his eyes. He was never a man of faith, of blind bets and countless wagers, but he realized that wasn’t quite the truth. Every path he had taken had brought him further into hell. There was nothing for him to wager except a life of pointless misery. He closed his eyes. Yes, that was his wager.

That the universe had some meaning. That what he did here counted. That he could save those lives out there, and maybe even the Andromedans. Maybe Captain Singh could do it, and maybe he couldn’t, but Miles realized he could make that bet. There was no guarantee that it was the truth, but he had nothing left to lose.

And maybe that was what the real truth was anyway—whatever brought you out of that hell you found yourself in.

Miles screamed as he held the gun. The weight of the world fell upon him as every instinct of his body tried to pull him back. It hurt; it hurt more than anything he had ever felt in his life. Miles knew he was giving it all up, every hope and dream he ever had. Everything. Every drop of blood. It all flashed before his eyes… and he pulled the trigger.

Miles thought he was thrown against the bulkhead. Maybe the shield generator exploded. It knocked the air out of his lungs anyway. The world was blurry. His thoughts were slowing, and he knew he didn’t have much time. My hat? Where’s my hat? His fingers scrambled for purchase on the metal floor, and then he found it.

Relief took him as he gripped the brim of the felt cowboy hat. With one hand, he placed the brown hat back on his head. He slumped against the wall. There, he could die now. His head rolled as he stared out into the blackness of space. All the turret fire had ceased, and the infinite was silent.

His lungs tried to draw breath, but there was nothing. He grinned as he saw the Hyperion floating in the void. The shuttles all approaching fast. It was over. It was all over.

He didn’t regret it. In fact, everything seemed to be falling away. All that misery and pain, it didn’t matter. The choice had been made, and for the first time in Miles Kieth’s life, he thought he made the right one. Tannis? Miles didn’t give a damn about Tannis anymore.

Miles looked to the Hyperion. This is farewell, Captain. He took his hat and placed it on his chest. Godspeed.

He tried to laugh, but he could only muster out silent chokes. He gazed off into space. The jeweled stars looked down upon him from the quiet night. A billion billion stars, they were all there in front of him. His grin widened into a beaming smile. Countless worlds were waiting for him, and he would go. He would go flying out into the universe.

But first some sleep. He was tired. He was so very tired.