Nathan and Bigby woke up one morning and realised they were the only ones left alive. The Zoltan brothers counted the corpses littered around the station's cargo bay - a full complement apart from the two of them.

"The hunger must have taken the last of them overnight."

"Yes. It would appear that way."

It had been months since the last food delivery, maybe because the producers on the planet below were solely focussed on saving themselves or because they were already dead too.

"Well, what do we do now? I mean, we set up the distress beacon ages ago and no-one's turned up apart from pirates."

"We promised we wouldn't abandon them."

"They're dead, Nathan. All of them. There's no point staying here. Eventually the hydrogen's going to run out, and you know what happens if we run out of fuel."

Nathan thought for a moment. The Zoltan were powered by a form of internal nuclear fusion, and without a supply of hydrogen, they would collapse.

"You are correct. It's just..."

He stopped mid-sentence, reminiscing about how the people on Yevon III had begged them to help when the food stopped arriving and how he had promised that he wouldn't leave until they were safe. He looked at the metal floor. He remembered how he had watched some of his best friends thrown into huge machines to produce food for the survivors and watched Bigby climb in and pull out their bones without a second thought, and how in the days leading up to that day the remaining eleven survivors had lay motionless, waiting for the false miracle Nathan had promised them.

"...We didn't save them, did we?"

Bigby grabbed his brother's shoulder.

"Look, I'm sorry we didn't save them, but what's important now is that we leave. We can take any remaining fuel cells from the reactor and get out in the Nightingale in the docking bay."

Nathan said nothing but nodded. His brother smiled reassuringly and walked out the blast doors to get the fuel cells, leaving Nathan kneeling among the last to die from the famine, before he too left the corpses to their silence.

Hours later, the Nightingale was fully prepared and activated. Bigby and Nathan had found some old combat uniforms in the hold, and were now both dressed in them. Nathan, now recovered from earlier, became captain of the ship with Bigby as first officer. Bigby had always hated being in command and had usually left it to Nathan instead - even though he was a bit... well... different, he was definitely the best strategist and pilot that he knew.

"All systems online, Nat."

"Thank you. Prepare for Faster Than Light."

They silently watched the bars fill up on the screen until alarm warnings interrupted with red lights and blaring sirens.

"There's something coming right for us! It's a direct collision path!" Nathan shouted as he prepared evasive action.

"It looks like... an stasis pod?"

"What? We did hundreds of scans! There were no vessels anywhere near us!"

"Then that thing has been drifting for a long, long time. I wonder if the passengers are even alive..." Bigby's voice trailed off into thought.

"There's only one way to find out. Get ready to perform an emergency clamp in the cargo bay."

"Sure thing." Bigby ran out of the engine room towards the rear of the ship as Nathan rotated and accelerated to match the stasis pod. As he braked a little, the stasis pod slowly moved closer to the open cargo bay doors. Concentrating furiously, he watched the blip of the pod merge with the wrench-like structure of the Nightingale. After the two blips had become one, he shut down the engines, activated the clamps and ran towards the cargo bay.

Bigby had already activated the pod lying in the middle of the huge chamber, and the defrosting was about to finish.

"There's still lifesigns from inside, but just one. I also checked the records. This thing has been floating around for over ten years."

Nathan nodded but his eyes stayed fixed to the pod. It had been damaged heavily by asteroids and solar radiation, with dents and burns all over. Stasis chambers were meant to activate a distress beacon as soon as they were ejected, but the antenna on this pod had melted away from a laser shot. Suddenly, the canopy opened with a hiss, and a human male with scars all over his body lay motionless. Blood started to seep out of the cuts as his heart restarted.

"We need to get him to the medbay. Those scars are going to start bleeding now that he's out of stasis."

They both carried one half of him as they walked to the Medbay. Nathan noticed his clothes. They were the remnants of a uniform, but it had been shredded and bloodstained so much that Nathan doubted it had been red to begin with. Bigby stared at his limp body, and wondered who he was and why he had been hurt so badly. Many scars were deep and bloodied handprints showed where the man had covered them up in desperation. If he didn't get medical attention now, he would die.

"Bigby?"

Nathan called to him, and Bigby realised he had been staring at the man's torn clothes for a bit too long.

"Oh right, yeah. Medbay."

He would have told Nathan a long time ago about how he felt, but he had a feeling that love didn't really compute with him at all. It wasn't worth confusing him.

They arrived at the medbay and held him down to a medical bed. Nathan tore off the man's clothes, and again Bigby tried not to make eye contact for fear of getting distracted.

"I'm going to need a skin welder and an A- blood transfusion pack." Nathan said after a quick scan of the man's wounds.

"Got it." Bigby turned and picked up the instrument from a tray across the room and a blood pack from a freezer in the wall. Nathan completed the surgery in minutes with pinpoint accuracy and waited for the man to wake up.

"...Where am I?" He asked slowly. Though he seemed calm, inside his mind reeled, trying to locate a fixed position to neutralise the coma induced nausea.

"You're safe. This is the Nightingale's medical bay. I healed your scars and gave you a blood transfusion. My name is Nathan."

He looked at Nathan, his mind registering that he was Zoltan, not Mantis. He sat up and saw the other Zoltan across the room before the pain forced him back down.

"The name's Bigby." He said, trying to hide the awkwardness from his voice. "We found you drifting in a stasis pod. I checked the onboard computer's records, it's been over ten years since you launched the pod. Ten years in cryogenic stasis."

The man nodded slowly and sighed. "I guess you want to know who I am, right?"

Nathan nodded.

"About ten years ago, if what you're saying is true, I fucked up a Mantis ship pretty bad. Crashed my ship straight into their reactor and hijacked a teleporter signal back to safety." He laughed slightly, but the pain from his freshly sealed cuts stalled his breathing. "Let's just say the few survivors weren't impressed."

He looked over at Nathan who had prepared another one of the combat uniforms they had found earlier.

"Your previous clothes were damaged. Please wear this for now."

The man nodded as he got up a second time, unfazed by Nathan's abnormal way of speaking.

"Thanks. I guess they were torn in a few places."

He laughed a hollow, almost dead laugh before continuing to talk.

"I need to get somewhere. Some friends of mine... They didn't get captured by the Mantis and escaped to form a colony. I need to find them."

"Where are they?"

"The Delta sector, but I have a feeling that if I've been drifting for ten years we're not that close anymore, huh."

"We're in the Sigma sector. It would take a long time to get there."

"I see."

"And also," Nathan pulled out his stun taser and thrust it into his back. "how do we know we can trust you?"

The man let off another hollow laugh.

"You saw the records. If I was planning a trap the ambushers would be long gone by now. And anyway, it's been ten years. I have no idea what's happened over that time."

"Fine." Nathan put the taser at his side but kept it charged.

"Thanks. So what did happen whilst I was gone?"

It was Bigby who answered. "The Federation collapsed and the Rebels took over. Things were pretty good for the first few months, but then the leaders got even more greedy than the last ones. They live on the Flagship, eating our food as we starve. The population of every species, even Crystal, has dwindled. We're the last survivors from a famine aboard the Yevon III. I haven't seen another Zoltan apart from Nathan in at least six years."

"Shit..." The man stood up in his new uniform. "So... are you taking vacancies?" he asked casually, as if he had forgotten everything Bigby had just said.

"What do you mean? Do you intend on joining us?"

"On the last ship I was on, I was chief shields specialist. I'm sure I could help here and there."

"We don't need another crewmember. I suggest you-"

"Nathan. We need to talk about this."

Nathan walked over to Bigby.

"What are we meant to do with him? I mean, he's not going to find another ship around here!"

"I still don't know if we can trust him. If anything, the Eternal Winter's taught me that."

"I'll be fine, Nat. If we leave him, he'll just get killed by pirates. Plus, I've always wanted to visit the Delta sector." He smiled reassuringly.

"...Fine. He is under your responsibility."

Nathan calmly turned to the man standing on the opposite side of the room.

"Welcome aboard, officer...?"

The man smiled.

"Vince. Officer Vince."