Chapter 5
It was only hours after Karath activated the distress beacon when she entered the vicinity of a small mining crew chipping away at an iridium-rich asteroid deep inside Vega Belt Alpha. A half a dozen kilometers away, a tiny, blinking red light caught her eye, resting atop a large grey rock, projected against the speckled backdrop of the asteroid field. As she neared it, she could see a heavily dusted, cargo-class ship, 170 meters long, with the words Deep Cradle painted in sapphire blue behind the bridge windows, and planted in the asteroid's surface with a large drill vehicle mounted nearby, spinning away, kicking up rocks in all directions.
Inside the pod, Karath sat strapped to the pilot's seat, awaiting a comms request. A flashing yellow light appeared against the console, and she stared at it, taking a few deep breaths to lower her heart rate.
"Computer," she finally said. "Answer."
A man's voice shuffled languidly over the communications channel, the mouth from which it sounded seeming to have half a sandwich in it. "'Ullo?" it said.
Karath winced as the channel was left open, transmitting peanut butter lips surfing the comm waves, splashing right down into her ears; she immediately wished for the golden silence she'd had for days.
"Comm, open," she replied. "This is the pod, I've been out here for weeks, are you mining?"
"Weeks?" it replied. "How much do you weigh? We don't have much food on board."
Karath furrowed her brow and rolled her eyes. "I don't need much food, I don't weigh more than 40 kilos."
"40?" The voice coughed and struggled. "Yur a little thing, what do yeh taste like?"
Karath sat silently, contemplating continuing on through the void.
"Haha," he chuckled, swallowing the rest of what was in his mouth. "Only kiddin', we'll come get'yeh."
She waited, staring out at the Deep Cradle for a few minutes before a hatch opened in its side and birthed a gunmetal-grey, light fighter with a dual TR2 engine, which hastily flew towards her pod. She had concerns of being shot out of space but was also impressed with the pilot's maneuvers. He flew unnecessarily fast, but with precision, and it quickly latched onto her pod and flew her over to the rock, gently placing it on the surface and returning over to its dock.
Karath packed a bag full of necessities and suited up in the pod. She brought with her the rest of the rations, some water, a knife, an energy pistol, and a copy of Ecklestein's letter uploaded onto a high-mass drive stick, which also had on it thousands of videos of planetside scenery, and music ranging from modern hits to classic pieces from all over the galaxy.
Her hand crept up to a button next to her door that read WARNING: Pressurization Lock. She turned slowly to look at not only what might be the last time she ever saw her bedroom, but what could very well be the last time she touched anything—save her suit—that Ecklestein's hands ever engineered. "Ecklestein." she whispered to herself, and took a deep breath, straightening up and reaching for the depressurization button.
Bright red lights and a loud alarm were set off, followed by puffs of smoke and steam entering the chamber, and the shelves or anything else exposing the controls of the pod flipped and sealed over, exposing knick knacks and stuffed animals which fell to the floor of the pod, bouncing afterwards, floating upwards alongside Karath's feet and legs as the Localized Artificial Gravity system was destabilized. The door slid open, introducing the dead silence of space Karath hadn't heard in many days, and she floated out timidly over the asteroid's surface.
She reached the ship, and as the EVA de-pressurization chamber door panel bent open, empty bottles of Snazzle and Liberty beer, along with empty ration cases and used utensils blew out of the door, some hitting Karath, specks of food and old juice getting on her suit as she winced, disgusted, but continued to step into the chamber attempting to avoid stepping in trash. "Ugh." she grunted.
The chamber finished it's pressurization procedure, and the interior horizontal doors opened up, revealing the unkept furnishings and rusted walls of the Deep Cradle's entrance hallway. Streams of oxygen shot out of Karath's helmet as she unlocked it, barely lifting it up before a stale smell entered under the glass; she frowned and dipped her head down with her eyes closed, and held her helmet to her hip, cheerlessly attempting to acclimate to her new home.
Light, quick-moving footsteps down the hallway pulled her eyes open, and she looked towards the sounds in anticipation. A young human boy of a similar age popped out from around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks, frozen, and stared at Karath, up and down, locking into the bluish-silver feathers on her head.
"Hi." she stated.
A loud hydraulics noise sounded elsewhere just as the boy opened his mouth to speak, drawing his attention back the way he came, and he darted off leaving her standing there looking at nothing. She rolled her eyes and followed him in an unhurried stroll.
The ship's innards were worn, with cracks in faded paint and rotting trash decorating the corners of the hallways, forcing Karath's hand to her beak. She eyed the elbow joints of the doors, the electrical piping, and noticed that though the only modern parts of the ship were haphazardly-done repairs to its fundamental areas, the structural elements as a whole seemed to be in full working order, though very unsightly.
She caught up to the boy in the cargo area where he was assisting a man unload cases of metal off of a mining vehicle. She entered the room, and the man stood up tall and studied her as the boy continued to work away.
"Well, well," he voiced. "A tevarin."
"Yeah?" she replied.
"It's been a while," he said.
"Been a while since what?" she asked.
"Let me guess," he said, disregarding her question. "A fugitive?"
Karath stood and said nothing, staring back at the man as her hand twitched towards her backpack. He broke eye contact and spun around, reaching for the boy's shoulder, gripping it hard and pushing him in Karath's direction.
"You should go see my twin brother, Marty. Oily, here, will show yeh the way, won't yeh?"
"Y-yeah, of course, Loo'." Looty turned towards her and wore an encouraging smirk, waiting for her to turn around to follow the boy. As she left the room, she could swear that she felt him searching her up and down with his gaze, and a shiver jumped up her back when she was finally out of view.
As the pair travelled through the smelly hallways of the ship, Karath noticed that Oily walked completely unphased by the mess.
"How long have you guys been out here?"
Oily thought for a moment. "Just a couple of months."
Karath quickly wondered at the condition of the Deep Cradle before becoming distracted by the peculiar situation she had found herself: This was the first time she was alone with someone else that was her age. She decided to inquire.
"How many sol are you?" she asked.
"12, yeh?"
"Wow, I'm turning 12 in a couple of days, actually."
Oily looked back at her with genuine excitement. "Really," he smiled. "That's perfect."
Karath cocked her head to the side. "Perfect?" she said.
"Yeah!" he exclaimed. "I've never gotten to hang out with someone my own age before." Karath blushed under her feathers, and quietly smiled towards the ground.
As they entered the bridge, Karath finally found the source of the confectionary artifacts that had been left for discovery around the entire ship. In an oversized, custom pilot's chair, with thick, titanium-braced supports, and hydraulic tubing many centimeters in diameter, an obese man sat, spinning around as they entered the room to meet eye to eye with Karath, wearing a huge grin and a large, unidentifiable nugget of meat perched into one of his tooth gaps.
"It's yeh," he chuckled. "Welcome aboard!"
Karath couldn't keep her eye off the nugget. "It's me, hi," she managed to say. "Name's Karath."
"Wouldn't have guess yeh a tevarin," he replied.
"Sorry," she said, and Marty replied with a chuckle.
"Karath's gonna be 12 soon, like me!" Oily butted in.
"Is that so?"
"Yeah," she stated.
Oily peered at both of them as they stared in quiet silence towards each other, a muted conversation going on between them. Karath's hand kept twitching to reach into her backpack; her senses were blaring off all over the place.
"So, Karath, is it?" Marty started. "What happened to yeh?"
Her brow creased and back straightened. "I was attacked by slave traders."
"Yeh?" Marty replied. "Weren't yeh with anyone?"
"Do I have to be?"
"At yer age," he said, tossing some fried potatoes into his mouth, "yeah." Karath's eyes flickered in Oily's direction, catching him turning his gaze down and away with awkward motions.
"I manage," she said bluntly.
"Well yeh couldn't a' managed very well ending up in that escape pod there." he said, and Oily's eyes opened wide as he looked up at Karath to watch her respond.
Karath held her unwavering stare. "I destroyed half my ship killing a dozen pirates," she said without blinking. "The escape pod was the only undamaged thing in space."
At this Marty halted his chew, inhaling a few seconds before letting out a boisterous laugh, sending soggy crumbs all over his stomach.
"Fan-tas-tic!" he managed to yell, the volume of his voice sending half a grimace over Karath's face.
"I think I believe her, Marty," a voice said sneaking out from behind her. "Would you expect lies to come out of a face like that?" Karath spun around, startled, but relaxed after seeing the distance between her and Looty.
Marty's face calmed as he shot Looty an incredulous look. "Out of a tevarin?" His and Karath's gaze met slowly. "I'd expect just about anythin' from worms to space-trash to come out of a tevarin's mouth."
Immediately, the gears in Karath's mind started spinning as she regretted ever switching on her distress beacon. The urge to resist pulling out her pistol was getting more difficult by the second, and she gripped her helmet so hard it began to creak. She reached up to her pack just as Looty's thin lips began to move.
"Oily," he said. "Why don't yeh go ahead and show the guest where she'll be stayin', I'm sure she wants rest." Oily walked with his head down, and Looty reached out with his gangling left arm, caressing the young boy's flat stomach as he passed. "She's going to need it to help us haul that iridium," he said, smirking.
Karath watched Oily, head cocked, questioning everything about these three, and glanced quickly at the brothers before following him out of the chamber. Another shiver jumped down her back as she waded past their gazes down the hallway.
When they were a safe distance away, Karath decided to pry some answers out of Oily, who seemed to be expecting the interrogation. "Oily," she whispered.
He turned and smiled. "Karath?"
"What is with those two, the brothers?"
"What is with—" He contemplated the question. "How?"
"Are you a slave?"
This question he understood. "Well, not exactly. They found me on Selene, a few years ago, and I've been with them ever since."
"Where are your parents?"
He looked back silently and shrugged.
"You don't know where your parents are?"
"I dunno who my parents are."
"What?" she pressed.
Oily stepped slowly to a stop, and prepared to tell her a bit more about what he remembered. It was appreciated, but Karath noticed something about Oily: There was no disobedience in his attitude, no defiance, no insubordination. His relationship with his past reminded her of her own—before a week ago—except his possessed a kind of acquiescence that captivated her, drew her into the sadness that the understanding would surely bring with it.
"I lived on the streets of Selene ever since forever, fightin' for scraps, for warmth. By the time I met Looty I been in jail over a dozen times, theft mostly. I got pretty good, but it's hard to stay outta the system when yeh seen 'em so much they recognize yeh wherever yeh go.
"Marty and Looty were in the foster care system for years before I landed in their home. They," he said, turning red, "they took care o' me. They loved me, showed me a different way of livin', one that wasn't desperate. It felt good."
Karath peered into his side-glancing eyes in an attempt to understand the things he wasn't telling her, the things about their relationship that he blushed about instead of revealing. They decoded each other's silence for a moment, before Karath decided to pry further.
"What kind of people are they?" she asked.
"What do yeh mean?"
"Well," she said, looking away, "how do they treat you, physically?"
At this the boy gave her a sharp look. "They care about me, always have. When they bought this freighter, they didn't have to take me along. They coulda thrown me back to the system, back to the streets."
Karath decided it was something she didn't need to know more about, as the more she thought about it, the more she caught a gag feeling rising up out of her belly. It was like the experience of boarding this place had gifted her with distastefully ugly pieces of the rock she landed on, and she just wanted to throw it all back up. She needed to change the subject. "So what do you do here?"
Glad to be asked about his responsibilities, his expression brightened. "I help with the hauling, and a little bit of drilling here and there. I'm also a better pilot than the both of them combined, been flyin' since I was 8 sol!" he said with a grin.
"Me too." she replied, smiling. Although she chuckled on the inside: She'd started earlier, when she was 5, but didn't want to ruin his moment. "So that was you that picked me up, then?"
"It was! How'd yeh like it?"
"Getting rescued? Great, I guess," she replied dryly.
"No," he said. "My flying."
"Oh." She thought back and remembered being frightened by it. "It was...fast."
She said the word he was hoping she'd say. "I know," he voiced proudly. "I'm only 12."
"That's great," she said flatly. Even though he was a little daft, and a little bit annoying, she somewhat liked the boy, and if clouds of awkward ambiguity didn't surround his relationship with his guardians, she might have actually liked him, as his flying skills were honed, and they were the only two of their age, probably, for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. She studied the contour of his jaw line. I guess he is kinda cute, she thought.
They arrived at the room and Karath studied it closely. A desk with a computer console lined the left wall, and a compartment sectioned the right, with an indented shelf above it that housed old books, some young adult fiction novels, mostly textbooks on flight, piloting, and asteroid drilling. She eyed the neatly-made bed in the corner and wondered for a second as Oily disturbed it, removing the beddings and tossing them onto the floor. He moved over to the wall compartments and paused for a second, looking up at her.
"Yeh can clean up in the wash down the hall while I get yer bed ready." he encouraged.
Karath blushed under her feathers as she realized that she hadn't cleaned up for many days now, and she had become used to her scent. She quickly exited the room as Oily chuckled under his breath.
Much to Karath's surprise, the washroom was cleaner than the bedroom she had just exited, and took solace in the fact that for the first time since arriving here, besides being in the bedroom, she was the worst smelling thing in her own vicinity. A genuine smile waved over her face, the first in days, as she inhaled the pleasant scents of the clean, fragrant washroom, before coughing at her own.
She pulled down the suit over her body, watching herself in the mirror, and froze as she noticed a tiny black hair dangling off her suit's interior. With her thumb and forefinger she calmly pinched it, bringing it up close to her face to inspect it. Her heart skipped a beat, and she inhaled deeply to counter it, realizing the strand was Ecklestein's, left over from when he repaired her suit last, that time he revealed a shapely piece of the incomplete puzzle that was his past. She rested it upon the sink ahead of her, and knelt down, transported to melancholia, gazing at it for what seemed like forever.
Finally, she took the hair, kissed it with her beak, and let it wash down the drain. She stared at herself for a few moments longer, letting her mind race down the rivers of her mind, and if the events of the day were boulders, turning the rivers into tumbling rapids, Ecklestein's hair washed them all away, even pushed the mists to the banks, and it was back to clear sailing for her: All she needed now was a ship.
She placed her thoughts in a little box and tucked it away and cleaned herself, staying extra long in the shower to let the warmth comfort her. When she was done she was all collected, smelling like a clean tevarin, and with plumed feathers she strolled back to the bedroom.
She entered the room to find Oily sitting at the desk, working out a digital puzzle, behind him the bed completely made and neat with fresh beddings. He had placed the original sheets on the floor across the room into a makeshift sleeping bag—he gave her his own bed, and it made her feel royal.
She donned a sweet expression, short-lived though as she noticed Oily staring at her in the corner of her eye. She was out of the suit and wearing casual sleepwear, and his eyes glided over her newly revealed curves and puffed out blue and green feathers, his mind wandering into a separate universe.
She audibly cleared her throat, blushing so hard she felt the heat radiate out through her feathers. Oily shook his head, remembering where he was, and looked back at his computer screen disappointed that he'd failed his time trial in the puzzle game.
"Well," he said, "yeh get comfortable, I'll wash up."
"K," she replied.
"Ok," he replied back.
Oily was clean and fresh smelling when he returned, and Karath caught herself glancing at him now and then when he wasn't looking. Her mind wandered.
"We'd better sleep," Oily started, breaking the silence, "Looty dug lots today, we'll prob'ly be haulin' back and forth for ten hours tomorrow."
Karath laid in the bed, eyes up to the ceiling, following the edges of welding marks in the walls. "When do you think you guys are leaving this rock?"
"To sell? I dunno, we been here a while, but there's still so much down there, and our containers are only halfway full. I say a couple months."
"A couple...months?"
"Yeh."
"I see." she said, the wheels turning in her head, exploring what little options she had. "Hey, I've been meaning to ask you," she said timidly. "Why do they call you Oily?"
He chuckled. "Actually, my name is Olly, well that's what they used to call me back home. When I met Marty and Looty they ended up callin' me Oily after they saw how dirty I was all the time. It stuck."
"Oh," Karath replied. "I see."
They said their goodnights after Karath ate a bit from her ration, and she laid mentally and physically exhausted in the bed. The two were asleep after a while, and Karath dreamed of floating in EVA in deep space, with nothing around her, drowning in a sea of black, unsure of how she got there or even how much oxygen she had left.
She awoke to a start and glanced about the room, confused. She looked over at Olly's bed sheets to see them empty, and through the cracked door she heard distant voices. She sat up for a minute in an attempt to translate the whispers she heard before her curiosity pulled her out of bed and down the hall in the direction of the sounds.
She stepped lightly through the dim, red-lit hallway, avoiding trash, pleasantly reminded of the smells they emitted, and finally reached the chamber where two voices spoke lowly with each other. She put her ear against the cold steel of the wall and eavesdropped.
"We can't—" Olly started.
"Why," Looty interrupted. "Are yeh startin' to like this girl? Yeh can't like a tevarin, Oily. They're bad news, they're all bad news. Before yeh were born they were trying to wipe us out the galaxy."
"But that was a long time ago, and Karath, she's different, I can tell."
"She seem different, yeh. But they all show their true colors, one day." Olly looked down with nothing to say, and Looty stopped to rub his shoulders, consoling him. "She just a tevarin, Oily. We all know where they come from, what they're like, what their religion tell 'em to be. They can't be trusted, have I ever steered yeh wrong?"
Olly looked up at him. "No, yeh love me, right?"
Looty took him into his arms and caressed the back of his head. "Of course I love yeh, me and Marty, we both love yeh, and that why I'm trying to protect yeh from 'er. Yeh simply can't trust a tevarin, they're barbaric. After two wars, seeing what their religion does to 'em, they're all the same."
"Are they?" Oily replied.
"Of course they are! I been around long enough to know. I seen what the tevarin refugees did to the people who took them in, everyone saw it. They were thieves, rapists, the lowest of the low. Your friend out there, she runnin' from somethin'. Do yeh think she be floating out here in a escape pod if she didn't do somethin' wrong? Think about it, boy."
Oily looked down at the floor as Looty rubbed his back, battling internally with his own logic. Looty must be right, he thought, it all made sense: He was older, had seen more. Oily had never met a tevarin who wasn't a gambler or a drug dealer before meeting Karath, but a muted muffled voice in the back of his head spoke against it all, always questioned the things Marty and Looty taught him, begging the question: What if they were wrong? The tevarin, he thought, weren't they just people, too? People with aspirations, opinions, honor, logic? Could it be that maybe they weren't all the same, and that experiences with some couldn't possibly ordain universal values for all? Besides, back on Selene, Oily knew plenty of horrible humans, even a few really bad Banus, and Banus have a pretty good reputation among humans. Why was it, he thought, that the bad batches of the Banus and Humans were labeled on a case by case basis, that it were their environments and situations that turned them astray, evil, unfavorable, but that the same couldn't be said for the tevarin, as if they were innately lacking goodness? And what did Looty or Marty know about their religion anyway, to bad mouth it the way they did? Didn't every race have religion, and were the texts so different in substance? Should it be not the religion, but the person, that answers for their actions? Freedom, and Life, are the only two true gifts we've been given by the universe, were those not universal values among the people themselves, just as people, separate from the cultures to which they belonged?
Looty noticed Oily looking down, silent, confused. He grabbed his chin and pointed it towards his face.
"Me and my brother love yeh more than anythin' else in the galaxy, isn't that enough for yeh to trust us?"
It was as if the growing voice in his head was once again muted, the voice that asked questions instead of giving answers, that wondered about the unknown, contemplated beyond the labels given to him by his surroundings, and he relaxed and smiled, giving up his freedom into the hands of one he trusted to do the thinking for him: It was easier.
"I trust yeh, Looty. I'm sorry," he said, and smiled. With that, Looty brought his face closer to his own, slowly, and kissed him on the lips, puckering twice, and when he let go he brought his nose up to his washed hair and inhaled deeply.
"Been a while since yeh cleaned up," he said, smiling.
"Yeh," Oily agreed.
"It's time for bed, Oily," he said, motioning to his sheets. "I missed yeh."
Outside the room, Karath was frozen, crouched, her face red under the feathers with rage, her ear still up against the cold steel. She stood up, with fists clenched so hard they shook, ready to burst into the room and beat both of them down until there was but one femur left to use to beat Marty with down the hall, who was probably half asleep with food sliming out of his mouth and his sides spilling out of his chair.
She noticed her breathing loudened, and covered her mouth as she walked backwards to Oily's room, careful not to make a sound, disgusted by the noises she heard bouncing around the hall. When she got back she grabbed her pistol out of her bag and climbed into bed. She'd have a big day, she thought, she needed to get what little rest she could, if it were even possible.
Six hours went by and Karath managed to sleep for two of them, and she awoke to Oily opening the door to his own room but pretended to be asleep. He grabbed the undersuit for his EVA outfit and changed into it. Before he left the room he called out to Karath gently, telling her it was time to get up and get to work.
"K." she replied quietly.
When he left the room she got out of the bed and stretched and did some pushups to get her blood going. She packed all of her things back into her bag and put on her EVA suit, hiding her knife and pistol within it, and walked to the bridge.
When she entered, Marty was eating and farting, staring out the bridge window at Looty and Oily in the mining rover across the way.
"So, Karath, are yeh ready to g—"
"What are you going to do with me," she interrupted. "What's your plan here, to work me, to make me your tool and slave, your toy, like you two have done to Olly?"
Marty swallowed what food he had left in his mouth and slowly turned the chair around to notice Karath standing 10 feet away, dressed, with her helmet in one hand, and an energy pistol in the other pointed directly at his nose.
"Now what the hell do yeh think you're d—"
"Answer the question or I'm going to blast the fat off your neck." She clicked the gun's safety off, and Marty looked at her wide-eyed as he heard the intimidating charging sound of the pistol, seeing her finger twitch at the trigger. "Hurry up," she stated.
"T-Tee's pirates. Tee's pirates are coming, they shot out a bounty all o'er the system for a human male 'bout 30 years, and a young tevarin girl 'bouts yer age."
"How long 'til they get here?"
"Th-they should be here any minute."
Karath noticed a red light on the dashboard and recognized it as an open comms button. Her eyes darted across the bridge window and saw that the rover had spun around and was making its way back to the ship: The comms were open and Looty and Oily had heard the whole thing.
Karath panicked for a second and looked back at Marty, who wore a stupid smile over his face and a meat strip in one hand. His other hand was over his armrest pressing a little orange button above a hole.
The blast blinded Karath as she dove out of the way, dropping her gun and helmet to rub her eyes. She didn't feel anything so it must have missed, but when the second blast sounded, she crouched and screamed as she felt the heat from it enter her side, the energy being absorbed into her suit and directed down into the floor of the bridge. With her eyes closed, she locked onto the direction of the sound of the blast, pulled her knife out, and dashed towards it, leaping after a few steps and coming down with a hard stab. She felt that she had landed on Marty, her feet planted into his fat, bulging legs, her knife sunken deep into his chest. Her vision started to come back as Marty brought his hands up to her throat and squeezed. Karath yelped through her restricted airway, and stared into Marty's face, seeing that it was filled with horror and panic, and pulled her blade out of his chest and stabbed him right in his left eye, forcing him to release his grip just as her vision was starting to go dark again around the corners. She fell off of him and slammed into the metal floor, rolling over and coughing.
As she was catching her breath she heard loud footsteps down the hall coming towards the bridge. She dove for her pistol across the floor, gripping it as she rolled past, and with one knee down she crouched in a shooting position aiming directly at head-height on the bridge door.
The door opened revealing Looty, rifle in hand and helmet off sporting a panic-stricken face. The moment the door opened past him, a blue streak of energy bolted at his forehead, snapping his head back and dropping him dead to the floor, with Oily standing right there behind him, horrified. Karath pointed her pistol at him, getting up on two feet.
"Don't move, sex toy!"
"What. Did. Yeh. DO!" he exclaimed in disbelief. His whole world had shattered before him; the only people he knew, the only people his broken mind had cared for were gone. He was always confused, lost, saw the world so dark and untrusting that the so-called love that these sick pedophiles showed him was sadly the best thing he ever had, the warmest comfort he'd ever known, and as they lay there dead before him, slain by a tevarin—who was only ever fabled to him as evil—it seemed the little voice of logic that rarely peered out from the depths of his mind was gone forever, lost in the big dark that was the wretched universe of his tortured soul.
"Don't move," Karath repeated, walking towards him as he stood there, shaking, with tears in his eyes, and utter fear worn over his entire being. "They didn't love you. They used you, they were horrible, disgusting people, and you're too naive to see it."
"Yer horrible," he replied. "Yer the bad one, tevarin!"
"You know nothing about me! Why I'm here, who's been hunting me. They killed the only thing I've ever known. Did they even tell you who's coming to claim me? Tevarin pirates!"
"No!" He looked down and away in confusion. "They wouldn't deal with tevarin. Yeh never trust a tevarin!"
"It's true. They're slave traders, Olly! They might even come here and take you as a slave! If the money was right, Olly, Marty and Looty would've just sold you."
"NONE OF THAT'S TRUE! THEY LOVE ME!" Olly, broken, beaten, sat mumbling to himself against the hallway's rusted wall, as something sounded from the bridge console. Karath turned to see it was a communications request, and noticed blips a few dozen kilometers away on the radar screen.
She looked back at Olly, who currently wasn't of this world, and she felt guilty, felt sorry for him. In another universe they might've been good friends, but this one had dealt him a bad hand, and part of her—the empathetic part she had inherited from Ecklestein—felt absolutely crushed for him, but also knew that she couldn't save him.
"I'm sorry," she said, holstering her gun, wiping her knife clean and putting it away. She grabbed her helmet and put it on as she ran past him down the hallway towards the ship dock.
When she got there she hopped into the light fighter that Olly used to retrieve her, and the ship's manufacturer was familiar to her, luckily, so she wouldn't have to figure out how to pilot it. She started the ship and activated the gate control, and as the door lifted she looked out into the universe with drive and resolve to do what she had to, to survive, and thought for a second, that maybe that was the same thing that Olly was doing: Surviving. Two sides of the same coin, she thought, and activated the ship's afterburners, scorching the interior of the docking bay and jetting out and off this crazy rock, the likes of which she wished never to see again.
She burned her way out into the asteroid field, looking back at the ship one last time, and warped un-obscured to the Vega-Bremen wormhole.
Moments later, back on the asteroid, a heavily customized Casse Aerospace Hurricane, reflecting Vega's light off its black and silver trim exterior, had landed in a large cloud of white dust. Inside the Deep Cradle, Olly sat, ripped out of his trance by the sounds of the depressurization chamber down the hall. Slow, heavy steps, lurched towards him as fear brought him back to reality. He gazed out into the dark, red-lit hallway at the shadow that approached him, and tried multiple times to say something through the chokes in his throat.
"H-hey?" he managed.
The figure closed in on him, seemingly gliding through the mist and the darkness like a ghoul, and when he got but five feet away he stopped as the light from the bridge stretched out through the door and revealed his face: It was the exact face of Olly's fear, the fear that had been ingrained into him through years of conditioning. The unknown face of that once distant fear had finally manifested before him, just as his world had been flipped on its side.
Tee looked down at him and smiled.
An unsheathing noise sparked screams echoing throughout the rusted, trash-filled hallways of the Deep Cradle, and eventually faded to a grim silence.