1

That's how it was in defeat.

You were alone. You felt awful. And you were very, very tired.

Although Marcus Hamilton wasn't actually alone. He was hunkered down with seventeen others in the corridor outside the engine section of the cruiser TRS Proxima. They were all secured to the wall with emergency cuffs to prevent them from drifting in zero gravity each time they moved-zero gravity that should not even be present in a fully functional ship. Unfortunately, the good old Proxima was far from being fully functional.

Two of the seventeen were dead. Technician Second Class Petal sat across from him. A fine thread of blood floated from the corner of his mouth, winding through the air like a thin worm. Petal's eyes were open, and he stared at Marcus blankly. There was no life left in him. There were no visible external injuries: it was all internal, organs crushed after the gravity compensation failed. Petal had been an okay guy. Marcus had often worked with him.

The other dead man sat a short distance away. His head was bent unnaturally to one side. Marcus didn't want to look. He didn't know him. No one seemed to know him, or at least no one was looking at him.

That's how it was in defeat.

Five refugees from other ships in the defeated fleet sat in the corridor with him. Hopeless figures, overcome with fear, rescued from escape pods. An arm in a makeshift splint, two skulls wrapped in pressure bandages, one man coughing constantly-a little too often and too violently for Marcus's taste. The cruiser's infirmary was overcrowded. The technician didn't even want to think about what was happening in there. The full complement of the Proxima crew was 146. Now there were perhaps four times as many on board, most of them in a miserable state both inside and out, physically and mentally.

Not that Marcus felt great.

But that's just how it was in defeat.

Especially when defeat dragged on for days. And especially when precipitated by betrayal. Space battles were not spectacular or heroic. They were seemingly endless episodes of spaceships flying in continuous loops, briefly coming into contact and attacking each other before the laws of physics parted them again. By all accounts, things were hectic and tense on the bridge. But here, in the belly of the ship, there was ample time to mourn the dead, tend to the injured and repair what they could-all with a growing fear of their next encounter.

Marcus was terrified. The fear lay deep in his gut and ate away at his innards. It fused with his anger at the other crews, who had turned on their comrades at the crucial moment, dealing the death blow to the Republic fleet.

He looked into Petal's dead eyes and saw no more fear there. Marcus was almost envious.

Suddenly, something caught his attention. He looked up in alarm, recognizing it immediately. A module floated slowly through the air. It was spherical, about twenty centimeters in diameter: an emergency battery, prepped for combat, fully charged. and its contact surface was glowing. At some point, it had been cast adrift and was now gliding down the corridor. Not good. Marcus's eyes followed its trajectory. The torn innards of conduits, exposed by a cascade explosion, were strewn along its path-damage that Marcus had been trying to repair when they'd received the order for the re-acceleration phase. He had pinned himself to the wall to avoid ending up like Petal. No one had managed to secure the battery.

It was going to land right in the exposed wiring harness.

That would end badly.

Marcus's gaze shifted to the flat, flexible screen pad wrapped around his forearm. Emergency closure, the warning read. There were no accompanying orders. That meant that, at any moment, someone higher in the chain of command might engage the engine so the old girl could make another attempt to exit the carnage of the battle they had lost so spectacularly. They were being pursued; there was no other explanation.

But the module. No one was anywhere near its trajectory, and only Marcus knew his way around a battery.

He pressed a finger on the soft, flexible surface of the screen pad. A face appeared, adorned with a bloody gash covered in med-gel foam. Ludmilla Kamp was Specialist First Class. She had been in charge of the internal maintenance team ever since the officers in her section were wiped out by one of the strikes, as Chief Engineer Thomson was busy repairing the hypercoil.

She didn't look too well.

"Hamilton, I don't have time right now."

"I've got a live energy module flying around in here. Class four, and it's headed for the exposed live wiring harness. I've got to intercept it."

"They've declared an emergency lockdown. You could get slammed into the wall with that module."

"Ask the bridge."

"Why don't you ask them yourself?"

The screen went dark. Kamp had obviously had enough, and Marcus didn't blame her. It was all too much for everyone, to the point that they were finding it hard to care. He focused on the module again, ran some calculations, cursed and tapped the screen. It flickered, and a wait icon appeared. Of course. The bridge was busy. And who was he to them anyway?

He needed to.

Someone passed through the air in front of him with quick, elegant movements. A slender woman with a confident grace, who knew what she was doing-or did she? He caught a glimpse of her insignia: TRS Traian, one of the last ships to be destroyed before the battle ended and they escaped. A tender, if he remembered correctly. Tenders were full of technicians.

Like him, she had seen the danger, and she had taken the initiative. Marcus stifled a curse.

The woman rotated and extended her hand. She moved like a fish in water. He didn't look half as natural doing those kinds of maneuvers. He could warn her, but she could read the situation just as well as he could. She had made her decision.

The module glided into her hand. She grasped it, turned it and pushed in the emergency shutdown pin. The soft glow faded.

A siren wailed. Five seconds until the acceleration phase.

Marcus grabbed her nearest leg, hauled her toward him and wrapped both arms around her. He felt her jumpsuit automatically lock to his as they became aligned. She exhaled, her tension faded away, and she stared him in the face. She had short, hazelnut brown hair, petite ears, large eyes and a nose that jutted a little too sharply from her nicely chiseled face. He had better not bump into it. That wouldn't be nice for either of them, he thought.

She smiled at him gratefully.

He felt an enormous weight on his chest as the woman's body pressed against his. He groaned. She supported herself as best she could, not wanting to hurt him, but it made little difference, despite her efforts. The Proxima leapt forward. away from an enemy? A minefield? He didn't know. The structure of the old cruiser creaked and groaned as it jerked back into action. It was designed to absorb kinetic energy and distribute it throughout the hull. Some of the people in the corridor groaned, especially the injured. Sudden pressure caused wounds, both internal and external, to burst open. Zero gravity slowed the healing of wounds, and weakened circulatory systems were prone to blood clots and strokes. Space was not kind to human anatomy.

Marcus found himself holding on to the technician to prevent her from being thrown against a wall. She had reacted quickly; now he was returning the favor.

Seconds felt like an eternity. Seconds that hurt more and more.

A tone sounded as the pressure began to ease. Marcus drew a rattling breath. His chest hurt. He had probably bruised or broken a rib. He loosened his grip on the woman and coughed into his hand. No blood. Not yet.

"Are you alright?" He heard her voice and, at the same moment, caught a glimpse of her name tag. Gutierrez. That suited her dark eyes, which were now looking back at him, inquiring and concerned.

"Thank you," she said.

"No, thank you. The module."

".is under control," she interrupted. Their suits separated as she moved at an angle from him. She drifted away and fastened herself to the wall next to him, as per the regulations. She looked exhausted.

"I'm Marcus," he said. "Technician Second Class, Proxima."

"This is your ship? It's an old one, right?"

"It still flies."

"That's a good thing. Most of them don't anymore."

A sudden feeling of melancholy came over Marcus. Sooner or later, the emotion of the situation was going to take its toll, and the friendly gaze of a beautiful woman was ruffling his calm exterior. It had always been that way.

He felt her hand on his cheek. It felt surprisingly cool.

"I'm Margie. From the Traian. Did I hurt you?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you lying because I'm a woman?"

"Yeah, obviously."

They smiled at each other briefly. It was a wonderfully peaceful moment.

Then, the alarm sounded. The Proxima groaned.

It was starting again. Over and over, until they finally put enough distance between them and the enemy. They were fleeing, and Marcus hoped and prayed that the fighting was over.

The next burn began. The ship shook. It shook the people in the corridor, too-the survivors, the injured, the dead-among them Marcus Hamilton,...