Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it, these frantic moments between life and death.
But having Elani's in his ear the entire time made
it worse than it had ever been before. The old,
worn out screens, buttons and switches on the ancient reliant
hovered beneath the tips of his fingers, beckoning, telling him
without words that there was a solution somewhere in the
perfect pattern of strikes and presses. But the metal and
plastic were cold, and behind him, his partner was hot
with fury. Waking a hand through his hair, Cedric whipped
around to face her. She ate her arms crossed over
her chest, like she was trying to hold the crief
inside her short, dark hair, hon in her face, stuck
to her forehead with sweat. In some places, he found
it so odd that in the floating tinkin which took
them through the frozen emptiness of space, Olanis could be sweating,
and it made him stare at those strands for longer
than was polite. Cedric. She snapped, and he met her eyes,
only realizing once he did that he had been avoid
in doing so for a reason. Alani's usually saw full
and bright with life, was hollow, and it left him reeling.
What he answered tonestly, first you want me to try
to fix things, and then when I do, you tell
me to stop. Why don't you just go sit down
Olani's or try to get some sleep her joel worked.
The captain goes down with his ship right. His anger
was like a flash fire, the leash on his temper
non existent lately. Stop being so fucking melodramatic. She flinched,
but he felt no remorse for it. We've got at
least two days of oxygen left, and frankly, calling yourself
a captain of anything when your ship is probably worth
more and scrap is a bit too generous. Just just
let me work, okay, you're just bleeding more air out
into space. I've told you this a dozen times now.
If there is a clog, I'm trying to dislodge it.
Losing a few minutes of air to bring the whole
system back online is a fair trait, if you ask me,
look at me, Cedric alan Is demanded, and when he did,
he found that she was still just as hollow. We
both know it's not a blockage. The best thing to
do is to go low power and wait for someone
to respond to the beacon. Ye know, the military isn't
going to just leave a derelict gunship floating add there,
and once they figure out that they've lost contact with us,
they'll send somebody else, and then they'll be close enough
to hear our distress. His laugh was cruel. The fact
that you think that even a single one of those
assholes at Vanguard's station is going to give us one
thought is sort of sad. So again, let me work
unless you are ready to. I don't know, except your
fate was some cliche bullshit. Just get out of here.
Olani's turned her face away. The lights have a flickered,
but that was nothing near. Then she left down the
hallway and back to her quarters. Her steps are going
through the ship's interior like a heart beat, until her
door shut behind her and things were still. He lowered
his head into his hands and exhaled slowly, knowing that
his thundering heart, which was demanding he breathed harder, was
just another mechanism to drive him closer to suffocation. It's
just like you to let her die. Let me guess
if things get too dire. You'll just kill her yourself
so you can have a few more preciure, slumfuls. Cedric
turned in his creaking seat slowly to see his wife,
water along, green and beautiful, sitting across from him. The
bundle in her arms was still, but from the way
she strained almost unbearably heavy. That's what you're good at,
after all, She continued, bouncing the thing in her grasp
absent mindedly. A puddle of briny sea water pulled round
her feet, slowly dripping from the tendrils of her hair
and her silk clothing. The shirt, even wet, was all
the large. Let us all die so you can go
on right. She tried to sleep at first, but it
served no purpose. Alanie's overanalyzed every lungful of air she
pulled in, every grown and shifting of the ship beneath
her feet, and the increasingly frantic sounds of her only
crewmate on the flight deck looking for something. They both
knew he would never find the solution. One of the
things that she kept thinking about the most was how
much she ated the name of the fucking ships she
had bought from an auction years ago and restored slowly
until she was able to take conscription work. Wiliant had
been painted on the side and fading brick red, and
Olanie's had kept it as a homage to the years
the ship had spent under someone else in a different life,
but now it felt like a joke. The reliance warp
drive had failed in one spectaculargy, throwing them out of
hyperspace as such force that she had been thrown against
the console and knocked unconscious. When she awoke, Cedric had
been nearly frozen in shark sitting in front of the
status screens and flicking through the report again and again,
as if on autopilot. We aren't reading oxygen tank one
or two, he had told her robotically, whereon reserves? Maybe
eight irs? If were lucky, either the tanks had been dislodged,
or the ship was damaged in such a way that
it wasn't able to utilize the main life support system. Normally,
it would have been an easy spacewalk to determine if
the tanks were gone were reparably damaged, but the extra
energy it would cost them, both mechanically and to their
physical bodies would be a death sentence to at least
one of them, well, a slower one anyway, because from
what Lannies could tell, they were both going to die.
Fucking reliant, she thought, poking the bloody lump on her
for had under the sweep of her binds from where
she had been knocked out. I saved the ship from
getting melted down and turned into godas and this is
the thanks I get. Life hadn't been bad for Alanie's
all things considered, but she had felt since the day
she turned it in that she was destined for more
than the latch she was given. It's what spurred her
to buy a ship with her enlistment bonus, and what
made her start taking risky jobs once she was out
of the military and on her own. She was so
sure that one day, one job was going to make
this gray and neutral life of hers come into full colla.
Maybe she would save a life, or, like she thought
in her wildest dreams, be the first ship on the
scene to save an entire crew. But all the captaining
the Relion had taught her was that there were very
few heroes in the world. Her and Cedric had towed
in an unknoble number of ships that were cold and
dark inside the still and silent crew floating lifelessly, but
they had never saved a single soul, which made her think,
not for the first time, why Cedric had even taken
the job of her. Alanie's didn't pay much, and the
quarters she had given a mechanic left a lot to
be desired, But Cedric was desperate to get off herth,
so much so that she hadn't seen a man relax
until the pale blue dot was fading away behind them.
They barely knew each other even now, at least who
they really were, and in turn, Alanis had little interesting
to say about hers. She had no tragic backstory, no
loss loves. That was the problem. She had nothing. She
was nothing, and now she never would be. Her knots
were kept her up, kept her from possibly sleeping through
the inevitable suffocation and dying peacefully. She was sick with
the idea of going out of existence the same way
she had lived in it, quiet and eventful and without
a fight. They had round seven hours left, She had
to decide how many of them she was going to
spend laying and the hard mattress in her quarters staring
at the yellowing ceiling. Alani's had just closed her eyes
when she had the worrying that indicated that Cedric had
activated the distress beacon. It made her sit up in
bed surprised. They were both well aware that they were
in empty space and the chances of anyone passing close
enough to find them was slinten on, and he had
refused to even consider wasting the extra power. Although they
both knew it was going to be that which took
them out, oxygen was always going to be the culprit.
It wasn't the strange that her crewmated a change of
heart about maximizing their chances for rescue, and it gave
her a glimmer of hope that maybe he wouldn't run
her off again if she tried to join him. There
was a strange, aching emptiness that eclipsed her fear of death,
and that emptiness was the knowledge that they might each
die alone. Not quite strangers, not quite friends, but they
were both still human at least. Alanie's didn't bother putting
her shoes on, and the chill of the sheet metal
four led up through the soles of her feet into
the core of her body as she made her way
back out of the command deck. Cedric had abandoned the
diagnostic screens and was at the main system screen. Now.
He seemed stiff, his shoulders pushed back and his neck forward,
But it wasn't like she could fault him for feeling
that way, Cedric, she spoke into the quiet. He didn't turn,
but she knew he hurt her. What's the status? I
thought you were sleeping, was all he said. Alani's knew
that meant it's all the same, No, she responded, simply
coming up beside him. On his screen was something curious,
the drive signature of another ship, a rescue in recovery ship.
What is this? She breathed, sinking into the seat next
to him. He didn't move aside to let her see better,
but her pulse was pounding all the same, Cedric, did
someone answer the beacon in such a short time? They
weren't coming for us. They were in hyperspace heading to
the rack of a civilian transport ship when they caught
the beacon there. He blew out of breath, fidgety and
nearly vibrating with anxiety. Data dropped out of hyperspace when
they heard it. But the coms aren't working right either.
I don't think they can hear us, But I heard
them pretty clearly, so that's it. Alani's was in disbelief.
We're going to be okay now, No, fuck no, we aren't.
He licked his lips, breaking his hands through his hair.
Maybe I don't know from what I heard from them.
The civilian ship they are on their way to hasn't
communicated or shown any signs of life for over twelve
hours now, so if they can confirm that we're alive
over here, they'll just course and come to us instead.
But they don't have enough fuel over both. There are
a few ways I could hail them without the coms
being up, but we'd be sentencing that other ship to
death if they are still survivors. Alani swallowed hard, pass
a lump in our throat. But if they haven't received
confirmation of signs of life, it's a transport. Alani's. If
the ship lost life'spport, or whatever happened to them was
isolated to one part the ship, and the survivors have
no way of getting to any sort of communication, who's
to say they would even know how to use it.
We can't of her rescue just to save ourselves, She
felt a stump drop to her feet. How many are
aboard the transport? When Cedric looked over at her finally,
his pupils were pimpricks between eighty and one hundred passengers.
Tilting her head towards the ceiling, she let the hearty
wash over her in one intense way before tucking it away.
There was no time for such things. I wish you
hadn't told me. She closed her as to keep penny
errant tears at bay, but it made her nearly jump
out of her skin. Wh Cedric spoke next, hissing in
her ear so closely that she felt his breath on
her skin. Why wouldn't I My blood is already on
your hands. Why not a fewtisn' more or a hundred more?
Selfish murderer? The words he spoke so fast that it
sounded like he was on fast forward, and Cedric's tone
was so full of venom that she reeled back as
popping wide open. Is that what you think? Al Annie
snapped in shock. Cedric was back fully in his seat,
mountain no longer against the shell of her ear. A
question in his exhausted eyes, what are you talking about?
Do you think I'm a murderer. There was a thread
of hysteria in her voice, Ollie on the t hill,
and of the horrible things he had said. The nickname
made her flinch. No, we both know the right choice here,
and unless have completely misjudged you, I'm sure we're on
the same page. But if that's what you called me
just now, His gaze shuddered, looking over her shoulder for
a long moment before putting his attention back on her fully, No,
I didn't. What are you talking about? She stood so
quickly that her chair locked into place, but free spinning
made a few jerky rotations on its own. I need
a second, Olani's blurted out, clenching and and clenching her fists,
the bump on her forehead only adding to the all
consuming migrints starting to set into his skull. The door
to her quarters was a few feet away when she
felt hands on her shoulders like ice coal vases, and
Cedric's voice in her ear again, so close that he
might as well have been speaking against her skin. Olani's
hadn't even heard him behind her. The metal floors didn't
lend themselves well to sneaking, but she swallowed the alpafet
before it to the escape her lips. You'd really let
me die for a bunch of strangers, Cedric whispered sharply.
It's your fault that I'm even here, and now your
content to just let me die? Monster murder whipping around.
She tried to grab at him and hold him in place,
but her crewmate was nothing but empty ere when she
did so, except she could see the dark ginger of
his head over the back of his seat back at
the front of the ship, seemingly oblivious. Quivering with anxiety,
her trust in her own sanity bleeding away. But a second,
Olani's guard the handle of the door and pulled, But
right before she stepped inside, she heard her partner speak again,
the vitriol in his words replaced with an unending sorwer,
did you know that I had a daughter? His words
hit herlike the crack of a whip echoing in the ship.
With how loudly he had to speak so she could
hear him, but Helani simply entered the room and shut
the door behind her. At that point she had no
idea if it was actually Cedric speaking or just the
ghost of her own despair, Her weight falling back against
the closed door, she slid to the floor, had fallen
into her open palms and silent sobs racking her body
like the quaking of the earth she had left behind.
Did you think she'd listened to you, Sarah asked her husband,
now walking pointless lines across the ship. You can't delude
your sins by confessing them at the end, Sedric, drink
them down and be done with it. He didn't resp
bonde to her, the silence of her steps reassuring him
that she was just a figment of his slowly deteriorating mind.
It was too soon for the lack of oxygen to
be noticable enough that he would hallucinate so vividly, but
he figured he had already been teetering on his mental breakdown,
and the slow march towards the end was what finally
sent him over. The thing was a part of him
wished it was real. He'd take her in any form,
living and warm or dead and soap with seawater. The
biggest regret of his life was not drowning with her
mausav in the Atlantic on a boat he was too
inexperienced to drive, but had been rented out to him anyway.
He had scraped the old thing against a jotting bit
of coral, but paid it no mind until it was
too late. Sarah was nine months pregnant and he weak
to keep floating until Reski eventually came once the rental
wasn't returned on time. It was supposed to be their
last blessful trip before they became parents, but she had
begged him to not let her drown fade. I know
you're thinking about it, Sarah's ghost exhaled. I hope it
torments you every minute of every day. Outside the stars
wheeled by Bright and gerrishon col Vaquium of Idol, Cedric
didn't turn to look back at the specter of the
time terrible beloved things she carried in her arms. But
he couldn't let that comment pass by. Of course, if
fucking does Sarah? How many knights had he dreamt it?
At her all alone on the floor of the ocean, unreachable,
an empty grave that he could never mourn, at a
nursery that he locked and never enters again. The dilapidated
hunk of the Reliant and his futureless insides were an
answered prayer compared to all of that now, though he
was sick with the thought of spending eternity a lifetime
and more away from her and their daughter. He had
severed himself from that man husband unexpecting father, only to
have that identity come crashing back down on top of
him in his final ears, a morning veil he could
never shirk, and when he tried to exercise himself of
those locked away pots of him to the only person
around Alanies had shut the door, leaving his spotted cry
for help bouncing around the air around him, unheard, unacknowledged.
If only Daddy had been stronger, She cow to the bundle,
her voice echoing and reverberating around him. If only he
could have held us up longer. Oh, now you've tricked
another woman into trusting you, and she's going to die too.
As the minutes past, Sarah had grown grayer and more gaunt,
the tendrils of her dark braids dribbing along with her clothes,
and when she stepped into his line of vision, it
terrified him so much that his stomach turned inside him.
At least you have the chance of saving this one,
but you won't. Better to save a possible group of
nameless faces than her hum. She moved closer, and he
turned his head so far away that his necker. More
than anything, he dreaded seeing what was in her arms,
had seen it in his nightmare for years now, had
wondered if Sarah clutched her stomach a she ate the
sandy bottom of the sea to hold their daughter into eternity.
He knew he was going to be sick, and the
logical part of his mind railed at him. For all
the extra energy and oxygen the act of perging would
use the beacon word SA gretched, and then the oxygen
alarm began to sound. Alanis found Servit passed up cold,
curled round the toilet like it was an effigy, the
smell of bier in the thinning air. She left him
like that, feeling her heart cracking loudly enough that for
a moment it drowned out her fear and choking sorer.
Her head was full of whispers, now hissing like a snake,
rattling in her brain like the water of a copper head,
dry and rasping at the inside of her ears. The
voice was still that of her crewmate, but seeing him unconscious,
sick in the corner, of his sluck mouth helped her
come back to the reality, as bleak as it was.
She went to her ragged a cracked leather captain's chair
and took in the screens and diagnostics. The din of
the oxygen alarm was unavoidable, and she tried to put
it at the back of her mind. It was lost
on her how her vision seemed to swim, and no
matter how quickly she sucked in air, she never felt satisfied.
But there was still that pure, distill utchingly human seed
of hope in her that she couldn't quite silence. She
mused on the transport ship that would receive the salvation
her and said it could be denied about the passengers,
and hoped that the rescuers might mention a smaller ship
they had passed up in order to save them. The
idea of her existence being forgotten. The instant she breathed
at last made her chest tight with panic. All Annie's left,
no legacy, no children, no contributions to society. In nothing.
Did you know that I had a daughter? Cedric, or
at least a voice that took his identity had said.
It made her sad more than any thoughts about her
own wasted life to think of his little girl waiting
for him back at home. Cedric had taken so little
time off that the idea that he might actually have
a child as hard for her to comprehend. But maybe
he and the mother were estranged. Now her rickety ship
was going to steal any feature that you may have,
and the truth settled over her like an icy second skin.
When she exhaled slowly and she could see her breath
in the air, it occurred to Olannie's that it wasn't
just her guilt making her child. The ship was actually freezing.
Are you going to just let him die on the
freezing bathroom floor covered in vomit? The voice rasped, Are
you really going to just let him die? Her eyes
flicked to the screens again and back. The image of
a tiny girl with auburn hair played across her mind's eye.
Her finger tips flew across the keyboard and then stopped.
She ran to get Cedric off the bathroom floor, sucking
in ir audibly. When she reached him and shook the
man awake. He was groggy as he sat up, and
she went a cloth in the sink to clean his face.
When he was fully conscious again. He watched her with
careful eyes. She pretended she didn't see away. The corners
of his lips were blue, his clothes, Cedric said simply,
and Olnis nodded, helping him to his feet. Then an
expectedly he pulled her into his arms, and that moment
of pure human connection rocked her. It wasn't until the
sob escaped her and in answering one came out of
him that she realized how much she didn't want to
be alone. Tell me about your daughter, he furrows gazed,
once again, going distant as he looked out the bassroom
door behind her, before he shook his head hard. I
can't she's dead. There were a million things Lannis wanted
to say to him, words of comfort and understanding, even
though she couldn't understand the depth of his loss at all,
but words were precious commodity for them now. Instead, she
took him by the hand and led him to the
open door of her quarters, and they lay on top
of the black duvet forehead to Forehea and Hans linked together,
held to their chests as if in prayer. They had
so few breaths left, so they shared them ice clothes,
a scant warmth of their bodies, barely enough to keep
the nuns away. You're shaking, Cedric told her, and she
nodded weakly. I'm not afraid any more, she told him,
a blatant lie, but one that she desperately wanted to believe.
I just wish it wasn't so cold. He didn't know why,
but Sir didn't come into the room with him and Alanie's,
but just stood outside the door, keeping a silent bit
of vigil over him. He untangled himself from the last
human in the world he would ever touch, stumbling to
the machine room in the back of the Reliant, hoping
to bypass the energy a limitter and get the ship
warm enough that Olanais was comfortable at the end. It
was such a pointless, silly thing, but it was all
he could give her. It was hard, his arms and
hands didn't want to obey him at his vision's wand doubles,
But with more strength than he thought he had left,
Cedric turned the wrench and the temperature began to climb.
He stumbled as he tried to make his way back
to Oloney's quarters, hitting a storage rack hard. Something rolled
against his feet, bumping into him. As he sank to
the ground, Haynes short circuited him, but when he forced
his eyes open once more, Sarah was there again. He
drew an air like a bellow's, gagging on the smell
of decay and Brian and the sight of her flesh
melting off those cheap bones he had ORed. She pushed
a rap bundle at him, and to his horror he
heard it stir take her. Cedric moaned and tried to
crawl away, but there was nothing left in him take her,
so he did. Cedric took the way heavyweight of his
daughter into his arms and forced himself to look into
a vase the color of bleach bone for the first
and the final time. The baby slept and was beautiful. Weedlessly.
He looked back up to his wife, but when he did,
the horror of her was gone, and when he looked
back down at his baby, she was gone. To The
weight in his arms then was instead a silver tank full.
His vision was going, and he couldn't read the label,
but he knew in his heart had to be oxygen.
When the ship had first been thrown out of the
warp drive, they had torn apart the ship for tanks
just like these, but the only ones they had were
stored in the airlock with the spacesuits, and the damage
to Reliant jolted the air up door open just enough
for the vacuum to take over, and everything had been
lost in an instant. The one he held must have
been looked over, hidden under some shelf or piece of machinery.
We would only give him an ire at most, and
they both had come to terms with the fact that
brescue was not coming. But maybe Sarah had given him
this for a reason, so he would try. He owed
her that much. Sedric crawled through the saltwater puddle his
wife had left, pulling the first aid kit from the
wall until he found the mask an attachment howse he
was looking for. Then, using the door from his leverage,
he made it to his feet, followed the trail of
ocean water back to Olannie's quarters, tank h mask in hand,
and collapsed into the bed beside her. Not cold was
all she could manage. Her eyes opened with only a sliver.
Both of their breathing was just rattling in their chests
and agonal him, but Cedric managed to fix the mass
to the tank, pull his crewmate into his lap. And
strap the mask over her face. She watched him with
quiet now open eyes, but didn't make a sound. Exhausted,
he moved her back to the mattress and laid next
to her, once more terrified, the grimly accomplished, knowing he
had given her the last bit of oxygen left. He
wanted none of it. He just wanted to go back
to Sarah, even if the way there was the endless, airless,
quieter space. Cedric closed his eyes and took Colline's hand
in his again. Her skin was warmer now, but she
didn't stir. It wasn't until he concentrated on the ribber
quarrying of the distress beacon to lull him into a
final rest that he heard it. The pat in the beacon
was making now instead of the steady being. It had
been three short pangs and three long over and over again,
anesso as proof of life. What did you do? He whispered?
He was rolling down his face but too weak to
sit up. Al Annie's what did you do? She didn't answer,
and he didn't let her go, But as the world
went dark, he carried the one thing he hated most
into the ether. It Cedric knew he was dead, floating
in the abyss of nothingness. But there were fits and
starts of clarity that he didn't understand. Things he shouldn't
have been able to see, moments that never actually happened.
In Betting. In his memory, he felt himself pulled from
Milanie's bed, and he felt a thoud pair of fingers
and knots from house, Then the hiss of an airlock,
a punch of freezing air, and now pressing brightness on
his eyelids that he couldn't agamore. When his eyes opened,
he found himself in a white room, a strange man
in what looked like scrubs, checking the machines he was
hooked up to you to beatific smile on his face
when he saw that Cedric was awake. Welcome back. Cedric
asked over and over about Alannie's but the nurses that
looked over him would just share uncomfortable looks and tried
to get him on a different subject. Cedric felt a
welling of dread, but he tamped it down until the
doctor finally came. After silently checking over him. The doctor
and an older man, sank into the chair next to
his bed. You're incredibly lucky, he said bluntly. Once we breached,
we were sure that you were both dead. But I
want you to know that your crewmate choosing to go
on her own terms is no less honorable. There's no
way to tell if she would have held out until
we arrived. Anyway, it didn't make sense he had given
her the oxygen so she would be the one here.
Too exhausted for open grief, he closed his eyes and
was back in the open water alone under the night
sky sun bent skins screaming from the sault, wishing that
he was just brave enough to let go. What do
you mean on her own terms? The doctor's lips thinned,
as if he didn't want to say, but gave Sadric
the truth. YE might not remember. Hypoxy can do that
to the mind, but Alanni's mc dowell took her own
lifeih and elation from an acettleinge tank. If it's any solace,
I'm sure she went easily. I've heard it's like drowning, blissful,
and that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
I will see you in the next one.