“Colonel,
what happened to the Naga Sentry?”
He wouldn’t, or couldn’t look at me. He kept
his eyes on the double vault of airlock doors ahead of us. There were guys in
spacesuits a lot like my skinsuit, but with helmets, preparing a spacepod just
for me.
“Your parents were good people. All of the
people on that ship were good people. I couldn’t stand the sight of that thing.
I had orders to bring it in to port. I was commanding a brig carrying it in our
cargo hold. When we passed behind the star to make a standard orbital approach, I flushed it
into Alexis’ photosphere.”
I
nodded. “Good.”
“You’ve never talked about the seven months
you spent as a Loner on that ship.” “
Why
would I want to?”
I shut my eyes tight. Just like that a
flash of memory returned, as real as when it happened. My father standing over
my mother’s body, staring at his hands. His running screaming into the calesthetics
ring between sleep pods until another crazy passenger shivved him.
Me, seven years old, wheeling my parents’
bodies on their own sleep cot to the science lab freezer where we stored
cellular samples for seeding on A-Seven. I secured them on their mat, spooning
them together in death as they’d been in life, before this fucking voyage
began. Then I shut the freezer door.
“It’s ready,” the Colonel grunted. “How about
you?”
“Yeah.
Let’s go.”
[a very short chapter for a story using my DeviantArt character Lianna]
Enjoy.
www.mike3839.deviantart.com
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