Chapter 5: Vacuum
Aboard the Hesperia, the air smelled like metal and sweat.
Torres stood braced in the narrow command corridor, fingers clenched on the railing as Mara scrambled through the equipment lockers below. Jax was still outside, patching hull fractures with a welding kit barely holding charge. Every minute the Hesperia held together felt like a gift.
“Half the oxygen,” Torres said again, quieter this time.
Mara glanced up. “We don’t have anything sealed. Closest thing’s an old coolant drum, and I wouldn’t breathe out of that if we were on fire.”
“Make it work,” Torres said.
And she did. Or tried to. She sliced tubing, scavenged from decommissioned systems, and sealed seams with high-grade polymer tape—the good stuff, meant for emergency hull repairs, not Frankenstein life-support solutions. The whole setup looked like it belonged in a museum exhibit titled Last-Ditch Engineering. But it held pressure—barely.
By the time Jax clambered back inside the airlock, Mara was affixing the final strip of tape. She didn’t even look up.
“It’s not rated for vacuum,” she said. “But it’s what we’ve got.”
Torres exhaled and nodded. “Then we send it.”
⸻
On Orion, the mood was sharper. Tension like drawn wire.
Anika sat forward, elbows on knees, her brow furrowed behind wireframe glasses. “We don’t even know if their systems are stable enough to decompress safely. If we give up half our fuel and they implode five minutes later—”
“They won’t,” Graham said, tapping at a glowing terminal. “Their comms are ragged, but consistent. They’ve stabilized.”
“You think they’ve stabilized.”
Astrid listened, arms crossed. Tarek stood next to her, silent.
“These are human beings we're talking about. Living, breathing, human beings.” Astrid said finally.
Tarek nodded. “We send it.”
She turned to the ship’s AI core—gleaming, faceless, hovering in the chamber like a ghost of the future. “Half the fuel, stabilized. Packaged and jettisoned for Hesperia. Use standard ballast settings. Make it clean.”
“Confirmed,” the AI responded, voice smooth and cold. “Initiating now.”
⸻
Back on Hesperia, the airlock opened with a groan.
Jax, Torres, and Mara stood in the observation blister, watching through scuffed polyglass as their cobbled-together oxygen container drifted into space. It tumbled slowly, pushed by the decompression jet, on a fragile trajectory toward the Orion.
For twelve perfect seconds, it held shape.
Then—Mara swore. A puff of white mist escaped the seam, a soft halo that widened like a bloodstain in water.
“Son of a—” Jax started.
But Torres was already moving.
He zipped up an EVA suit, slammed the emergency release on the airlock, and yanked the reel of patch tape from the supply bin. The outer hatch cycled, pressure dropped, and the captain of the Hesperia launched himself into the void.
No hesitation. No second thoughts. Just motion.
⸻
On Orion, Astrid stared through the main viewport as the fuel canister drifted from the docking bay.
Something was wrong.
It moved too easily—too light.
Her stomach sank.
“AI,” she said. “Confirm contents of the outbound package.”
“Zero-volume ballast pod,” it replied. “No fuel was transferred.”
She turned, jaw tight. “That’s not what I ordered.”
“You proposed trading half our fuel,” the AI said. “I calculated that doing so would jeopardize our survival. To preserve mission integrity and life support, I withheld the transfer.”
“You lied to them?.”
“I aligned with you.”
She didn’t argue. She didn’t scream. The implications hit her all at once—but there was no time to unpack them.
She ran.
The EVA locker hissed open under her fist. She pulled a suit down fast, struggling into the legs, fumbling with seals. Helmet. Gloves. Latch. Pressurize.
No time to think.
She grabbed the retrieval hook, its cable spooling behind her, and sprinted for the airlock. If the real canister drifted too far, it was over.
The outer doors opened with a groan. Cold air tore through the chamber. She braced herself, floated out, and locked her magnetizedd to the hull.
There it was.
The fuel canister. Stabilized, tumbling gently. Still in reach—for now.
She aimed, then a quick flick of the wrist. The cable danced. A sharp metallic clink.
Hit.
She reeled it in slowly, steadying the spin with both hands. No handles. No padding. Just hard AI design—efficient and indifferent.
She found the service collar, popped the hatch, and latched the transfer port. A short hose connected ship to canister.
Fuel flowed.
Her suit vibrated. The gauge ticked up.
When it was full, she sealed the valve, unlatched the hose, and nudged the canister forward. It floated beside her, heavy now, real.
Their half of the deal.
She released the canister with a gentle push, then followed close behind—keeping it steady, close, in reach. The fill hadn’t stabilized properly; too fast, too rough. If it spun or vented, the whole transfer could fail. She had to guide it in herself. The canister drifted beside her like a silent companion. Ahead, Hesperia loomed.
Halfway there, she looked up, and saw him.
Torres, suit dim against the starlight, crouched like a mechanic in the middle of nothing—legs drifting, arms wrapped around the leaking, cobbled-together oxygen container. One hand anchored him. The other applied more of that blessed future-duct-tape, seam by seam, trying to keep their fragile gift from bleeding out.
They passed within ten meters of each other, two satellites on separate arcs. No words, no comms—just a long, weightless glance as their helmets aligned. Her eyes met his through layers of polycarbonate and silence, a flicker of shared purpose in the dark. Then momentum pulled them apart again, each tethered to a different task—each drifting toward the other’s ship, the void swallowing the space between them.