Sub-Light Nightmare

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. The big empty doesn't allow sound waves to carry. Radio waves, yes. Light? Sure.

But screams?

Kuni Nero sat on the outer hull of her ship and stared into the distant stars and shivered. Her spacesuit was snug and the thermal systems were functioning admirably, so she was comfortably warm, but that didn't stop the shiver from making her teeth click together almost painfully.

Perhaps it was shock? The inside of her suit's visor was covered in dozens of health and vital readouts, glowing against the backdrop of space. Heart rate. Respiration. Blood pressure. All were within normal ranges. A little elevated, but nothing to radio home about.

She snorted and felt like screaming again, but stopped herself. Why bother? There was nobody around to hear her.

Nobody alive, leastwise.

She shifted and checked the harness tethering her to her broken ship, unaware of the small panicky noises she was making as she did so. The ship was a Quasar, an M-Class Fighter that was rarely seen anymore. An antique, really, but she'd loved it despite its age and the likelihood of it leaving her stranded in space one day. Like today.

Kuni ran a gloved hand over the polished hull of the ship and sighed. She said, "You did your best, love. I can't fault you for dying on me, not after all the times you saved my life." She traced her fingers across the wide gash running across its surface and winced. "You've earned your rest."

Around her, pieces of debris and the orbiting shells of burned out ships float silently past, forcing Kuni to stop her ruminations and confront the bleak task ahead. There were also bodies out there. Drifting among the wrecked fleet, some as crisp as their scorched ships, there were hundreds.

Maybe thousands.

Kuni thought about keying the internal radio built into her suit, but stopped herself. It was too soon. The chance that the enemy would discover her was too dangerous to risk revealing her presence. The chaotic mess from the space battle might've have camouflaged her life signs against a basic scan, but if she started calling for help, they would definitely hear her.

Thinking of the enemy made her shiver once more and Kuni let her mind wander back to the events of the last few hours. It seemed insane that the ambush had happened such a short time ago. And it had been over in a matter of minutes.

The fleet had exited space warp at the same time. Unfolding into existence with a ripping of space, like the sudden appearence of hundreds of black holes, the ships snapped into place instantaneously. Each vessel was as different as the last, but in order to make the jump they were all slaves to the Fleet AI, Noah. Noah was an older program but more than adequate for basic space jumps.

Warping was tough on humans and it always took a few minutes for the fleshy pilots to regain their equilibrium, so it was a catastrophe when the waiting squadron of fighters swooped in and opened fire.

Kuni only survived that initial onslaught because the freighter nearest to her caught an unlucky broadside that ignited its core. That set off a rising series of explosions as its fuel tanks ignited and the concussion wave sent Kuni and her ship whipping through the heart of the battle.

Her harness kept her from being hammered into jelly by the inertia, but did nothing for her confusion. What the hell was happening?

Fighting the controls, Kuni tried to get the ship under control, but it was no good. Before she could achieve much of anything, there was a flash and all of her panels lit up with damage warnings. No shields. No weapons or engines. The ship was dead in the water. So to speak.

Around her, space was a cacophony of violence. Blasts from exploding ships and flashes of blinding light as compromised warp coils folded in on themselves and blossomed into self contained miniature super novas.

Kuni braced herself as the momentum drove her ship into the side of a burning transport, tearing an ugly gash across the hull and venting a burst of atmosphere into space. Her suit was powered internally so the vacuum was no danger, but she took a quick glance at her hud to make sure the seals still held.

She didn't see the impact that knocked her unconscious.

When she awoke, the battle was over. It took some work, but she was able to extricate herself from her fighter and attach herself to the hull with a harness and a magnetic coupler. Once outside, the magnitude of her situation made itself clear.

Studying the wrecks surrounding her, Kuni decided on the slowly rotating bulk of the transport ship. It was the closest to her ship and was the biggest target. The monofilament tether was as thin as fishing line but rated for 3,000 kilos and there was a thick coil of it within the harness. More than enough to reach the other ship.

Thumbing the release catch, she loosed enough of the line to give her plenty of slack, letting the glittering wire float loose beside the ship. When she had twice the length she needed, Kuni took a breath and braced herself against her ships hull.

The next step was more difficult. Bunching her leg muscles tight, she pushed off of her ship, aiming for the transport. The force of her push sent her hurtling towards the burnt out hull, while at the same time sending her fighter in the opposite direction.

Stomach lurching, Kuni watched the other vessel loom up in front of her, its ruined hull peppered with holes and scorch marks from the flames that had hollowed it out. Behind her, she knew her own ship was now pinwheeling through space. There was a chance it would outpace her and yank her off her target, but that was why she doubled the amount of slack.

In her right hand, Kuni gripped another magnetic coupler. An instant before slamming into the side of her target, she attached it to the bigger ship's hull. At almost the same moment, the monofilament snapped tight and she felt the weight of her ship try to tear her away from the transport.

The coupler held and the ruined hulk's greater mass kept it from being pulled after the smaller ship. Kuni then used the retractor built into the harness to recall the monofilament, slowly towing her own ship back. It took only a moment before her fighter was perched alongside the transport.

Kuni rested for a bit, admiring her work. She was no less stranded, but now she had a bigger base to work from. Activating the mag locks on her boots, she stepped heavily along the side of the big ship, keeping low to avoid creating a larger profile against the derelict. The wreck was useless for parts, but there were ships nearby that had suffered significantly less damage.

One such ship was a fighter much like her own. Not a Quasar, but of a similar vintage, and not nearly as badly damaged. The canopy was open and spattered with blood, but the rest of it was in one piece. Definitely worth checking out.

Moving carefully, Kuni repeated the same operation as before. Giving herself plenty of slack, she got in position before releasing the mag locks on her boots and launched herself back out into space.

Sliding through the vacuum, she twisted and felt a shock as she caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. A flash of light. It was coming from another of the ruined ships. This one a medical frigate.

But she didn't have time to brood about what she saw. She barely got her hands up in time to place the mag couplers before she crashed into her destination. She hit the nose of the fighter hard enough to hurt, glancing off the scorched metal and tumbling off course.

The safety line snapped tight and the couplers held, yanking her up short and spinning her up against the ship's belly. She hit hard but was able to catch herself before things spiraled out of control. The fighter was moving now, corkscrewing as its new momentum pushed it in a new direction.

"Shit." Kuni said under her breath. Her heart was pounding hard as she quickly regained her bearings and began pulling the line taut. The ship stopped its spinning and she took a moment to study the wrecked medical frigate.

She wasn't crazy. She'd definitely seen a flash of light come from that direction. There was nothing to say it was anything other than a brief electrical flash or maybe the reflected light from a nearby star, but she couldn't stop the niggling feeling of hope that sprang up inside of her at the thought of not being alone.

Working with a renewed vigor, Kuni towed her new acquisition back to her growing collection of broken vessels and began the tedious work of scrounging parts from her own ship to see if the other was at all repairable. While her ship was a loss, the other's outer hull was scorched in places, but otherwise intact.

It didn't take her very long to get the new vessel's life support online and, after that, the sublight engines. It was a newer ship than hers and the engines ran slightly better than expected. No warp capabilities though, meaning it would still take her a thousand lifetimes to reach the edge of the solar system.

But where there was life, there was hope.

Where had she heard that saying? She wasn't sure. Her father, maybe?

Thinking of her dad made her heart ache and she fought back the sudden urge to cry. Breaking down would accomplish nothing.

Triple checking the ship's instruments, Kuni used the maneuvering thrusters to bring it up alongside the medical frigate. Unlike her old ship, there were directional spotlights equipped on her new ride and she played the bluish white beams along the perforated length of the frigate's hull. She didn't really expect to find anything. Odds were that flash of light was nothing.

But she wanted to be sure.

She was about to give up when there was another brief flash of light. It came from the rear of the ship. Kuni flipped a pair of switches, activating the fighter's short range comm system. She keyed the mic and spoke softly, "Is anybody there?"

That wasn't necessarily a standard distress query, but Kuni wasn't about to assume that the source of the light was friendly. It was just as likely it was one of the ambushers, lying in wait for survivors.

Kuni waited a long ten count and said again, "Requesting an immediate response from any and all nearby life forms. No response will be seen as an act of aggression and all further contact will be through the lens of my combat scope." Again, not a proper form of address in her current situation. But Kuni was past caring about protocol.

Nothing.

Kuni felt her pulse thumping in her throat as she used deft motions to flip her ship around so that she could more easily study the frigate through the canopy. Running the beam of the searchlight along the hull, she reached a place where the hull had buckled and split, creating a narrow opening.

She tried to imagine what that must've been like for the ship's passengers. The sudden implosion as the air rushed out and the vacuum boiled the oxygen in their lungs. The terror they must've felt as their blood began to boil in their veins.

Then, again, came that flash of light. From beyond that narrow gash.

Something was moving inside the ship.

Kuni swallowed and, once again, checked her suit's seals before depressurizing the cockpit and popping the canopy. She pulled herself outside and secured herself to her ship. She'd gone through too much to get it, there was no way she was going to risk being separated from her only lifeline out of an unwinnable situation.

Moving carefully, she studied the opening before her. This close, she could see the ambient light inside the ship, glowing softly. Putting her faceplate close to the ship's gaping wound, she studied the shadowed interior of what was once a connecting corridor between decks.

The light was to the right.

A body floated alone in the corridor, clasping a flashlight close to their chest. The hands were claws and the child's face was a rictus of agony.

Kuni felt something let go inside her chest and she pushed away from the sight.

Back inside the snug cockpit of her fighter, she prepared herself for what might be the longest journey of her life. And, most likely, the last. But she didn't care. She kept picturing that poor dead child, floating in the darkness with her burning flashlight.

The child's face had been her own.

With one last look at the floating graveyard of ships, Kuni activated the sublight engines and launched the fighter toward the distant stars.