Blood Impulse

Part 7.3

Thirty-two years ago, Liguanian Sector, Battleship Kansas

Samantha Scarlett woke to the cold. Without life support or the engines, temperature on the Kansas was slowly equalizing with space's icy vacuum. Small fires burned on the edges of CIC, paper and people alight, but none of them were large enough to generate heat as they slowly starved of oxygen.

She turned and tried to shake Commander Reddy awake, but as soon as the faceplate of his helmet had been jostled up to face her, she could tell that he was dead. White marbled eyes stared up at her from beneath the clear blood-splatted visor. The red droplets had already frozen. Commander Reddy had been dead for a while.

She left him where he sat underneath the emergency lighting. Ignoring her discomfort, Samantha stumbled out of CIC and down the nearest ladder. The radio of her suit was silent, despite the body masses she saw strewn about the hallway. She sobbed at them as she recognized their faces, but none of them stirred.

Soon, it settled in on her. She was the last one alive, and she thought she knew why.

But that little secret would not make the infection any less lethal. Her panic faded into a pitiful acceptance. She was all alone. No one could save her.

She did no know where she was walking until she arrived on the observation deck. She shut the hatch and leaned up against it, sliding slowly to the floor. Knowing it did no good, she took off her helmet and stared out to the stars with bare eyes.

It reminded her of why she had joined the fleet. She had wanted to wander amongst the stars, and she had long ago accepted the possibility of dying among them. It was an acknowledgement every member of the fleet made: their life may someday be forfeit for the good of the worlds.

But, back then, she'd had nothing to lose. Now, there was more to her life. The face of a particular young man came to mind. He had promised to be waiting for her when the Kansas returned.

He was going to be waiting for a very long time. If she knew him at all, perhaps for the rest of his life.

Sam tried to lose herself in those memories: all the happy times, all the things that had yet to come. But those things were to be torn from them both now. She would die here, alone, and in misery.

She slumped over, thinking it would be easier for them both to forget. I shouldn't have told him, she thought. This loss would have been easier for him then. She could have at least spared him that.

Time ticked by, slow and irrelevant and death encroached. Sam was fluttering between asleep and awake when she saw it: a stray line of light in the void, an incision between normal space and subspace. She watched in horror as it grew into a bright flash of rainbow light, and a ship emerged.

Recognizing it immediately, a cry of anguish escaped her lips. "Why?" she demanded, "Why are you here?"

But the black and red shape of the Flagship Singularity offered no explanation as she hung outside the windows.

"You have to go," Sam cried. They would die if they came aboard.

Suddenly, her worry for her future husband dominated her mind. She should have known he would come looking for them. He had, after all, promised to be there when they needed him.

Late by a few hours hardly classified a ship as missing, but that would not have stopped him from snatching the nearest ship and coming to fulfill his promise. "Oh, Will." She could weep for the fate that would now await him and every other soul aboard that ship. "Why would you bring them here?"

"He didn't."

Samantha Scarlett traced the words back to a woman now standing on the previously empty observation deck.