The vacuum of space doesn't just pull at your lungs; it pulls at your very soul.
As the hull of the Aethel-Dawn tore open, the screaming wind of escaping atmosphere became a physical hand, dragging everything—crates, corpses, and hope—toward the hungry violet maw of the nebula. The six Wraiths at the end of the corridor anchored themselves with magnetic boots, their heavy rifles leveled at Elias and Lyra.
"Hold on to me!" Elias roared over the deafening whistle of the depressurizing deck. He slammed his fist into the emergency magnetic lock on the wall, grabbing a tether line meant for cargo. He wrapped his other arm around Lyra's waist, pulling her flush against his back.
"Elias, the hangar is gone!" Lyra screamed, pointing through the widening gap in the ship's ribs.
She was right. The explosion had severed the docking arm. The Sparrow was drifting, unmoored, about fifty meters away from the derelict. It was a tiny silver seed floating in a sea of chaos. Between them and the ship lay nothing but the frozen, radiation-soaked vacuum and the crossfire of the Wraiths.
"We have to jump," Elias said. The madness of the statement hung in the air.
"Without suits? We'll flash-freeze. Our blood will boil."
"Not if we use the fire suppression canisters," Elias countered, his mind racing through the physics of a dying man. "They're pressurized with nitrogen. We use them as thrusters. We have maybe thirty seconds of consciousness once we leave the atmosphere. If we miss, we drift forever."
The Wraiths opened fire. Pulse rounds sizzled through the thinning air, melting the metal inches from Elias's head.
"Better to drift than to give them the satisfaction!" Lyra yelled, her eyes burning with that silver fire he was beginning to crave more than air.
Elias grabbed two fire suppression canisters from the wall rack. He handed one to Lyra. "On my mark. Aim for the Sparrow's open hatch. Don't breathe out, or your lungs will collapse. Don't breathe in, or you'll sear your throat. Empty your lungs halfway and hold."
He looked at her one last time—not as a captive, but as a partner. "I'll see you on the other side, Commander."
"Count on it, Captain."
The bulkhead behind them finally gave way. The roar reached a crescendo, and then, suddenly, there was no sound at all.
They were cast into the void.
The transition was a physical blow. The silence was absolute, a terrifying weight that pressed against Elias's eyeballs and skin. The cold was an instant, biting predator, turning the moisture on his lips to ice. He saw the Wraiths firing, their muzzle flashes silent blossoms of light, but the rounds drifted harmlessly wide as the distance grew.
Elias squeezed the trigger on his canister.
The jet of nitrogen hissed into the vacuum, a silent propulsive force that jerked his arm. He felt Lyra's grip on his harness tighten until her knuckles must have been white. They were a single, tangled mass of humanity hurtling through the stars.
The Sparrow loomed larger. The hatch was open, a small rectangle of amber light in the darkness. But they were coming in too fast, and their trajectory was shifting.
Lyra acted. She didn't have the strength to use her canister for propulsion, but she used it as a counterweight, swinging her body to shift their center of gravity.
Elias felt his vision begin to tunnel. The edges of the world were turning black. His heart hammered in his ears—a slow, wet thud. Ten seconds left.
He saw the edge of the Sparrow's hatch. He reached out, his fingers stiffening with the onset of frostbite. He missed.
The vacuum began to pull them past the ship.
In a final, desperate surge of adrenaline, Elias fired the last of the nitrogen directly away from the ship. The recoil slammed them toward the hull. Lyra's hand shot out, her fingers catching the rim of the airlock.
She screamed—a silent, agonizing contortion of her face—as the metal took the skin off her palms, but she didn't let go. She hauled them inward, tumbling into the tiny pressurized chamber.
Elias hit the manual cycle button with his head as he collapsed.
The hiss of returning oxygen was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He gasped, a ragged, weeping sound, as the air rushed into his starving lungs. He rolled onto his back, his skin burning as the blood began to flow again.
Beside him, Lyra was curled in a ball, coughing violently, her hands a raw, bloody mess.
Elias crawled to her, pulling her into his lap. He didn't care about the mission or the data drive in his pocket. He held her, his chest heaving against hers, their shared warmth the only thing keeping the frost at bay.
"You... you caught us," he wheezed.
Lyra looked up, her silver eyes bloodshot but triumphant. She let out a weak, broken laugh. "I told you... I can crawl faster than you can run."
But the victory was short-lived. A shadow fell over the Sparrow's viewport.
The Iron Sovereign had arrived. The Dreadnought sat above them like a god of war, its hangar doors opening like a mouth. They weren't being shot at anymore. They were being swallowed.
And then, the ship's comms crackled to life. It wasn't a soldier. It was a voice Elias recognized from his childhood—smooth, aristocratic, and utterly devoid of mercy.
"Captain Thorne," the High Chancellor said. "You've been a very difficult man to erase. Bring me the drive, and perhaps I'll let the girl die quickly."
Elias looked at the drive, then at Lyra. The slow burn of their connection had reached a flashpoint, but the ending was already being written in the cold steel of the ship surrounding them.
To be continued.....